I have nothing to add to this article. It's well-written, well-sourced, and just plain right:
In wake of George Floyd’s murder and the protests that followed, many colleges and universities have been rolling out new training requirements – often oriented towards reducing biases and encouraging people from high-status groups to ‘check their privilege.’ The explicit goal of these training programs is generally to help create a more positive and welcoming institutional environment for people from historically marginalized and underrepresented groups.
As I have explained elsewhere, there is a long literature on the benefits of diversity on knowledge production.* However, many of the approaches to training people how to navigate and utilize diversity were implemented by corporations, non-profits and universities before their effectiveness had been tested rigorously (if at all).**
Beginning in the mid-90s, it became increasingly clear that, due to this lack of validation, many widely-used interventions could be ineffective or harmful. An empirical literature was built up measuring the effectiveness of diversity-related training programs. The picture that has emerged is not very flattering.
The article addresses unconscious bias/implicit bias and microaggressions training, points out the flaws in such training, and identifies the negative consequences of such training.
Even if your heart is pure, and you genuinely believe that such training is important to organizations and should help people work better together, the conclusions of studies about the actual effectiveness of such training are inescapable:
However, when scientists set about to investigate whether the programs actually changed behaviors, i.e. do they reduce expressions of bias, do they reduce discrimination, do they foster greater collaboration across groups, do they help with retaining employees from historically marginalized or underrepresented groups, do they increase productivity or reduce conflicts in the workplace — for all of these behavioral metrics, the metrics that actually matter, not only is the training ineffective, it is often counterproductive.
Science would indicate that you should believe the data, not your intuition.
(And for those of you for whom this kinda stuff is important, look at the author's name.)
I shared with my principal the posting that Joanne did a couple days ago about reducing bias in the classroom. That one was valuable because it specific data and a specific solution (unbiased rubrics). We have been doing that "diversity training" the last couple of weeks. She was most taken back by the first line ""Anti-bias training” doesn’t seem to change teachers’ behavior" because she honestly could not believe it. Maybe I should share this article too.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely! While the intentions of diversity training are good, we can't ignore that its success in reducing the implicit bias of authority figures, teachers, students, and coworkers is... limited at best.
ReplyDeleteIf you happen to be interested in yours, by the way, I'd recommend Project Implicit by Harvard.
I've written a lot about Harvard's unconscious bias/implicit bias "instrument". It is, shall we say, problematic.
ReplyDeleteHarvard's instrument says a lot more about Harvard than about any actual bias.
ReplyDeleteBut that's the Ivy League for you...