Teacher bias hurting Māori education | Radio New Zealand News: "The Unconscious Bias and Education report, released today, compared the effect low expectations had on Māori students here and African-American students in the United States. The report is a review of existing research. Its principal investigator, Anton Blank, said negative Māori stereotypes were partly to blame for Māori underachievement, although poverty also played a role. "Definitely socio-economic factors - and I mean that's patently obvious that children who live in poorer areas do less well in the education system. "But even controlling for that there is still a very, very significant gap. We argue that that is about the unconscious bias at play between teachers and students." He said people pointed to the blatant racism in the US as a way of claiming racism did not exist in New Zealand. But it was something that was happening here on a "systematic level" and so was harder to detect. "We've had a lot of race relations discussion, a lot of bicultural discussion over the last 30 years so I think people know not to articulate their biases publicly, but under the surface the biases are still there." The report also found that cultural awareness training and high-level strategies alone were not enough to combat it. The solution lay in raising teachers' awareness of their own bias through professional development, Mr Blank said."
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