Stereotype Threat Theory and
First-Generation Students:
Strategies for Faculty
Created by /
Anna Plemons and Jordan Engelke
Critical Literacies Achievement and Success Program
Washington State University
Let’s Play “Green Glass Door”
GREE N GLA S S D OO R
P u p p y, n o t d o g
K i tte n , n o t cat
Boots, not shoes
B e e r, n o t w i n e
W h e e l s , n o t a t i re
Were there times you thought you understood the rules of the
game?
Did you want to participate, but felt you couldn’t?
Could you pick up on clues, here and there, on how to play the
game?
Were you relieved to guess a correct answer but had no idea why
it was right?
Was it frustrating seeing other people understand the game?
If you want to play the game, it helps to know the rules.
Two Dangers in Facilitating a Conversation about
First-Generation Students:
1. Use stereotypes that hyper-define and/or over-determine differences
between First-Generation Students (FGS) and their peers
2. Sanitize differences so that real and concrete challenges are muted
and/or made invisible
There is no monolithic First-Generation Student,
but many FGS share some common characteristics.
Stereotype Threat
Stereotype Threat Video
Stereotype Threat
 The threat of being viewed through the lens
of a negative stereotype
 Fear of doing something that will
inadvertently confirm a stereotype
 Linked to diminished performance based on
the associative psychological stress
From Steele, C. (1999). Thin Ice. Atlantic Monthly. 282(2).
Stereotype Threat
Reduction in stereotype threat
supports an open, relaxed posture
for learning and improves academic
performance.
From Steele, C. (1999). Thin Ice. Atlantic Monthly. 282(2).
Defining the Politicized Climate
“[P]olitical antagonisms are being formulated in terms of moral categories. We are
still faced with political friend/enemy discriminations but they are now expressed
using the vocabulary of morality. . . . When opponents are defined not in political
terms but in moral terms, they cannot be envisaged as an ‘adversary’ but only as an
enemy.” (75-76)
“[A]gonism is a we/they relation where the conflicting parties, although
acknowledging that there is no rational solution to their conflict, nevertheless
recognize the legitimacy of their opponents. They are ‘adversaries’ not enemies. This
means that, while in conflict, they see themselves as belonging to the same political
association, as sharing a common symbolic space within which the conflict takes
place. We could say that the task of democracy is to transform antagonism into
agonism.” (20)
-Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (2005)
Invention Activity for Teacher Response
Imagine you have assigned an Op-Ed project in which students are charged with the task of responding
to a significant contemporary political issue. Discuss how you would respond to the two Op-Ed
examples provided.
Questions to consider:
1) How can I help the composer be a stronger and more rhetorically-aware communicator?
a) What is the composer attempting to communicate or accomplish?
b) To whom is the composer attempting to communicate?
c) What is at stake for the composer?
2) How can I help myself be a stronger and more rhetorically-aware communicator?
a) How am I situating myself as a reader/reviewer/evaluator of the composer’s work?
b) Where am I deriving my ethos and/or authority to respond to the composer’s work?
c) What is at stake for me in reading/reviewing/evaluating the composer’s work?
“We thought we all needed to be there for freshman orientation — the whole
family, for the entirety of it...They’d used all their vacation days from work and
had been saving for months to get me to school and go through our orientation.”
Stereotype Threat
What stereotype threats might
there be in your classroom or
specific discipline?
Cues and Clues
1. Make the rules explicit whenever and wherever possible
“Parents usually participate in the first day of orientation, then leave campus.”
2. Diffuse stereotype threat with environmental cues
“This is a difficult assignment. Most students really struggle with it the first time
through.”
3. Encourage a malleable view of intelligence
“Academic reading is really challenging, but the more you do it the easier it gets. Its like
a muscle. When I was first in grad school…”
So What? / Takeaways
“[T]exts can be presented to students in such a way that theory finds articulation in
practice, that though there is anger and frustration, that is how the dialectic works. Race
and class and gender struggles and coming to grips with those struggles means that there
must be combat in the contact zone. And that persuasion in the sense of conversion is not
likely in the few short weeks that we see students, but the process of change and
reconsideration can surely be achieved, the dialectic entered into.” (50)
-Victor Villanueva, Jr., “Shoot-Out at the I’m OK, You’re OK Corral” (1997)
Central policy implication of the research:
“Unless [we] make people feel safe from the risk of these identity predicaments in identityintegrated settings, [we] won’t succeed in reducing group achievement gaps or in enabling
people from different backgrounds to work comfortably and well together.” (215)
In the Next CLASP Module:
Power and Privilege in the Curriculum: Working with your institution’s
Student Learning Outcomes
References
Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (2005)
Claude Steele, “Thin Ice.” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 282, iss. 2. 1999.
Victor Villanueva, “Shoot-Out at the I’m OK, You’re OK Corral.” 1997.