What is stereotyping

Stereotypes are oversimplified generalisations about people based on key aspects of their identity, such as their sex, sexual orientation, race, nationality, religion, socio-economic background etc.

The brain is built to make connections, and the unconscious part of the brain uses these connections to make quick decisions and shortcuts, saving time. The unconscious brain places people into categories based on previous patterns and cultural stereotypes, which our brains absorb from a very young age from the media, books, TV, the curriculum, our family’s narratives and our own lived experiences.

Whilst we may find it tricky to stop our brains from activating stereotypes, we can consciously choose whether or not to apply these stereotypes by simply slowing down our thinking and bias-checking ourselves. If we don’t clock them when they surface, we can easily end up dropping stereotypes into our lesson planning and resources, unaware that the unconscious part of the brain has made a link between one thing and another. There have been a few incidents recently reported where school staff have referred to a group of Black children as a ‘little gang’. Whilst it may have been intended as a playful term, the connection between Black people and criminality is an offensive false narrative presented through the TV and media for many years. The use of language here is clearly problematic, whether intended to cause offence or not.

You may have seen some of the COVID ‘stay home’ images issued by the government and splashed on billboards in 2020 which received a large number of complaints, as the images showed a woman doing the housework, a woman cleaning, a woman ironing etc- gender stereotypes in every image.

Slightly more subtly, an unconscious bias conference led by a huge HR company recently placed an image of a wheelchair-user next to the ‘helpdesk’ icon. Whoever designed it, defaulted to a cultural stereotype – that disabled people need help.

It is important to notice these stereotypes when they emerge because they are all around us. We have been breathing them in all our lives, largely unaware of the impact they could be having on our attitudes and behaviours. As adults, these learned stereotypes can surface through our words, attitudes, actions and decision-making processes whenever we’re in auto-pilot mode.

Whereas previously, as educators, we were encouraged to avoid showing harmful stereotypes within our planning and resources, an inclusive approach now is to be more proactive than that. It is important we counter those narratives by showing images that are atypical rather than stereotypical. Flip the narrative to address the imbalance.