Personal Practice CPD: Know your anchoring from your attribution

It was brilliant to welcome around 30 educators to our Personal Practice workshop recently. Throughout the course of 2019 as we’ve been out and about presenting and networking at events, and speaking to practitioners and teachers in our Supporter schools, many people have requested the chance for some quality CPD on unconscious bias, gender stereotyping, and strategies to lessen their effects in the classroom.  

This video from the Royal Society is a great explainer on the concept and ramifications of unconscious bias.

We kicked off with exercises on how biases affect our perceptions and decision-making. A really effective example of ‘anchoring bias’ saw participants willing to pay from £50 to £3,000 for the exactly same NYC hotel room. And how we’re all affected by attribution bias – firmly believing our actions are less blameworthy and our mitigating circumstances are more valid than others’. We also had some healthy discussions around gendered language, and some phrases that are OK/not OK.

Some useful tools to for the classroom to ensure our own biases don’t creep into who we call on, or how we give feedback, are:

·        Plickers

·        Classroom interactions template

With many thanks to Dr Jenny Search and Esther Mander for leading the session, and for teachers for attending and championing this work.