Effects of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Intonation on Secondary Science Teachers’ Evaluation of Spoken Responses

Abstract

To explore the role of teachers’ biases in the underrepresentation of minorities and women in STEM, 128 secondary science teachers were asked to evaluate responses spoken with either falling or rising intonation by African American, Latino, and White ninth-grade boys and girls. Responses spoken by minority students were evaluated less favorably than identically worded responses spoken by White students, and rising intonation responses were evaluated less favorably than falling intonation responses. Female speakers have been shown to use rising intonation nearly twice as often as male speakers, so this bias against rising intonation responses disproportionately affects female students (an indirect effect of gender).