Prejudice and Stereotyping in High-Stakes Testing - Essay Example

Prejudices and stereotyping in high-stakes testing By: Cognitive psychology is referred to as a scientific way of investigating cognitive abilities in humans. These cognitive abilities include all the processes of learning, thinking, perceiving, understanding, remembering etc. Cognition means to know and is derived from a Latin word. The aim of the paper is to consider cognitive psychology using it as a tool to mitigation of prejudice and stereotyping in high-stakes academic competency testing.

Piaget's Cognitive Theory was given by Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980). His theory is based on children and is regarded as a systematic study that’s leads to cognitive development in children. Moreover he also observed the detailed mechanism of cognitive learning in children and he also devised ingenious tests to study the variance of cognition abilities found among children. The basic difference between his study and others research works was that he studied children particularly while others focused on learners.

The theory given by him was aimed at developing the infant and eventually a child into an adult and individual who can use reasoning, logic and think via using the hypothesis. He explained how children surround themselves from a world supported by their own understanding and through experience whether bitter or positive, they learn how their understanding of world is different from the actual world they have experienced (McLeod, 2009). Piaget's Cognitive Theory was applied to learning as it constituted three main elements that aided in learning these are: Schemas which are the building blocks of knowledge used by children as an important way of how knowledge can be organized.

Three stage processes that focus on the transition between two stages named as equilibrium, assimilation and lastly accommodation. Stages of development (McLeod, 2009). Another theory of cognitive psychology called operant conditioning was given by Skinner, B. F. (1904-1995). According to this theory, the environmental stimuli have an influential impact on an individual’s behavior and language when these stimuli are reinforced the individual results in behavioral changes. The theory act as a source and its application continued in the form of progress and development of behaviorism, multiple tools and experiments pouring different concepts to his study leading to behavioral revolution in the United States (www.muskingum.edu).

Prejudice is formation of a strong belief or perception in negative concerns against a particular group. The researches and recent studies have regarded prejudice as malleable that can be easily amenable to change. The scientific evidence has forced people to change their beliefs about malleability of prejudice. To increase and strengthen the beliefs on long term basis long term interventions models on the past interventions are modeled. The concepts from cognitive psychology are utilized here when racial prejudice is reduced by strengthening the beliefs of White Americans regarding it as malleable.

Teachers are trained under the guiding frame work concepts led by cognitive psychology that in turn engage with the minority students in a friendly and more interactive way and treat them just like other students. Teachers must encourage them to tell their race’s or group’s history that can reduce the prejudice of the White Americans. Prejudice is a result of egalitarian values that must be diminished. To eradicate this concept of prejudice, interracial discrimination, and enhancing equality, it is important to change the understanding of Americans and other individuals of taking prejudice as fixed rather than malleable rather than changing White Americans completely.

Those individuals who take prejudice as malleable or are accompanies by strong beliefs don’t draw lines between the Whites and Blacks rather they are equally friendly to both (Carr, Dweck & Pauker, 2012). In the same way cognitive psychology can be deployed to reduce stereotyping. A theory of using radio dramas as educational training is utilized here where individuals are enabled to listen to the shows on radio where number of practical tools, models of learning and cognitive psychology is used to reduce the violence among people which is through their personal values.

So the basic target is their social norms and values that are to be amended to reduce stereotyping. Individual beliefs and values are affected and educational media can impact on group responses positively when programs are attended by the listeners in groups rather than individual listeners. The behaviors change and the same radio drama is shared among groups (Staub & Pearlman, 2009). The bottom line of this paper is that cognitive psychology can actually help in reducing prejudice and stereotyping through learning and instruction.

The chief factor is the targeted beliefs that are changes and molded in a way that makes individual anti prejudice and anti stereotyping and evolve equality to all groups and races. References Carr, P. B., Dweck, C. S., & Pauker, K. (2012). Prejudiced Behavior Without Prejudice? Beliefs About the Malleability of Prejudice Affect Interracial Interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi:10.1037/a0028849 Cognitive Psychology. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/cognitiv.

htm McLeod, S. (2009). Jean Piaget | Cognitive Theory. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html Staub, E., & Pearlman, L. A. (2009). Reducing Intergroup Prejudice and Conflict: A Commentary. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi:10.1037/a0014045