Abstract

Reliance on stereotypes is a persistent feature of human decision-making and has been extensively documented in educational contexts, where exposure to stereotypes has long-lasting effects on students' confidence,  performance, and the accumulation of human capital. While effective techniques exist to mitigate these negative effects, it is first crucial to establish that teachers are able to detect stereotypes that occur in their professional setting. We develop the Stereotype Identification Test (SIT), a new survey tool asking teachers to evaluate and comment on the presence of stereotypes in images randomly drawn from school textbooks. These comments and evaluations are systematically linked to established measures of both implicit bias (Implicit Association Test, IAT) and explicit bias (survey scales on teaching stereotypes and social values). Our findings show that the SIT is both reliable and valid, and that knowledge of bias and other key malleable factors increases the ability to detect stereotypes in educational images.