Reducing Prejudice with Lecture vs. a Classroom Activity
Abstract
This poster presentation will examine the extent to which classroom activities may decrease discrimination in individuals. In this experiment, using the Borgardus Social Distance Scale [BSDS], the change in students’ attitudes towards a stigmatized minority group was recorded (before and after a relevant lecture). We hypothesized that students who did a classroom activity using the BSDS would show a greater reduction in social distance on the scale and would have a greater attitude change from pretest to posttest. Three different conditions were observed in this experiment. The control group received a lecture with no class activity, the first experimental group received the lecture and the classroom activity, and the third experimental group received the lecture and was shown their peers’ responses. Like in a previous SoTL study using the BSDS (Maurer, 2013), students in all groups displayed significant decreases in prejudice, but there were no differences between groups in the magnitude of decrease in this study. This suggests that the change in students’ attitudes cannot be attributed to whether or not they completed the activity or knew the attitudes of their classmates, but rather that lecture content alone may have been sufficient to change their attitudes.
Location
Room 1002
Recommended Citation
Clemens-Dean, Jade, "Reducing Prejudice with Lecture vs. a Classroom Activity" (2015). SoTL Commons Conference. 91.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sotlcommons/SoTL/2015/91
Reducing Prejudice with Lecture vs. a Classroom Activity
Room 1002
This poster presentation will examine the extent to which classroom activities may decrease discrimination in individuals. In this experiment, using the Borgardus Social Distance Scale [BSDS], the change in students’ attitudes towards a stigmatized minority group was recorded (before and after a relevant lecture). We hypothesized that students who did a classroom activity using the BSDS would show a greater reduction in social distance on the scale and would have a greater attitude change from pretest to posttest. Three different conditions were observed in this experiment. The control group received a lecture with no class activity, the first experimental group received the lecture and the classroom activity, and the third experimental group received the lecture and was shown their peers’ responses. Like in a previous SoTL study using the BSDS (Maurer, 2013), students in all groups displayed significant decreases in prejudice, but there were no differences between groups in the magnitude of decrease in this study. This suggests that the change in students’ attitudes cannot be attributed to whether or not they completed the activity or knew the attitudes of their classmates, but rather that lecture content alone may have been sufficient to change their attitudes.
