Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Anti-racism training works, but is no panacea

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

An increasing number of school boards are incorporating diversity training as part of their professional development programs for teaching, administrative and support staff. While motivations differ among boards, the general hope is that diversity training will have a positive impact. I share that hope.

Knowing something of the literature and practice in the field, I suggest that boards have realistic expectations about what diversity training (also called race-relations training, anti-racism training, etc.) can accomplish.

In the early 1990s, a colleague and I undertook a meta-analysis[1] of what we described at the time as “attempts to prepare teachers for managing inter-cultural and inter-racial contact in their classrooms and for creating the conditions under which students can learn to work and live together harmoniously and productively.”[2]

We were able to locate and systematically review 19 studies that contained 43 effect sizes.[3] The average effect was a +.20 standard deviation improvement of among those who had diversity training versus those who did not. To put that small effect into perspective, about 57% of the teachers receiving training exhibited less measurable prejudice than the teachers in the control groups who did not have diversity training. The chance that a teacher picked at random from the training group would exhibit less prejudice than one in the control groups who did not have diversity training was about 55% - just a bit better than 50/50.

We compared studies that used an anti-racism approach with those that used a social-psychological or cultural information approach. Training that focused on anti-racism produced superior outcomes. There was a 57.6% chance that a person picked at random from the anti-racism treatment group would exhibit less prejudice than a teacher picked at random from the group that had no anti-racism training. In contrast, the chance was only 52.5% that a teacher picked at random from the training using a cultural information approach exhibited less prejudice in comparison to a person picked at random from the group having no training.

My colleague, Josette McGregor, conducted a study of the impact of anti-racist teaching and role-playing approaches to reduce prejudice in students. She found that both approaches were about equally effective, each producing an effect size of approximately +.45 standard deviation. In other words, there was a 62.5% chance that a student picked at random from training that used either a role-playing or and anti-racist teaching approach would exhibit less prejudice than a student picked at random from a control group that did not have either kind training.[4]

A 2016 meta-analysis of 40 years of diversity training research produced similar findings. The overall effect size was +.38 of a standard deviation, meaning that about 65% of those diversity trained exhibited better outcomes than those who are in the control group without such training. Or, to put it another way, there was a 60% chance that a randomly chosen person from the diversity training group exhibited more positive outcomes than someone picked at random from the control group without diversity training. The best outcomes achieved for cognitive learning were maintained over time. Attitudinal learning effects attenuated over time.[5]

Diversity training produces small effects. The literature devoted to the topic provides information about practices that are effective and ones that are not.[6] Such training has a greater positive impact: on younger rather than older people; in situations where women predominate among those trained; and where training occurs over a longer period (but not too long); etc.

Diversity training is not a panacea. The impact of diversity training will be modest. This suggests that such training must be part of a larger effort that includes policies and practices aimed at eliminating systemic racism.

This summary is no substitute for a careful review of the literature, especially the meta-analytic literature that looks across studies for effective and ineffective practices and conditions. School boards undertaking diversity training for staff or students should ensure that the training is evaluated closely so that adjustments can be made that will produce maximum positive outcomes.



[1] Meta analysis involves looking across studies that address the same question to determine what the overall pattern of data looks like.

[2] J. McGregor & C. Ungerleider (1993) Multicultural and racism awareness programs for teachers:  A meta-analysis of the research. In K. McLeod (Ed) Multicultural education:  The state of the art - report 1. pp. 59-63

[3] An effect size is a statistic that compares the difference in mean outcomes (effects) between two conditions, programs, or approaches.

[4] McGregor, J. (1993) Effectiveness of Role Playing and Antiracist Teaching in Reducing Student Prejudice, Journal of Educational Research, 86(4), 215-226.

[5] Bezrukova, K., Spell, C.S., Perry, J.L., and K.A. Jehn, (2016) A Meta-Analytical Integration of Over 40 Years of Research on Diversity Training Evaluation, Psychological Bulletin, 142(11) 1227-1274.

[6] See, for example: FitzGerald, C., Martin, A., Berner, D. et al. (2019) Interventions designed to reduce implicit prejudices and implicit stereotypes in real world contexts: a systematic review. BMC Psychol 7(29). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0299-7