Teachers are the most important factor in determining student achievement compared to any other aspect of schooling. They operate on the front lines of society’s efforts to promote equity and play a pivotal role as gatekeepers of academic opportunities. Despite good intentions, teachers like the rest of society are racially biased. Studies indicate that teachers hold lower expectations and recommend harsher punishment for Black compared to White students, leading to vast disparities in outcomes. This project aims to evaluate if contemplative exercises can reduce racial bias in disciplinary decisions. Instead of targeting bias directly, we propose that a brief mindfulness training can shift the mental conditions that lead to biased behaviors. We will test the hypothesis that mindfulness can reduce the application of stereotypes and increase compassion, leading participants to recommend less severe punishments for Black students when exposed to school records. We will test this hypothesis through a double-blind, placebo-controlled field experiment. Our intervention is brief, free, and theoretically precise, enabling the causal test of mindfulness on disciplinary actions in the classroom. Should this intervention prove effective, it can become a scalable way to embed insights from contemplative science into teacher education to reduce bias and improve student outcomes.
