Faculty/Staff Training to Examine Racial Implicit Bias: Findings and Implications for Creating Inclusive Educational Spaces

Inclusive educational spaces are necessary for post-secondary Black students to thrive. However, faculty and staff often, unintentionally, create non-inclusive educational spaces while exhibiting and perpetuating behaviors relative to race/racism and microaggressions driven by racial implicit bias. Via this mixed-methods study, researchers examined the effects that a set of training modules about race/racism, implicit bias, and microaggressions had on the attitudes of participating university faculty and staff, as well as their intentions toward creating inclusive educational spaces. More specifically, university faculty and staff members completed an online training during which they were provided information in separate modules about systemic and color-blind racism, implicit bias, microaggressions, and two components of inclusive educational spaces, culturally sustaining pedagogical and race-conscious educational practices. Researchers found participants’ attitudes, post-training, significantly and positively shifted relative to race/racism, implicit bias, and microaggressions. In addition, faculty and staff identified specific practices they intended to incorporate to facilitate more inclusive educational spaces for Black students. Researchers also drew implications from findings for other higher education settings.