Empowering Students to Deconstruct Race and Policing Reports

• In Event: 30821 - Open Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 10

Abstract

Many factors are believed to influence student perceptions of the police, including news stories and reports from seemingly reputable sources like Pew. As educators, we want our students to understand that media sources omit contextual factors which skew student perceptions of race and policing. With increased media focus on high profile policing incidents against Black adults, there has been renewed interest in student perceptions of the police as it relates to racial (in)justice. We want to focus on student perceptions of race and policing before and after a lecture and reading literature that elucidates the inherent biases in policing and statistical reports. The purpose of this project is to understand student perceptions before (pre) and after (post) a class reading, lecture, and assignment on racial bias, policing, and statistics. The purpose is to know if these assignments aid our students in being more critical of statistical reports regarding race and policing. This study has two main questions: (1) After learning about QuantCrit methods, how do students read and interpret statistics in a Pew Report on race and policing in the United States? (2) Are there differences in students’ interpretations by course type? That is, do students who take a course on policing have different interpretations of the Pew statistics than students who take a course on race? Data come from an assignment written by students at two universities: a competitive, mid-sized research university (CMRU) and a regional, small liberal arts university (RSLU). These students had self-selected into courses on policing (n =25) and courses on race (n=47). In general, students in both the race and policing classes were drawn to the same statistics in the Pew report, but they offered different explanations for their interpretations of those statistics.

Authors

• Crystal Peoples, Randolph College

• Brooke Mathna, Longwood University