We have begun reading Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do by Claude M. Steele.  The title comes from a true story of a young African American male walking down the street in Chicago at night who noticed people changing their behavior to avoid him.  When he moved to another street and started whistling tunes from the Beatles and Vivaldi, he noticed people stopped avoiding him and even started smiling at him.  He had broken the stereotype.

Steele’s work focuses on under-performance because of prevalent societal stereotypes.  In a recent talk at Brown University, he defined stereotype threat:

It’s simply being in a situation or doing something for which a negative stereotype about one of your [social] identities is relevant.  If you care about the thing that you’re doing, and I underline that, if you care about the thing that you’re doing, then the prospect of being reduced to that negative stereotype is upsetting and distracting and alarms you; and this makes you vigilant in the sense that what else is going to happen?  Where is this going to be relevant?  What does this really mean for my future?  Am I in the right spot?  It raises all sorts of questions which start to take up cognitive resources and capacities.  (http://brown.edu/web/livestream/archive/2012-steele.html)

We are excited about discussing this book because it includes ideas for how to improve our practice, help counteract under-performance, and make the College of Education more inclusive (culturally, linguistically, racially, by age, by discipline area, and so on).

We are planning two book discussion sessions:

Tuesday, January 15 at 12:00-1:30 PM and Wednesday, January, 16 at 4:00-5:30 PM

Both sessions will be in Furman Hall with pizza provided.  We’ll organize into small groups to discuss how the concepts in this book relate to our work in the College of Education.

Do you need a copy of the book?  We have copies to lend out.  Contact Lynda Thomas in Furman 104, 541-737-4661, or lynda.thomas@oregonstate.edu