True Story 1.17
Nonverbal misalignment at the nursery school level
The setting for this story
Alycia and four of her regular preschoolers visited a research facility where they were videotaped for thirty-three minutes by two cameras in different corners of the room. Alycia was white. Two of the girls were Black and came from New York’s Harlem community; two of the girls were white and lived in a middle-class community in the New York area.
While viewing the videotapes multiple times at different speeds, the researchers watched for instances (a) when eye-contact occurred between Alycia and any girl and was followed by an exchange of expressions, and (b) when there was physical contact between Alycia and any child. The following is excerpted from the researchers’ report. For the sake of brevity, these excerpts focus on Alycia’s interactions with the more animated Black girl and the more animated white girl.
A story of misaligned minds19
The children are sitting around a table cutting, pasting, and drawing. Alycia moves around the table, sometimes bending or crouching beside a child for a while. Her movements are unhurried. At times, one or more of the youngsters moves around the room. After circling the table for a while, Alycia sits at one side for several minutes, then at the other side for several minutes. She appears to be trying to distribute her attentions equally.
During the first ten minutes while Alycia is seated, she and the Black girl often look toward each other. The Black girl glances at Alycia thirty-five times, “catching her eye” and exchanging facial expressions four times (11.4 percent). The white girl glances at Alycia fourteen times, catching her eye and exchanging facial expressions eight times (57.1 percent).
Throughout the thirty-three minutes, Alycia occasionally tries to touch, pat, stroke, or otherwise make physical contact with individual children. On occasions when Alycia makes physical contact with the more animated white girl, the touching occurs in a smooth flow of events. Alycia and the more animated Black girl never quite manage to achieve this. Typically, the Black girl approaches Alycia, who reaches out tentatively; the girl jiggles or twists and contact – if any – is broken. Often, Alycia tries again; her hand brushes the Black girl lightly, but no sustained touching occurs.
Near the end of the thirty-three minutes, the Black girl examines a toy shopping cart, which pinches her finger. She stands with an “I’m hurt” expression on her face. Alycia walks to the girl, picks her up, and carries her to a chair. The girl doesn’t wiggle or squirm, instead embracing Alycia around the neck with both arms. Alycia sits down with the girl in her lap with both arms cradling her; the girl smiles and nestles her head in Alycia’s bosom.
The Researchers’ question
What does videotaping from two angles and observing the tapes at different speeds reveal that could refute the casual impression that, “The white teacher gives the Black girl less attention!” (which implies that the teacher is motivated by favoritism)?
Critique of story 1.17
Repeated viewing of the videotapes at different speeds yielded new information that was far more accurately informed, but also far more complex, than the casual impressions that often drive people’s opinions. Viewing at different speeds doesn’t answer all questions. But it does demonstrate clearly that the teacher was not intentionally shortchanging the Black girls. The complexity it reveals is that there was a subtle mismatch between Alycia and the Black girl’s nonverbal communication patterns, one reflecting Black culture, one reflecting white culture.
Both Alycia, the teacher, and the more animated Black girl appear to be trying to connect with each other via eye contact and facial expressions. However, each one’s visual “searching the scene for an opportunity to connect” is ill-timed to match the other’s “searching the scene” nearly 90 percent of the time. Alycia and the more animated white girl’s timing is mismatched only slightly above 40 percent of the time.
Similar conclusions can be reached regarding teacher and pupils’ mutual efforts to establish and maintain physical contact. Alycia and the white child were able, somehow, to smoothly flow into contact, but the teacher and the Black girl’s efforts infrequently yielded success. Their subtle patterns of interaction weren’t well matched and only infrequently coordinated with each other, although Alycia and the Black girl, consciously, intended to make physical contact.
What about the successful teacher–pupil interaction after the Black child pinched her finger? This was an interaction that Alycia and all her pupils had implicitly developed together during their months sharing the same classroom. For an injured-child event, Alycia and her pupils “knew the drill,” i.e., the behavior and the timing to expect from each other.
For thought
Consider two people who want to know each other better but imperfectly speak each other’s languages. Do we blame only one of them when they’re unable to fully communicate verbally? No. But when the imperfection lies in their patterns of nonverbal communication and the two people involved are a white teacher and a Black student, many people attribute the cause to one individual’s perceived personal favoritism: “The white teacher gives the Black girl less attention!”
Related stories
Stories 1.01, 1.04, and 1.08 present different types of misunderstood teacher–student nonverbal cues.
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Endnotes:
19 Byers & Byers, 22–25.
Full citations are available at misalignedminds.info/References.