Investigating pre-service teachers’ competence to notice ethnic microaggressions in the classroom

Ethnic microaggressions are subtle forms of interpersonal discrimination that convey insensitivity or demean a person’s ethnic identity and have been documented in educational settings targeting minoritized students. Drawing on the racial noticing framework and insights from teacher psychological characteristics, the present study examined pre-service teachers’ competence to attend and interpret ethnic microaggressions and explored the attitudinal dispositions that contribute to teachers’ awareness of these discriminatory actions. Using a vignette design across two experimental studies in Germany, our results indicated that participants demonstrated noticing ability in detecting microaggressions. We found less consistent evidence for the role of participants’ attitudinal dispositions as predictors of racial noticing. Implicit prejudice was only related to attending microaggressions, and this result was not replicated in the second study. Surprisingly, explicit prejudice was positively associated with interpreting microaggressions in both studies. Additionally, higher levels of critical consciousness were positively linked to a greater ability in attending and interpreting ethnic microaggressions. We discuss implications for teacher education on noticing ethnic microaggressions in schools.