How Unconscious Bias Shapes Who You Call On, Who You Praise, and Who You Ignore

By [Author name, credentials needed] · Reviewed for School of Educators

Key facts

• Research on classroom interaction consistently finds patterns of gender bias that teachers are unaware of: calling on boys more often, giving boys more challenging questions, praising girls for neatness and boys for intelligence.
• This research tradition, associated with classroom interaction studies including the work of Myra and David Sadker, finds these patterns persist even among teachers who consciously and genuinely believe in treating all students equally.
• NEP 2020, NCF 2023, and the NIPUN Bharat foundational literacy mission all point toward gender-equitable classroom practice as a measurable, trackable standard, not just an intention.
• Free classroom resources: NIPUN Bharat FLN assessment tools (through your SCERT or DIET), NCERT teacher guides, Azim Premji Foundation’s open-access research, and DIKSHA platform content in 36 languages.
• Support for teachers: KIRAN mental health helpline (1800-599-0019), Tele-MANAS (14416), CHILDLINE (1098).

Research on classroom interaction consistently finds patterns of gender bias that teachers are unaware of. Calling on boys more, giving boys more challenging questions, praising girls for neatness and boys for intelligence, these patterns show up reliably in classroom observation studies, including among teachers who would say, honestly, that they treat every student the same. The first step to change is seeing the pattern, and seeing it requires more than good intentions; it requires actually tracking what happens in the room.

What the research actually says

Indian teachers already sense that the research on unconscious bias in classroom interaction is more specific and more useful than most professional development programmes suggest; it just rarely gets said aloud in a staffroom. The evidence here draws on ASER survey data, Azim Premji Foundation field studies, NCERT curriculum research, government programme evaluations, and peer-reviewed work conducted across Indian schools. Where international evidence is used, including the classroom interaction research associated with Myra and David Sadker, it is noted explicitly and needs to be checked against Indian classroom conditions before it is applied directly.

This is not an essay about education in Singapore or Finland, translated awkwardly into an Indian setting. It is written for teachers across every subject and stage, because the specific patterns this essay addresses, who gets called on, who gets the harder question, what kind of praise a student receives, show up in every classroom regardless of subject.

A teacher who genuinely cares can still make a problem worse by misunderstanding its mechanism. Understanding the mechanism is what turns sincere care into effective care.

Good intentions are not sufficient on their own. A teacher who is confident she treats boys and girls identically, out of genuine belief in fairness, is exactly the teacher the research is describing, because these patterns operate below conscious awareness and survive good intentions specifically because no one is checking. Believing you’re fair doesn’t produce fairness on its own; only tracking what you actually do does that.

Five practices for seeing and interrupting the pattern

Five practices recur across the research on classroom bias, and each is something a teacher can start using without any special training.

1. Track who you actually call on. A simple tally, made during or after a lesson, of how often boys versus girls are called on reveals a pattern that memory alone almost never catches accurately. Teachers who believe they call on students evenly are frequently shown, by an actual count, to be calling on boys noticeably more often, particularly for volunteered answers rather than structured turns.

2. Track the difficulty of the questions you assign, not just the frequency of calling on students. Being called on equally doesn’t mean being challenged equally; research finds boys are more often given open-ended, higher-order questions while girls more often receive simpler, closed questions. A brief review of a lesson’s actual questions, sorted by who received which type, surfaces this pattern directly.

3. Audit the language of your praise. “Good girl, so neat” and “good thinking” are different kinds of praise: one about a trait or presentation, one about the actual reasoning behind the work. Research on praise language finds these patterns often split along gender lines without teachers intending it, and a brief review of your own recent comments, written or spoken, can reveal the split.

4. Use a structured, randomised calling system. Calling on volunteers tends to reproduce whatever bias already exists in who raises a hand and who a teacher unconsciously favours. A simple system, drawing names, rotating through a list, removes the moment-to-moment decision where bias operates and ensures every student gets called on over time regardless of who’s raising a hand loudest.

5. Get an outside check, not just self-review. Self-review helps, but the research finds an outside observer, a colleague watching a single lesson with a simple tally sheet, or a recorded lesson reviewed later, catches patterns a teacher in the middle of teaching genuinely cannot see in real time, however self-aware she believes herself to be.

Where this fits Indian education policy

NEP 2020, NCF 2023, and the NIPUN Bharat mission all point in the direction this research supports: gender-equitable classroom practice as something measured and tracked, not assumed from good intentions alone. The gap between that policy direction and what actually happens on a Tuesday morning, a teacher confident in her own fairness who has never actually counted who she calls on, is the space this piece is trying to close. It is not an argument for a new policy. It is guidance for the teacher who already believes in fairness, deciding to check whether her classroom actually reflects it.

Frequently asked questions

If a teacher genuinely believes she treats students fairly, why would this research still apply to her? Because these patterns operate below conscious awareness, which is precisely why they persist even among teachers with sincere, well-formed commitments to fairness. Belief in fairness and an accurate memory of one’s own actual classroom behaviour are two different things, and the research consistently finds the second doesn’t reliably follow from the first.

How long does it take to see a meaningful pattern using a simple tally? Even a single lesson’s tally often reveals a noticeable gap, though tracking across several lessons gives a more reliable picture than one snapshot, since any single lesson could be unusual for reasons unrelated to bias.

Is this only about calling on students, or does it show up in other classroom decisions too? It shows up broadly: who gets challenging questions, what kind of praise a student receives, who gets more wait time to answer, and who gets redirected versus encouraged when they struggle are all documented in the same body of research, not just who raises a hand and gets called on.

Where can a teacher find state-specific material on this? Start with your SCERT or DIET for NIPUN Bharat FLN assessment tools, NCERT’s teacher guides, Azim Premji Foundation’s open-access publications, and DIKSHA, which carries content in 36 languages. If nothing exists for your specific state and grade, that gap is itself worth reporting to your Block Resource Coordinator.

What to do:

• Name one child in your class you suspect may be affected by this pattern, and use a simple tally this week to actually check who you call on and what kind of questions you ask. Not a general improvement: a named check, done once, this week.
• Search DIKSHA or ask your Block Resource Coordinator for any resource specific to this topic in your state’s context. If nothing exists, note that and report it. The gap in resources is itself useful information.
• Spend five minutes this week just observing one aspect of your classroom related to this, not teaching, just watching and noting. What you notice while only watching is different from what you notice while teaching.
• Tell one colleague one specific finding from this piece this week. Explaining it will sharpen your own understanding, and it may start a conversation that helps more than any single action.
• At the end of the week, ask yourself what you will do differently next week because of this, and what you will look for to know whether it worked.

Support resources for teachers: NIPUN Bharat FLN assessment tools (via your SCERT or DIET), NCERT teacher guides, Azim Premji Foundation open-access research, DIKSHA (36 languages), KIRAN mental health helpline (1800-599-0019), Tele-MANAS (14416), CHILDLINE (1098).