The prevailing stereotypes make it plausible for ability stigmatized students to worry that people in their schooling environment will doubt their abilities. This strategy is to discredit these assumptions through the authority of potential affirming adult relationships.
“Critical feedback coupled with optimism about their potential is a motivating factor to all students of color”
Taylor and Antony (2000) argued that providing students with “challenging, rather than remedial expectations and academic work, which builds on promise and potential, not failure” could eliminate potential threats in the air.
When instructors maintain high standards for all students, they communicate to students of color that their work is assessed based on effort and merit, not skin color.
When instructors maintain high standards for all students, they communicate to students of color, especially African American students that their work is assessed based on effort and merit, not skin color. .
3. Stress on the expandability of intelligence
The threat of negative-ability stereotypes is that one could be seen as having a fixed limitation inherent to one's group.
In theory, highlighting the expandability of intelligence lets students know that skills can be learned and extended through education and experience (Taylor and Anthony 2000).
Aronson (2004) suggested that when instructors teach students to reconsider the nature of intelligence, to view their minds as muscles that get stronger and smarter with hard work, students of color, especially African American students’ negative responses to stereotype threat are diminished.