Here’s something most teacher training programs never talk about:
Confirmation Bias — and how quietly it shapes everything we do in the classroom.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, favor, and recall information that confirms what we already believe, while ignoring everything that challenges it.
And it shows up in our text selection more than we think:
→ We avoid texts that contradict our beliefs or make us uncomfortable
→ We gravitate toward our preferred Arabic language register
→ We pick content that aligns with our cultural viewpoint
Why? Because it protects our ego. It keeps us in our comfort zone. And the human brain loves the comfort zone.
Because changing your mind is genuinely costly. It takes mental energy. It means accepting you were wrong. It can even mean replacing your social circle.
Here’s the part that usually surprises teachers the most:
💡 Smart people are not protected from confirmation bias. In fact, the smarter you are, the better you are at defending your choices; which makes the bias even harder to detect.
This isn’t about intelligence. It’s about awareness.
So ask yourself honestly:
→ Which texts do you always choose?
→ Which ones do you quietly avoid — and why?
→ Have you ever skipped a video because the dialect felt “too different”? Because the cultural elements didn’t match your image of what Arabic culture looks like?
The first step is noticing. The second is being honest about what you find.
***
I invite you to watch this beautiful Moroccan clip (CLICK), and reflect on the reasons why an Arabic teacher wouldn’t use cultural texts from that country, or the Maghreb, or -for that matter – any other region that is different than theirs.
Join the conversation HERE.
