Stereotyping can be overt or covert. So, recognizing stereotypes is not always easy. Students who complain about dysfunctional multicultural PBL groups could be misjudged as being stereotypical, when that is not always the case. Hence, an honest discussion about the challenge can reveal whether students are blinded by stereotypes or not.

There are some clues in the following examples that can provide guidance on how to recognize stereotypes.

Stereotyping is present when:

• students make comments such as “He is from Greece, so he is probably…”, depending on the culture of the people;
• a certain group of students is left out when they have to split in groups;
• students make gender remarks, such as “a boy shouldn’t be like that”;
• some categories are considered better than others (“People from Eastern Europe are better/ worse than people from…”);
• students say attributes that depend on social groups: “People who study architecture/ psychology/ medicine are very friendly” or “People who listen to rock/ classical music/ electronic music are…”

The reason why all of these situations happen is that people tend to simplify and categorize the information, overgeneralize acts or characteristics of individuals to a whole group of people.