Fairness for Students

Fairness means caring about how rewards or benefits are shared between yourself and others or between other people.

Students’ begin to understand fairness at a very young age. It’s common to hear young children protest, “That’s not fair!” when they feel they’re being treated differently from others or compared to previous experience. Research even suggests that infants expect fairness, as shown by how long they stare at unfair behaviors. By age 3, children demonstrate a surprisingly advanced sense of fairness – they expect people to share equally, but also recognize that rewards can depend on effort or merit.

A child expects to receive the same amount of Halloween candy as their sibling but might also understand that if their sibling visited more houses or helped carry their bags, they may have earned more candy.

Despite children’s early understanding of fairness, we’ve all likely seen moments when their actions don’t reflect it. For instance, research shows that young children know they should be fair, but still tend to keep more for themselves when sharing resources with others.

A 4-year-old child, when given the option of sharing stickers with another child might say the fairest option is to split them equally. However, in practice, they tend to keep more for themselves.

Fairness tends to increase as kids get older. For example, an 8-year-old participating in the same task as above is more likely to share stickers evenly. Research shows it is not only children’s growing cognitive skills (like self-regulation) that contributes to this increase. There are many personal biases and influences that impact children’s behavior in ways that they don’t always recognize. The examples they see and fairness norms in their culture, as well as concerns for their reputation, in-group favoritism, and beliefs around who deserves fairness all contribute to young peoples’ actions towards fairness.

Fairness is complex, and schools can play a crucial role in nurturing it. Encouraging intergroup connection and respect, through collaboration, friendships, and perspective-taking can foster empathy and promote fairness and equity.

As children grow, they can continue to appreciate that fairness is more complex than treating everyone the same or giving them the same things (equality). Schools can help to broaden students’ understanding of fairness to include equity—giving people what they need to succeed, even if that looks different for each person.