Bias in Primary School Teachers’ Expectations of Students? A Study of General and Specific Bias Towards SES, Ethnicity and Gender

Elien Sneyers,Jan Vanhoof,Paul Mahieu

doi:10.5817/sp2020-2-4

Abstract

Based on teachers' knowledge base of students, teacher expectations of students' (future) abilities and potential are shaped, in which bias may occur. This study investigates data on multiple attributes of 535 sixth-grade Flemish students to find out (1) whether teacher expectations of students' cognitive and non-cognitive attributes, of teacher-student relationships, and of parental involvement in education are biased, and (2) whether teachers differ in their expectation bias towards SES, ethnicity, and gender. By means of correlation analysis, in which we compared teacher expectations with multiple measured student attributes (i.e., their achievement test scores and self-assessments), the results showed statistically significant, positive correlations for all the attributes included, indicating an overall correspondence between teacher expectations and students' measured attributes. At the same time, using an indicator of teacher expectation bias by subtracting the students' measured attributes from the corresponding teacher expectations, this study highlighted an expectation bias in terms of over- and underestimation by teachers, especially with respect to teachers' expectations of students cognitive attributes and parental involvement in education. Also, a specific bias in teacher expectations towards SES and gender was found.

Highlights

Making correct judgements of student performance is at the core of the teaching profession
Because little is known about the role of attributes other than students’ cognitive attributes in shaping teacher expectations and because previous research is generally restricted to a single focus on one particular attribute of teacher expectations instead of multiple attributes that are being studied simultaneously (Rubie-Davies et al, 2006; Timmermans et al, 2016), we address multiple cognitive as well as non-cognitive attributes of students and contextual variables, on top of student background characteristics
The small correlation coefficients suggest that the strength of the relationships between teacher expectations and students’ self-assessed non-cognitive attributes and contextual variables is rather weak

Summary

Introduction

Making correct judgements of student performance is at the core of the teaching profession. Surveying the existing literature, Vanlommel (2018) argues that traditionally, researchers and policymakers trusted teachers’ intuitive judgement derived from experience within the teaching profession and that an array of studies showed a lack of accuracy of such judgement. This questioning of the trustworthiness of teachers’ judgement nowadays is apparent in many educational systems and affects both the professionalism of teachers along with the status of the teaching profession. Teachers can use various information sources to shape their expectations, including students’ cognitive attributes (e.g., academic abilities and performance) as well as non-cognitive attributes (e.g., achievement-related behaviours), student background characteristics (e.g., social and ethnic background and gender) and contextual or relationship variables (e.g., the quality of the teacher-student relationship and the extent of parental involvement in education within the teacher-parent relationship) (Hughes et al, 2005; Riley & Ungerleider, 2012; Rubie-Davies et al, 2006; Rubie-Davies, 2010)

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