Gender-specific teacher expectations in reading—The role of teachers’ gender stereotypes

Abstract

This study focused on how teachers’ gender stereotypes are connected to teacher expectations, and examined the relations between students’ gender, teachers’ gender stereotypes, teacher expectations of students’ reading ability, and students’ reading achievement. Our sample consisted of 54 teachers and 1358 fifth-grade students (49% girls; age at T1: 10.89 years); data were collected at two time points. Multilevel analyses yielded three main results. First, after controlling for students’ previous achievement, teacher expectations predicted students’ reading achievement. Second, teachers’ higher expectations concerning the reading ability of girls explained the differences between boys’ and girls’ reading achievement. Third, a cross-level interaction was found: teachers with stronger stereotypes favoring girls expected girls to have higher reading ability than boys. Thus, our results contribute to the understanding of gender-specific teacher expectations by explicitly investigating the role of teachers’ gender stereotypes.