Abstract
ABSTRACTThis study examined the role of teacher expectations in the emerging gender gaps in reading and mathematics in the first year of schooling. Therefore, we first investigated whether boys and girls differ in their vulnerability to teacher expectancy effects. Second, we analysed whether gender-specific effects of teacher expectations contribute to gender achievement gaps. Our analyses were based on 1,025 first-grade students in Germany. Among the majority of the students, boys and girls did not differ in their vulnerability to teacher expectancy effects. Further analyses examined a subgroup of students who were targets of relatively strong teacher expectation bias and who showed unexpectedly high or low achievement gains. In this specific subgroup, girls’ mathematics achievement was more adversely affected by negatively biased expectations and benefitted less from positive bias than boys’ achievement. Mediation analyses revealed that teacher expectation bias did not substantially contribute to gender gaps in reading or mathematics.
Highlights
The issue of gender disparities in students’ academic achievement has a long tradition in educational research
As the mean differences in the residual scores of teacher expectations indicated, teachers expected higher reading achievement for girls (M = 0.13, SD = 0.76) than for boys (M = −0.11, SD = 0.77), accounting for students’ actual achievement but not for differences in teacher perceptions of student motivation and work habits; t(1023) = −5.19, p < .001, r = .16; that is, girls were more likely to be overestimated by their teachers in reading achievement, whereas boys became the target of negatively biased expectations more frequently, when teacher perceptions of student motivation and work habits were not taken into account
The current study investigated the role of teacher expectations in early gender disparities by analysing two complementary research questions
Summary
The issue of gender disparities in students’ academic achievement has a long tradition in educational research. In almost all Western countries, significant gender differences in students’ proficiency in reading and, to a lesser extent, in mathematics occur in the first years of schooling. Large-scale assessment studies in schools, such as the Progress in International Literacy Study (PIRLS), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), give us information on gender disparities at different age levels. In all of these studies, test scores are scaled to an overall mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100.
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