Subtle discrimination: do stereotypes among teachers trigger bias in their expectations and widen ethnic achievement gaps?

Georg Lorenz

doi:10.1007/s11218-021-09615-0

Abstract

Ethnic and racial disparities in educational outcomes, such as test scores, are a core issue of educational research. While the role of student and family factors in the formation of such disparities is well established, existing studies fail to draw a similarly clear picture of how teachers contribute to ethnic and racial achievement gaps. In contrast to previous studies, which focussed on the consequences of rather blatant forms of discrimination, such as in teachers’ grading practices, this study investigates rather subtle processes that might result in discrimination of ethnic and racial minority students. In particular, I address stereotypes among teachers and analyse if they induce bias in their achievement expectations for ethnic minority school beginners. Additionally, I analyse if such bias results in a self-fulfilling prophecy and contributes to ethnic achievement gaps at the end of first grade. Multilevel regressions applied to a sample of 1007 children and 64 teachers in German primary schools reveal that different teachers internalize distinct stereotypes regarding ethnic achievement gaps and the achievement-related attributes of ethnic minority students. I also find that teachers with more negative stereotypes expect lower mathematics and reading achievements for ethnic minority students at the beginning of first grade. However, although I replicate the finding that inaccurate teacher expectations result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, I find no statistically significant effects of teacher stereotypes on ethnic differences in the development of students’ reading and mathematical skills throughout first grade.

Highlights

In most Western societies, school performance varies between majority and ethnic minority students, and some minority groups perform closer to national averages than other groups (e.g., OECD 2016)
My study advances the debate regarding the issue of teacher discrimination in education, as it indicates that within ecologically valid settings, stereotypes among teachers cause bias in their evaluations of ethnic minority students
This evidence counters a common criticism of discrimination research, namely, that the residual effects of student ethnicity on teacher evaluations are mainly driven by unobserved heterogeneity

Summary

Introduction

In most Western societies, school performance varies between majority and ethnic minority students, and some minority groups perform closer to national averages than other groups (e.g., OECD 2016). A lack of knowledge in this regard is surprising given that experimental evidence from the U.S (Anderson-Clark et al 2008; Tenenbaum and Ruck 2007) and Europe (Tobisch and Dresel 2017) indicates that teachers have lower expectations for the achievements of ethnic and racial minority students than for majority students, even after controlling for the students’ abilities and skills This evidence is potentially important for research concerning ethnic and racial educational inequality since experimental studies showed that differences in teacher expectations can result in a self-fulfilling prophecy if the academic achievements of students adapt to the teacher expectations (Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968). To date, this assumption has only rarely been tested directly

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