Bias and teacher perceptions

Bias and teacher perceptions
 
Research has shown that teacher expectations frequently influence student outcomes. American University, The Institute for the Study of Labor in Germany, and Johns Hopkins University recently collaborated on a study to determine if teachers' perceptions of their students' future educational attainment could be correlated with their ethnicity or gender. In other words, would teachers predict brighter futures for students who shared their race or gender than for students of other races and genders?

Researchers examined data from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS) of 2002, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, which followed 16,810 U.S. public school tenth graders. The ELS contained predictions from each student's math and English teacher about how far they expected them to go in school.

No correlations were found for factors such as 9th grade GPA, socioeconomic status, or mother's education. However, non-African-American teachers had lower expectations than did African-American teachers for African-American students, with larger effects for male students and math teachers.

By conducting this study, researchers hoped to encourage teacher training and professional development to include discussions about expectations and bias, to provide evidence that a more diverse teaching force is needed, and to inform other researchers who look at teacher predictions.

Johns Hopkins University 

Research in Brief

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