Poor Expectations : Experimental Evidence on Teachers' Stereotypes and Student Assessment
Do teachers’ stereotypes of social class bias their assessment of students? This study uses a lab-in-the-field experiment among primary school teachers to test whether they are biased against poor students. Teachers assessed a student in a video of...
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/930041616441079544/Poor-Expectations-Experimental-Evidence-on-Teachers-Stereotypes-and-Student-Assessment http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35305 |
| Summary: | Do teachers’ stereotypes of social class
bias their assessment of students? This study uses a
lab-in-the-field experiment among primary school teachers to
test whether they are biased against poor students. Teachers
assessed a student in a video of an oral exam after watching
one of two versions of an introductory video that portrayed
the child’s home and playground. When the student in the
exam video exhibited inconsistent performance, showing
varying levels of scholastic aptitude and focus during the
exam, teachers were far more likely to judge his scholastic
aptitude as below grade-level if they had watched the
introductory video portraying a poor background than if they
had watched the introductory video portraying a middle-class
background. The social class background portrayed in the
introductory video did not affect teachers’ behavioral
assessments of the student. When the student in the exam
video was consistently high achieving, showing high levels
of scholastic aptitude and focus throughout the exam,
teachers who watched the introductory video depicting a poor
background were more likely to assess the student as above
grade-level than teachers who watched the video conveying a
middle-class background. In this case, however, they had a
more negative assessment of the child’s behavior when they
thought he came from a poor background, deeming him to be
less motivated and less emotionally mature than when the
introductory video depicted a middle-class background. These
findings suggest that stereotypes influence how teachers
assess the scholastic aptitude and behavior of their students. |
|---|