Roles of socioeconomic status, ethnicity and teacher beliefs in academic grading

Lewis Doyle · Matthew John Easterbrook · Peter Richard Harris

84 citations0/0 files storedBritish Journal of Educational Psychology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

School Choice and Performance Education, Achievement, and Giftedness Critical Race Theory in Education

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Educational outcomes in the United Kingdom vary as a function of students' family background, with those of lower socioeconomic status (SES) and certain ethnic minority groups among the worst affected. AIMS: This pre-registered study investigates: (i) whether knowledge about students' socioeconomic and ethnic background influences teachers' judgements about the quality of their work and potential for the future, and (ii) the role of teachers' beliefs-most notably about meritocracy-in their practices. SAMPLE: Our findings are based on the responses of 416 in-service (88%) and trainee (12%) teachers who successfully passed several stringent exclusion criteria. METHODS: As part of a 2 × 2 independent measures design, teachers were randomly assigned to assess an identical piece of work ostensibly written by a student who varied by SES (higher vs. lower) and ethnicity (White British vs. Black Caribbean). Following this, they responded to several measures assessing their beliefs about education. RESULTS: Teachers judged students of lower SES to be inferior to students of higher SES across a range of indicators. By contrast, we found no evidence of racial bias in teachers' judgements, though potential reasons for this are discussed. Teachers who believed that schooling is meritocratic were significantly less likely to support equity-enhancing teaching practices and initiatives. CONCLUSIONS: Unconscious teacher biases and beliefs may be contributing to the relative underperformance of students from poorer backgrounds. These findings provide a mandate for educational institutions to help teachers reflect upon, and develop the skills required to mitigate potentially harmful biases.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 84 citations exist upstream.

References

1995Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes.1999Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development 1968Pygmalion in the classroom 1988The Psychology of Self-Affirmation: Sustaining the Integrity of the Self 1995Implicit Theories and Their Role in Judgments and Reactions: A Word From Two Perspectives 2002Contending with group image: The psychology of stereotype and social identity threat 2007A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement.1995The Links Between Education and Health

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.