Do race and gender influence teacher expectations?

Responsible researcher: Adriano Valladão Pires Ribeiro

Article title: TEACHERS’ EXPECTATIONS AND RACIAL MISMATCH IN BRAZILIAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Article author: André Vieira

Location of intervention: Brazil

Sample size : 53,841 classes

Major theme: Education
Type of intervention: Demographic differences

Variable of main interest: Teachers’ expectations

Evaluation method: Experimental Evaluation (RCT)

Policy Problem

Teachers' expectations about students' educational success may be related to several factors, such as academic performance, students' motivation and socioeconomic context, racial disparities between teachers and students, among other reasons. Data from Prova Brasil make it possible to study the relationship between the expectations of mathematics and Portuguese language teachers in the ninth year of elementary school in the public school system and the racial and gender characteristics between teachers and students.

Assessment Context

When teachers have systematically higher or lower expectations for a group of students, then their expectations would be biased. Since teacher expectations can have a long-term impact on students' academic and job market outcomes, bias in their training can be a problem. In particular, when a bias associated with lower expectations of a minority group leads students from that group to reinforce negative attitudes and behaviors, perpetuating social inequalities.

Intervention Details

The expectations of teachers in the ninth year of elementary school were collected through the 2013 Prova Brasil, a census assessment of public schools in the areas of mathematics and Portuguese language. As part of the evaluation, the teachers of these two subjects answered a questionnaire about the class, informing, in 3 different questions, how many students they expected to complete elementary school, how many to complete high school, and how many to enter college. The answers could be few, a little less than half, a little more than half or almost all students. These questions and their answers form the object investigated.

Other student information used to investigate teachers' expectations were proficiency in Portuguese and mathematics, school trajectory, educational aspirations, sociodemographic characteristics and socioeconomic level of families. As for teachers, data on their training, teaching experience and the proportion of expected content actually taught were used. Finally, teachers and students also answered a questionnaire indicating what best describes them, in which the options were white, brown, black, yellow and indigenous. The brown and black options were classified as black.

Given that teachers' expectations were measured by the three questions about the maximum expected educational level of the class, all other variables had to be aggregated to the class level. When investigating whether the racial composition of teachers and students in classes explains differences in teacher expectations, other factors must also be taken into account. Among them are the students' behavior and academic performance, the family environment and their socioeconomic characteristics, especially in environments of great inequality. Without taking these factors into account, one could attribute more importance to racial differences than they actually have.

Methodology

One way of analyzing education is to recognize the existence of hierarchical levels in the structure of its elements, that is, at the first level we would have students, these are divided into classes, the second level, which in turn are part of schools, third level, and, finally, they are part of an education network. Therefore, a multilevel analysis was put into use, although, due to the way teachers' expectations were collected, only classrooms and state and municipal schools were the levels considered. The investigation included observations from 53,841 classes and 18,923 schools and each of the three teacher predictions were studied separately. Finally, it is noteworthy that the measurement of these two levels allows us to distinguish the importance of the institution in the teachers' expectations, that is, what is the school effect attributed to the teachers' prediction.

Results

First, it is noted that teachers' expectations decrease regarding the level of education, that is, more students are expected to complete elementary school than high school and even fewer students are expected to enter college. The predictions are also higher for classes with a non-black majority when compared to classes with a black and mixed-race majority. Furthermore, because most teachers are non-black or mixed race, black students have the highest proportion of racial differences in the classroom.

The multilevel analysis indicates that classes taught by female teachers, with higher performances in mathematics and Portuguese language assessments and that teach the expected content effectively are associated with higher expectations. The association of these factors is even stronger when the expectation is about entering university. Furthermore, the difference between schools explains, respectively, 31%, 35% and 40% of teachers' expectations regarding the completion of primary education, the end of secondary education and entry into university. Therefore, the presence of the school effect can be seen, although the reasons for the institutional difference were not the subject of the study.

Finally, the results regarding the racial and gender profiles of the classes are presented. Black teachers, compared to non-black teachers, have lower expectations for students to complete elementary school, but higher expectations for completing high school and entering university. When interacting the racial profile of teachers with that of students, it was found that black teachers have higher predictions for classes with a black majority when compared to non-black teachers, even reversing the average result for elementary education. Regarding gender, the expectations of female teachers are higher, regardless of the racial profile of the class. When relating gender and race, the highest expectations are from women and black teachers for classes with a majority of women and black people.

Public Policy Lessons

The expectations of students of Portuguese language and mathematics teachers in the public school system are associated, albeit in a non-causal way, with racial and gender disparities between teachers and students. As noted above, similar racial profiles of teachers and students can even reverse teachers' lower expectations. The results presented, therefore, point to the existence of a bias in expectations due to the racial profile of students and teachers. Public policies must therefore delve deeper into the question of how expectations are formed so that this bias can be eliminated. Mainly, when there is a relationship between teachers' expectations and students' long-term results.

Reference

Vieira, André. “Teacher Expectations and Racial Mismatch in Brazilian Public Schools.” Research Notebooks, v. 48, n. 168, p. 412-445, 2018.