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Beyond judgment bias: How students’ ethnicity and academic profile consistency influence teachers’ tracking judgments

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Abstract

Research on school tracking has provided evidence that students with immigrant backgrounds are overrepresented in the lower school tracks. As teachers are the main decision makers when it comes to tracking, we investigated whether teachers’ tracking judgments are biased by the immigrant backgrounds of the students and how teachers’ tracking judgments are affected by inconsistencies in students’ academic profiles. Drawing on dual process models of judgment formation, we conducted two experimental studies to investigate teachers’ judgments. The results of both studies showed less favorable teacher judgments of students with immigrant backgrounds than of students without immigrant backgrounds. Students with inconsistent academic profiles were also judged less favorably than students with consistent profiles. Think aloud data indicated careful processing of all information both for students with immigrant backgrounds and students with inconsistent profiles. Results are discussed with regard to their underlying mechanisms as well as with regard to their implications for teacher training.

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  1. Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts, and Education, University of Luxembourg, Route de Diekirch, 7201 , Walferdange, Luxembourg

    Sabine Glock, Sabine Krolak-Schwerdt, Florian Klapproth & Matthias Böhmer

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  1. Sabine Glock
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Correspondence to Sabine Glock.

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We would like to thank the school inspectors for their help in recruiting the teachers.

The experiments reported in this paper were funded by Grant C08/LM/02 from the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg (FNR).

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Glock, S., Krolak-Schwerdt, S., Klapproth, F. et al. Beyond judgment bias: How students’ ethnicity and academic profile consistency influence teachers’ tracking judgments. Soc Psychol Educ 16, 555–573 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-013-9227-5

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