Student socioeconomic status and teacher-student perceptual discrepancies of school effort and enjoyment

Valentina Perinetti Casoni, Katherin Barg*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Working paperPreprint

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Abstract

Congruence between teacher and student perceptions is important for the creation of effective learning environments and enables teachers to adjust to students’ needs. The present study investigates discrepancies between teacher and student perceptions of student’s school enjoyment and effort, and whether these discrepancies are associated with student SES. We argue that ‘cultural correspondence’ between teachers and higher SES students, student visibility and teacher unconscious bias could be driving the association between student SES and teacher-student perceptual discrepancies. Our study draws on representative survey data on children at the end of primary school in England and Scotland, and uses a residual method to compute perceptual discrepancies. We find that, compared to students’ own perceptions of their enjoyment and effort, teachers significantly underestimate the effort and enjoyment of low SES students and overestimate the same attitudes for high SES students. The association between SES and discrepancies between teacher and student perceptions remains significant even when student prior ability and socioemotional and behavioural difficulties are held constant. Our results do not provide evidence for cultural correspondence but seem to show that student visibility and teacher unconscious biases explain part of the association between SES and perceptual discrepancies.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages34
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 16 Sept 2024

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