This talk will present findings from the ESRC-funded project ‘Social and ethnic biases in primary education’ focusing on primary school children who are around 10 to 11 years old, an age at which teacher-student relationships are particularly important. Using data on England from the Millennium Cohort Study, on Scotland from the Growing Up in Scotland study, and on Germany from the National Educational Panel Study, we leverage rich, representative information on students’ family background and students’ own reports of attitudes towards school & academic self-concept, as well as measures of students’ abilities and teacher-reported perceptions of such attitudes and abilities. This enables us to capture and explore discrepancies between teacher and student perceptions and between teacher perceptions and student ability.
The talk will briefly touch on the impact and knowledge exchange activities carried out across England and Scotland and highlight findings from the different research strands of the project:
1. Student socioeconomic status and teacher-student perceptual discrepancies of school effort and enjoyment in England and Scotland
2. Student gender, self-concept in English and Math, and the role of teacher-student perceptual discrepancies
3. SES-gradient in teacher biased perceptions of students’ language skills: a comparative exploration of determinants of teacher bias in England, Scotland, and Germany
4. (Mis-)perceptions of misbehaviour: an investigation of the role of ethnicity and other risk factors in English state schools