Influence of Demographic and Academic Characteristics of Students on Social Perception and Expectations of Teachers

According to existing research, teacher expectations can affect students’ performance. Relationship between student’s ethnicity and teacher expectations is of special interest of modern research as it is associated with several contradictions. Firstly, there is no clear evidence of the reasons of the ethnic achievement gap: while some researchers state, that there is a bias in how teachers grade ethnic minorities, the others argue, that the gap is formed as a consequence of Pygmalion effect. Moreover the main explanation of the relationship between student’s ethnicity and teacher expectations is that teacher expectations can be based on ethnic stereotypes, which does not take into account the modern two-dimensional model of stereotype. Applying both qualitative and quantitative methods on the sample of 34 Saint-Petersburg primary teachers I investigate, whether student’s ethnicity is associated with teacher expectations and stereotypical judgments. The results of the study showed that teachers tend to ignore the observed students’ performance and instead rely on a stereotypical one, which leads to differentiated expectations toward children and grading bias. According to another findings, teacher expectations were found to be based on both dimensions of stereotype. Thus, teachers’ perception of ethnic minorities could be characterized as paternalistic stereotype, according to S.Fiske, while ethnic majority was perceived in traditional way- as generally positive.