Students’ cheating is a serious problem: It undermines the chance to adequately promote, support, and evaluate them. To explain cheating behavior, research seldom focuses on perceived teachers’ characteristics. Thus, we investigate the relationship between students’ cheating behavior and an important teacher characteristic, individual reference norm orientation (IRNO; i.e., the tendency to evaluate students based on their performance development over time). We examined cheating on written exams, on homework, and in oral exams among N = 601 students (64.2% girls; Mage = 16.07 years) in N = 31 language classes. Results from doubly manifest multi-level analyses showed that, on the classroom level, cheating on written exams and on homework occurred less frequently the more the classroom of students perceived their teachers as having an IRNO. We found no further evidence for other cheating factors or student characteristics. This supports the idea that teacher characteristics are associated with some forms of students’ cheating behavior.

When providing feedback, teachers are concerned not only with the simple transmission of information, but also with motivational and interpersonal dynamics. To mitigate these concerns, teachers may inflate feedback by reducing negative or increasing positive content. The resulting difference between initial judgments and feedback may be even more drastic for ethnic minority students: In non-communicated judgments, negative stereotypes may result in more negative judgments, whereas in feedback, concerns about being or appearing prejudiced may inflate feedback towards ethnic minority students. These hypotheses were tested in a sample of 132 German teacher students in a 2 (between subjects: feedback vs. non-communicated judgment) × 2 (within subjects: target student's migration background: Turkish vs. none) design in which participants read supposed student essays and provided their written impressions to the research team or the supposed student. Findings revealed that teacher students’ feedback was more positive than their non-communicated judgments on a multitude of dimensions. Contrary to expectations, these effects were not stronger when the student had a Turkish migration background. Instead, teacher students rated the essay of the student with a Turkish migration background more favorably both in the judgment and feedback conditions. Our results suggest that teachers adapt their initial judgments when giving feedback to account for interpersonal or motivational dynamics. Moreover, ethnic minority students may be especially likely to receive overly positive feedback. While the motivational/interpersonal dynamics may warrant some inflation in feedback, negative consequences of overly positive feedback, for which ethnic minority students may be especially vulnerable, are discussed.

When students are grouped into school tracks, this has lasting consequences for their learning and later careers. In Germany to date, some groups of students (boys, ethnic minority students) are underrepresented in the highest track. Stereotypes about these groups exist that entail negative expectations about their suitability for the highest track. Based on the shifting standards model, the present research examines if and how stereotypes influence tracking recommendations. According to this theory, members of negatively stereotyped groups will be judged more leniently or more strictly depending on the framing of the judgment situation (by inducing minimum or confirmatory standards). N = 280 teacher students participated in a vignette study in which they had to choose the amount of positive evidence for suitability they wanted to see before deciding to recommend a fictitious student to the highest track. A 2 (judgment standard: minimum vs. confirmatory) × 2 (target student’s gender: male vs. female) × 2 (target student’s ethnicity: no migration background vs. Turkish migration background) between-subjects design was used. No effects of target gender occurred, but the expected interaction of target’s ethnicity and judgment standard emerged. In the minimum standard condition, less evidence was required for the ethnic minority student to be recommended for the highest track compared to the majority student. In the confirmatory standards condition, however, participants tended to require less evidence for the ethnic majority student. Our experiment underlines the importance of the framing of the recommendation situation, resulting in a more lenient or stricter assessment of negatively stereotyped groups.

Gender differences in school are often discussed in reference to a particular type of masculinity, negative masculinity, which is often conceptualized as detrimental to success. Another type of masculinity, instrumentality, has rarely been studied in schools even though instrumental characteristics are often exalted outside the academic context. The current study focuses on potential benefits that students may reap from instrumentality. The extent to which an instrumental self-concept is directly and indirectly associated with achievement motivation and self-esteem was examined for adolescent boys and girls in a structural equation model (SEM). A sample of German ninth graders (N = 355) completed self-report measures pertaining to their gender role self-concept, hope for success, fear of failure, and global and academic contingent self-esteem. The SEM revealed that instrumentality was associated with lower fear of failure and higher hope for success for both male and female adolescents. High scores in instrumentality were associated with greater self-esteem and lower academic contingent self-esteem. The association between instrumentality and global self-esteem was stronger for adolescent girls, and the indirect association between instrumentality and fear of failure through global self-esteem was significant only for girls. Results indicate that instrumentality can be an asset for students and that female students especially reap the benefits of an instrumental self-concept. The results are discussed in reference to the dangers of emphasizing solely the association between negative masculinity and academic failure, and the importance of studying relations with gender role self-concept separately for male and female adolescents.

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