Non-communicated judgements of, versus feedback on, students’ essays: Is feedback inflation larger for students with a migration background?

Abstract

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.

German Teachers’ Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Female and Male Muslim Students and Reactions to Social Exclusion

“…This could be due to social desirability because it might appear unacceptable not to help a socially excluded Muslim student which is especially true in socially sensitive situations (De Houwer, 2006). Our results might also be due to shifting standards (Biernat & Manis, 1994), and in this case, negative stereotypes can lead to more positive judgments (Nishen & Kessels, 2022). Although teachers had less positive attitudes toward male Muslim students, the latter were protected in the social exclusion scenario, and the group was more likely to be asked to act rather than the Muslim student himself.…”

“…Hence, although negative attitudes are not reflected in teachers’ behaviors and judgments, disadvantages can nevertheless operate. In this vein, teachers sometimes provide overly positive feedback to appear unprejudiced (Nishen & Kessels, 2022).…”

Roles of socioeconomic status, ethnicity and teacher beliefs in academic grading

“…Our findings cannot be explained by a racial (mis)match in student–teacher dyads, as there were not enough Black teachers in our sample to drive such effects. However, research has suggested that teachers' fears of being perceived as racist may lead them to inflate the grades of Black students (Croft & Schmader, 2012 ; Nishen & Kessels, 2021 ), thus mitigating deleterious biases. More simply, it could be that teachers are becoming more aware of ethnicity biases and are thus more likely to monitor and inhibit such influences (e.g., Pope et al, 2018 ).…”

Unequal selves in the classroom: Nature, origins, and consequences of socioeconomic disparities in children’s self-views.

“…They reward low-ability students, because they assume that these students had to work hard to compensate for their lack of ability-and such effort is praiseworthy (Rest et al, 1973). Building on these findings, a series of experiments in Canada, Germany, and the United States demonstrated the positive feedback bias, with White majority teachers giving more positive feedback to ethnic minority (vs. majority) students (Croft & Schmader, 2012;Harber, 1998Harber, , 2004Harber et al, 2010Harber et al, , 2012Harber et al, , 2019Nishen & Kessels, 2022;Zeeb et al, 2022). Research in the Netherlands extended these ideas to SES, examining teachers' feedback to 11-year-olds.…”