Article
Factors that bias teacher expectations: Findings from Chile
Factores que sesgan las expectativas docentes: hallazgos en Chile
Registro en:
Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología (2019) 51(3), 171-180
0120-0534
10.14349/rlp.2019.v51.n3.4
Autor
Barriga, Carmen A.
Rodríguez, Cristina
Ferreira, Roberto A.
Resumen
Artículo de publicación ISI It is well-known that teacher expectations tend to be biased by factors such as student socio-economic status (SES) and gender. However, much less research has been devoted to
understanding how teacher characteristics may impact their own expectations of the students.
The present study investigated teacher expectations for 343 Chilean teachers (240 in-service and
103 pre-service). We first designed and validated an instrument to measure expectations; then
we assessed the effect of teacher gender and experience, and student gender and school-SES in
the formation of teacher expectations. The data were analysed using hypothesis and data-driven
analyses. The results showed that SES had an effect on teacher expectations (2= .03 to .12); there
was a higher probability that teachers from high-SES schools would have positive expectations of
their students. However, negative expectations were equally distributed across teachers working
in high and low-SES schools. There was also no evidence of the effect of teacher or student gender
on teacher expectations. With respect to teacher experience, the findings were clear cut; both
pre-service and in-service teachers shared identical expectations of their students. These findings
have important implications regarding teacher training programmes since the expectation bias is
observed very early during training.