Oates, Gary L.
Researchers: Gary L. Oates
University Affiliation: Bowling Green State University
Email: oates@bgsu.edu
Research Question:
Whether teacher-student racial congruence conditions the impact of teacher perceptions on performance.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Social Science Quarterly
Journal Entry: Vol. 84, No. 3, pp. 508-525
Year: 2003
Findings:
- Anti-Black bias among White teachers and race neutrality among African American teachers.
- African American students appear especially vulnerable to negative perceptions when taught by Whites.
- African American students appear to be “shielded” from negative perceptions by their disproportionate tendency to be paired with African American rather with White teachers.
- Affirms presumption of self-concept theory regarding the potentially harmful implications of racial dissonance.
- Reduction of the Black-White gap would thus likely be facilitated by initiatives that advance race neutrality in white teachers’ perceptions.
- The impact of teachers’ perceptions on test performance shows signs of being especially pronounced in the racially dissonant white teacher-black student context- the very context where teacher perceptions seem especially likely to be unfavorable.
- Racial congruence seems primarily consequential to African-American test performance -shaping both teacher perceptions and (somewhat less so) the impact of such perceptions on performance.