How sociolinguistic factors shape children’s subjective impressions of teacher quality

Abstract

When university students are asked to rate their instructors, their evaluations are often influenced by the demographic characteristics of the instructor – such as the instructor’s race, gender or language background. These influences can manifest in unfair systematic biases against particular groups of teachers, and hamper movements to promote diversity in higher education. When and how do these biases develop? Here, we begin to address these questions by examining children’s sociolinguistic biases against teachers who speak with different accents. To do this, we presented five-year-old Canadian English-speaking children with pairs of adult talkers. Children were asked to select ‘who they’d like to be their teacher’ then they rated ‘how good of a teacher’ they thought each talker would be on a 5-point scale. In each trial, one talker spoke in the locally dominant variety of Canadian English, and the other spoke in a different accent. Children strongly preferred Canadian-accented teachers over teachers who spoke with non-native (i.e., French or Dutch) accents, but also demonstrated a preference for Canadian teachers over teachers who spoke with non-local regional accents (i.e., Australian or British). In line with the binary choice data, children rated the Canadian talkers more favorably. The relationship between the gender of the teacher and the gender of the child also impacted ratings. This work demonstrates that even at the onset of formal education, children may already exhibit signs of accent-based biases. We discuss these findings in relation to the growing literature on implicit bias in higher education.

Trilingual and Multicultural Experiences Mitigating Students’ Linguistic Stereotypes: Investigating the Perceptions of Undergraduates of Chinese Heritage Regarding Native/Non-Native English Teachers

“…This result is rather similar to that from the study in Thailand in which the Thai undergraduates rated UK, US and Thai English speech significantly higher than other Asian forms of English (Chinese and Indian) for competence, warmth, and perceived positive attitude of the speaker, revealing a clear background homophily [57]. More intriguingly, language learners as young as five years old can exhibit an even closer pattern of homophily preference than ours [9]. When invited to choose their "favorite" teachers, these young respondents choose NS over NNS teachers, and Canadian teachers over NS Australian and English teachers.…”

“…When undergraduates are asked to rate their teachers, their assessments are every so often influenced by the teachers' demographic attributes, such as race, language background, or gender [6,9]. Influenced by what Holliday [8] termed the native speaker fallacy, they showed a linguistic stereotype, claiming that the NNS speakers' English usage is "broken" [5] and that the NS speakers are linguistically and culturally superior to their NNS counterparts [13].…”

“…Some scholars name this phenomenon "the native speaker fallacy" [7], or "native speakerism" [8]. Indeed, a recent study suggests that this sociolinguistic stereotype can even be detected in Canadian children of only 5 years of age [9]. Researchers have been including the native fallacy and sociolinguistic stereotyping under the discipline of "raciolinguistics", claiming that "white supremacy" is behind these phenomena [10,11].…”