Pygmalion and the gender gap: do teacher expectations contribute to differences in achievement between boys and girls at the beginning of schooling?

Abstract

This study examined the role of teacher expectations in the emerging gender gaps in reading and mathematics in the first year of schooling. Therefore, we first investigated whether boys and girls differ in their vulnerability to teacher expectancy effects. Second, we analysed whether gender-specific effects of teacher expectations contribute to gender achievement gaps. Our analyses were based on 1,025 first-grade students in Germany. Among the majority of the students, boys and girls did not differ in their vulnerability to teacher expectancy effects. Further analyses examined a subgroup of students who were targets of relatively strong teacher expectation bias and who showed unexpectedly high or low achievement gains. In this specific subgroup, girls' mathematics achievement was more adversely affected by negatively biased expectations and benefitted less from positive bias than boys' achievement. Mediation analyses revealed that teacher expectation bias did not substantially contribute to gender gaps in reading or mathematics.

Do Teachers' Beliefs About Math Aptitude and Brilliance Explain Gender Differences in Children's Math Ability Self-Concept?

“…This finding is in line with findings from earlier studies with elementary students (Tiedemann, 2000b;Fredricks and Eccles, 2002;Herbert and Stipek, 2005;Ganley and Lubienski, 2016;Gentrup and Rjosk, 2018). While male and female students did not differ in their standardized test performance, teachers described their male students as more talented in math than their female students, corroborating Hypothesis 2 and validating earlier studies on teachers' gender-bias in math (e.g., Li, 1999;Cimpian et al, 2016;Hand et al, 2017;Holder and Kessels, 2017;Gentrup and Rjosk, 2018). As expected in Hypotheses 4, these genderbiased aptitude ratings of the teachers proved to account for half of the gender gap in math ability self-concepts.…”

Dimensional comparison effects on (gendered) educational choices.

“…Gender differences in mathematics- and science-related self-concept and values are assumed to result from a variety of influences. These include differences in role orientations, identity, and self-stereotype matching to different domains (Heyder & Kessels, 2013; Heyder, Kessels, & Steinmayr, 2017; Kessels, 2005), differences in participation in science- and mathematics-related school activities (Simpkins, Davis-Kean, & Eccles, 2006), as well as gender-differential beliefs and expectations of parents (Muntoni & Retelsdorf, 2019; Simpkins, Fredricks, & Eccles, 2012) and teachers (Gentrup & Rjosk, 2018; Muntoni & Retelsdorf, 2018).…”

Why do females choose to study humanities or social sciences, while males prefer technology or science? Some intrapersonal and interpersonal predictors

“…An important mechanism of this transformation seems to be the stereotype threat (e.g., Nguyen and Ryan 2008;Schmader 2002;Shapiro and Williams 2012) and selffulfilling prophecy (e.g., Fiedler et al 2002;Gentrup and Rjosk 2018;Watson et al 2017). The indicated phenomena, together with the regulatory function of students' self-expectations and their self-concept of ability in T/S and H/SS (e.g., Fan 2011; Rudman and Phelan 2010;Szumski and Karwowski 2019) are discussed in more detail in the following sections of this paper.…”