Teachers’ perceptions of students’ executive functions: Disparities by gender, ethnicity, and ELL status.

Abstract

Teacher-report is commonly used to assess executive functions (EFs) in schools, but teachers' perceptions of EF skills may be biased by students' demographic characteristics. In this short-term longitudinal study, we assessed whether students' gender, ethnicity, and English language learner (ELL) status predicted teachers' reports of students' EFs, beyond what would be expected based on direct assessment of EFs. In addition, we tested whether these associations changed between the fall and spring. Data were drawn from a school-based study of third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students (N ϭ 558, 33 classrooms, 8 schools) in which students' EFs were measured using direct assessments and teacher reports in the fall and spring. Using path analysis to control for the contribution of the direct assessment of EFs, we found systematic gender, ethnic, and ELL status disparities in teachers' reports of students' EFs. Moreover, these disparities did not change between the fall and spring. Given increased interest in incorporating teachers' report of students' EF skills into student report cards and school accountability indices, researchers and practitioners should further investigate and address the potential for systematic disparities in teachers' reports of EFs. Educational Impact and Implications StatementTeacher-report is widely used to measure executive functions (EFs) and related self-regulated behavior in schools, yet it is unknown whether teachers' reports of EFs are biased by students' demographic characteristics. This study found evidence that teachers viewed boys, African Americans, and students with limited English proficiency as having worse EFs than girls, White students, and English dominant students, respectively, beyond what would be expected based on a direct assessment of their EFs. Given the importance of teachers' perceptions for later academic achievement, these findings suggest that teachers' perceptions of students' EFs may contribute to persistent disparities in academic and behavioral outcomes. Researchers and practitioners should further investigate and address the sources and consequences of systematic disparities in teachers' perceptions of students' EFs.

Connecting Judgment Process and Accuracy of Student Teachers: Differences in Observation and Student Engagement Cues to Assess Student Characteristics

“…As a related issue, our analysis of student cue utilization is based on student teachers' self-reports. This might have resulted in a social desirability bias of their answers and would be one explanation why our findings contradict previous ones in which teachers relied on unimportant student cues such as gender or SES (Meissel et al, 2017;Praetorius et al, 2017;Garcia et al, 2019;Brandmiller et al, 2020). In this context, our results might not fully reflect potentially problematic cue usage of student teachers.…”

“…Student teachers took into account in particular whether students showed general participation in learning activities, whether they raised their hands to contribute to classroom dialogue, and also considered the quality of students' verbal contributions frequently. That student teachers dominantly rely on such diagnostic student cues, contradicts previous research which showed that teachers also take into account misleading or unimportant information like student gender, ethnicity, immigration status, and SES in their assessment of student characteristics (Meissel et al, 2017;Praetorius et al, 2017;Garcia et al, 2019;Brandmiller et al, 2020). However, these studies used text vignettes to provide teachers with specific information about target students.…”

“…However, differences in the abilities to interpret classroom events already appear among student teachers who had only limited opportunities to engage in teaching practice (Stürmer et al, 2016). When it comes to the explicit consideration of judgment processes, teachers seem to consider student background characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, immigration status, and socioeconomic status (SES) to assess students' cognitive and motivational-affective characteristics (Meissel et al, 2017;Praetorius et al, 2017;Garcia et al, 2019;Brandmiller et al, 2020). Moreover, teachers seem to rely on these rather unimportant and misleading student cues especially when they experience low accountability for their decisions (Glock et al, 2012;Krolak-Schwerdt et al, 2013).…”

Moving beyond executive functions: Challenge preference as a predictor of academic achievement in elementary school

“…Direct assessments are considered to be more objective than teachers' reports, but they are less ecologically valid (Toplak, West, & Stanovich, 2013). In contrast, teachers' reports can be biased by students' demographic characteristics such as gender and race/ethnicity (Garcia, Sulik, & Obradović, 2019), but they have the advantage of capturing students' EF behaviors as they occur in naturalistic learning contexts. The inclusion of both types of assessments provides a more comprehensive and robust way to capture students' EF skills.…”

“…Parental years of education was included as a covariate because of socioeconomic disparities in both EFs and achievement (Lawson, Hook, Hackman, & Farah, 2014;Reardon, 2011). Child gender and child race/ ethnicity were included as covariates due to previous research demonstrating gender and racial/ethnic differences on teacher-reported EFs (Garcia et al, 2019). Finally, child age was included as a covariate because it is associated with better EFs (Lee, Bull, & Ho, 2013) and less CP (Lepper et al, 2005).…”