Teachers’ attitudes toward mathematics and student equity in Russian classrooms

• In Event: How school in Russia’s mass education system reproduce inequality

Proposal

It has become common practice for teachers to use a differentiated approach in working with students, especially in heterogeneous classrooms. Because the approach allows for “customizing” teaching to individual students’ learning pace and different ways of learning, is considered potentially effective in maximizing student outcomes (Kerchkoff, 1986). However, teachers’ beliefs play an important role in how the approach is applied in practice. Teachers’ attitudes toward students based on social class, ethnicity, or gender could be stereotyped and, consequently, the evaluation of a student’s ability would be systematically biased and teacher decisions about how well students can learn subject matter, incorrect.
In this paper, we report on interviews with teachers of mathematics in 30 Russian middle schools in five Russian regions conducted in 2014-2015. Firstly, the research allowed us to investigate what criteria teachers employ in classifying students in the classroom and what expectations they have for each group of students. We found that teachers’ beliefs could be classified into two broad categories: exclusive and inclusive. Teachers with exclusive beliefs considered that not all students had the capacity to "master middle school mathematics. It was found that within the exclusive model, teachers had an image of a “normal” student and used discrete categories for labelling students with reference to that “normality.” Within the inclusive model teachers tended not to match students with discrete categories; rather they preferred to compare a student only with herself or himself and how much progress they were making.
Secondly, we were able to reveal inequality in teacher-student interactions through the lenses of 25 observations of math classrooms. In exclusive classrooms, teachers tended to involve in “presentation” activities only a limited number of students, those in whom the teacher felt confident. In those cases, teachers preferred to show us, the observers, the best of their teaching practices rather than taking the risk of engaging every student. In contrast, in inclusive classrooms most of the students participated in math activities and had a chance to interact with the teacher. Research findings are discussed in the context of a possible “fixed effect” on a student’s development. However, there is a need for further investigation of a connection between teachers’ belief systems, teaching practices, and student achievement gains.

Author

• Galina Larina, National Research University Higher School of Economics