Poster #79 - Teachers’ Inaccurate Beliefs and Peer Group Characteristics

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Teachers’ expectations about students’ academic abilities are related to students’ achievement over time (e.g., Rosenthal, 1994). Students whose teachers underestimate their abilities tend to achieve less whereas students whose abilities are overestimated achieve more. Several mechanisms including teachers’ differential treatment and students’ self-concept and motivation (Weinstein, 2002) have been examined to understand this crucial link but to date, no research has considered whether teachers’ inaccurate beliefs influence their students’ peer relationships. It may be that a teacher’s inaccurate assessment is self-fulfilling, in part, because it may influence peers’ perceptions of that student, thereby influencing the peers with whom students associate. A robust literature demonstrates both the influence of peers on students’ academic engagement and success (e.g., Ryan, 2001; Wentzel, 1998) and the influence of teachers on their students’ peer relationships (e.g., Farmer, Lines, & Hamm, 2011). This current study will examine whether teachers’ inaccurate beliefs in the 3rd grade influence the characteristics of students’ peer associates in 5th grade, ultimately predicting students’ achievement at age 15.

Participants include 1,364 students (48% girls, 80% White) from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. First and third grade teachers rated the study child’s proficiency compared to same grade-level students in language literacy and mathematics (as measured by the Academic Rating Scale). Study children were given the Woodcock-Johnson-Revised (WJ-R) multiple times throughout the study, including 54 months, first grade, third grade, and 15 years. Teachers’ inaccurate beliefs were operationalized by regressing teachers’ perceptions of abilities onto the children’s standardized abilities (Hinnant et al., 2009). A negative score reflects underestimation, and a positive score reflects overestimation. The closer a score is to zero, the smaller the discrepancy between teachers’ perceptions and actual performance. Primary caregivers reported on the characteristics of their child’s peer group (if the child had a peer group) with a 8-item questionnaire (e.g., “These kids are excellent students,” “These kids are hard workers,” α = .81). Higher scores reflect more positive peer characteristics.

Table 1 shows that when teachers’ overestimate students’ abilities, these children tended to have peers with more positive characteristics (r’s range from .37 to .50, all p’s < .001). Next we conducted path analysis with third grade inaccurate beliefs predicting age 15 achievement via fifth grade peers’ characteristics, by subject, in MPlus, using full information maximum likelihood estimation. We controlled for relevant achievement scores at 54 months (see Figure 1). Fit indices suggest well-fit models. The indirect effect of teachers’ inaccurate beliefs on high school achievement through peer characteristics were significant for the vocabulary (b = 0.21, p < .05) and reading (b = .22, p < .05) models, but not the math model (b = 0.01, p = .25).

These analyses provide preliminary evidence that teachers can influence students’ academic achievement through the characteristics of students’ peer groups. Follow up models will consider additional time points (using autoregression), test for moderation by gender, and objective measures of peer achievement.

Authors

• Nicole Sorhagen, Millersville University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author

• Molly Dawes, University of South Carolina
  Non-Presenting Author