Teachers’ Perceptions of Young Children’s Oral Narrative Skills: The Role of Children’s Race and Gender and Teachers’ Race

• In Event: Teachers’ Extended Discourse Interactions with Black and Latinx Children in the Early Childhood Classroom

Abstract

Children’s strong oral narrative, or storytelling, skills have been linked to the development of strong literacy skills. Black children have oral narrative skills that are on par with, and in some cases exceed, those of White children (Gardner-Neblett et al., 2012). Despite strong narrative skills, many Black children, particularly boys, experience low literacy achievement. One factor may be that Black children receive less effective literacy instruction as a function of teachers’ judgments of children’s oral narrative skills. Seminal research shows that teachers provide Black and White children with differential access to effective literacy instruction as a function of children’s oral narrative skills (Vernon-Feagans, 1996). Yet there has been little research exploring how teachers judge children’s oral narrative skills differently by children’s race/gender and teachers’ race. We hypothesize that teachers would rate narratives told by hypothetical Black children, particularly Black boys, more negatively than narratives told by hypothetical White children. Further, we anticipate that Black teachers would rate the hypothetical Black children more positively than White teachers would.
Method
Teachers, working with children from preschool through 3rd grade (N = 418; 30% Black; 92% female), were recruited through school administrators and a survey panel. Teachers were asked to evaluate the narrative quality of two transcripts of an oral story told by a hypothetical child across a set of 11 characteristics (alpha = .96). One story was of higher quality than the other. Race and gender of the hypothetical child was randomized using stereotypical Black, White, girl, and boy names. Thus, a 2 (high- vs. low-quality narrative) × 2 (child’s gender) × 2 (child’s race) design was used (i.e., teachers randomly received two of eight combinations of narrative quality and child race/gender), controlling for teachers’ background characteristics.
Results
Results from a linear mixed effects model showed a main effect for story condition (Table 1); teachers rated the low-quality narratives lower than the high-quality narratives. There was a significant three-way interaction between the hypothetical child’s race/gender, story condition and teacher’s race. Black teachers were more likely to rate low-quality stories told by Black boys favorably than White teachers (z = 2.27, p = .02; Figure 1). Black teachers were also more likely to rate low-quality stories told by Black boys higher than low-quality stories told by Black girls (z = 2.54, p = .01) and White girls (z = 2.37, p = .02).
Discussion
The study addresses an understudied topic: teachers’ potential biases toward children’s language use. While we find no main effects of the race or gender of the hypothetical child or the teachers’ race, we find that Black teachers are likely to evaluate low-quality stories told by Black boys favorably. Black teachers may be overcompensating in their evaluation of underperforming Black boys, who often face low teacher expectations, stereotype threat, and various other factors that compromise their academic performance. Additional research is needed to explore the implications of Black teachers’ evaluations of oral narrative skills for instructional practices.

Authors

• Nicole Gardner-Neblett, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Blake Douglas Ebright, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author