Ingroup or outgroup: Will Tibetan teachers benefit Tibetan students more than Han teachers?

• In Event: Promoting Excellence and School Effectiveness

Proposal

Background Introduction

Many studies have empirically shown that individuals’ educational outcomes are better when they participate in social and educational activities with people on the same identities including gender, ethnicity, partisanship, and nationality, than with people of different identities. For example, Dee (2005) found that in the 8th-grade classroom, teachers perceived better classroom performance from groups of students they observed having the same race or gender. Reflecting on students’ test scores, a study on Chile’s primary education found that female teachers improved female students’ academic performance more than they did male students (Paredes, 2014). There are three commonly discussed mechanisms of in-group bias in the educational process: Role-Model Effects, Stereotype Threat, and the unintentionally biased behaviors of teachers.

Looking at the dominant similar studies discussing in-group bias around the world, few studies have examined such effects on Chinese students’ educational problems, especially for minority students in rural China, who have been found to lag behind Han students, both in educational opportunities and academic performance (Hannum & Wang, 2010; Lu et al., 2016; Bai et al., 2018). Before exploring potential ways to improve the human capital of rural minority students, understanding whether the co-ethnic effect between Tibetan teachers and students might be a breakthrough to improve Tibetan students’ educational outcomes.

Research Question & Objectives

To explore whether the positive co-ethnic effect exists in minority students’ education in rural China, this study will examine whether Tibetan students benefit more from Tibetan teachers than Han teachers. Specifically, this study has the following research objectives:
1. To examine whether Tibetan students’ academic performance improves more when assigned to Tibetan teachers than to Han Teachers
2. To examine whether Tibetan students have a better studying process when assigned to Tibetan teachers than to Han Teachers
3. To examine whether the in-group benefits have different effects on Tibetan students who speak Tibetan than on those who speak Mandarin at school

Data Description & Empirical Strategy

This study used a field survey data collected in 2019 by the Center for Experimental Economics in Education (CEEE) at Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, China. A total of 10,947 students from rural Gansu Province participated in this study; among them, about 1,300 are Tibetan students. CEEE obtained information about the academic performance of the students, their demographics, family background information, school level and teacher level information.

Based on previous studies discussing in-group and out-group bias in education activities, this study will use the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model to verify the following three hypotheses about in-group benefits in rural minority education in China.

H1: Tibetan students’ academic performance improved more when assigned to Tibetan teachers than they did when assigned to Han Teachers.

H2: Tibetan students’ have a better English studying process when assigned to Tibetan teachers than they did when assigned to Han Teachers.

H3: The in-group benefits may have different effects on Tibetan students who speak Tibetan than those who speak Mandarin at school.

Preliminary Results & Future Research Plan

The preliminary OLS regression results indicate that H1 isn't verified. Though there is a slight (1 point) increase in Tibetan students' English test scores when assigned to a Tibetan teacher, it's not statistically significant. Trying to figure out why there isn't a correlation between teachers' ethnicity and Tibetan students' test score, this study found that when taught by Tibetan teachers, Tibetan students felt less difficulty in learning English compared to those taught by Han teachers. Furthermore, when assigned to a Tibetan English teacher, the frequency of students' self-study in English after class improved. To learn more about students' feelings about studying English, this study found that the proportion of Tibetan students choosing "Like English class very much" is about two times with Tibetan teachers than with Han teachers, 40% and 20% respectively, similar to the proportion of students answering "Like English teacher very much". Finally, for students who spoke Tibetan at school and who did not, being taught by Tibetan teachers didn't matter for their test scores.

Generally, this study found that for rural Tibetan students, there isn’t a correlation between English teachers’ ethnicity and their English test scores. However, a positive correlation does exist when considering students’ learning process. Further analysis is needed to explore the mechanisms of why the improved learning process didn’t result in advanced test scores. In addition, the heterogeneous analysis of whether students speaking Tibetan at school matters for their English studies when they were assigned to teachers of different ethnicity may bring more thoughts about how to build a more relaxed and less stressful multilingual environment for minority student education in rural China. Finally, to consider the co-ethnic benefits from a broader perspective, will Han students have similar studying processes and educational outcomes when assigned to Han teachers or minority teachers? This is also unclear and remains to be answered.

Author

• Tong Ru, The University Of Pittsburgh School of Education