Race Essentialism in the Context of Teacher-Student Relationships: A Longitudinal Approach

• In Event: The role of affirming high quality experiences on children's wellbeing and learning

Abstract

Racial/ethnic minority students consistently report less supportive relationships with teachers than their White peers. This is particularly problematic in urban school districts, where teachers are predominantly White and students, predominantly minority. The reasons White teachers have poorer relationships with minority students are not well understood. One unexplored factor may contribute to this problem, race essentialism, the belief there are deep-rooted, unalterable qualities unique to racial groups (Gelman, 2004). Teachers who hold essentialist views of race may believe that students of color do not have the same abilities or potential as White students, which may undermine the quality of relationships they develop with those students. However, race essentialism has not been studied in an educational context.
The current study examines whether White teachers’ intrinsic beliefs about race are related to students’ perceptions of the quality of their relationships and offers a unique opportunity to examine how social changes in the US may affect this relationship. We collected initial data in an urban high school in spring 2020; 85% of students were Black and 88% of teachers were White. We will collect a second wave in the same school October, 2020. Given the upsurge in attention to racial injustice that has occurred since the first data collection, we will explore whether Black students’ views of their relationships with their White teachers and teachers’ beliefs about race have changed over time. We hypothesize adolescents’ expectations for being treated with fairness and respect by teachers will be higher at Time 2, and consequently may report lower levels of satisfaction with those relationships and less belongingness. We also expect teachers will report higher levels of empathy. In addition, we hypothesize that there will be a stronger inverse relationship between teachers’ race essentialism and students’ perceived relationship quality and belongingness. That is, we expect that White teachers’ attitudes about race will have a stronger impact on the quality of their relationships with Black students at Time 2. Teachers (n= 15) completed measures of race essentialism and empathy at both timepoints. Students (n= 242) reported on the supportiveness they experience with each of their teachers and a measure of school belongingness. Time 1 means for these constructs generally hovered around the midpoint of the scales: race essentialism M=3.88, SD=1.19, on a 7-point Likert scale; empathy M=3.26, SD=.34, on a 5-point Likert scale; teacher-student relationship quality M=2.29, SD=.29, on a 4-point Likert scale; school belongingness M=2.13, SD=.15, on a 5-point Likert scale. Analyses also showed a small negative correlation between students’ belongingness and teachers’ race essentialism at T1 (r=-.10). When Time 2 data are collected, we will examine mean differences on these variables and test whether the unique and joint associations between teachers’ race essentialism and empathy and students’ perceptions of relationship quality and school belongingness differ significant at the two time points. Given the malleability of race essentialism, findings may inform interventions that address distorted conceptions of race that may be harmful to students of color and provide information on the shifting racial climate in our society.

Authors

• Jamee S Carroll, University of Maryland School of Medicine
  Presenting Author

• John Grych, Marquette University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Astrida Seja Kaugars, Marquette University
  Non-Presenting Author