Achievement development is less important for school-placement recommendations when students are stereotyped

Abstract

With this study we examined with a sample of N = 102 primary-school teachers whether their use of information about students’ achievement development for placement recommendations depended on student ethnicity. We applied student vignettes to mimic real students, and orthogonally varied student ethnicity, their GPA development, suggested by their last two school reports in primary school, and their grand mean of grades. We found that students were more likely to be recommended for the highest track when their grand mean of grades indicated higher achievements and when their GPA improved rather than declined. Moreover, we found strong evidence that teachers applied ethnic stereotypes when making school-placement recommendations. If the students fitted an ethnic stereotype, teachers tend to ignore information about their achievement development, whereas if the students did not fit an ethnic stereotype, teachers’ judgments were rather based on all information that was provided about the students. Hence, achievement development was less important for school-placement recommendations when students were stereotyped than when they were not stereotyped. Implications of the results were discussed.