Tag: Katherin Barg

ESRI Dublin

Posted on by lucy.haslam
White background with ESRI logo in dark blue. The logo is a triangle with two inverse colour circles sat on and next to it

On 5th of June, Katherin gave a talk titled How accurate are teacher perceptions of student academic attitudes, and do student social background and ethnicity matter? Evidence from England and Scotland at the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRI) in Dublin, Ireland.

Katherin presented two studies from the BIPE project that used large-scale secondary data for England and Scotland – respectively the Millennium Cohort Study and Growing Up in Scotland – to investigate discrepancies between teacher and student perceptions of student academic attitudes.

Both studies estimated such discrepancies using a residual method to then focus on whether socioeconomic or ethnic background of the students were systematically associated with larger or smaller discrepancies.

The first study explored to what extent discrepancies in teacher and student perceptions of student academic effort and enjoyment are linked to students’ socioeconomic background. The second study explored to what extent discrepancies in teacher and student perceptions of student misbehaviour in school are linked to students’ ethnic background and whether socioeconomic or ethnic school composition affect such link.

Slides from the workshop can be found on our ‘Teaching materials’ page.

University of Bristol, School of Education (SoE) Research Celebration Day

Posted on by lucy.haslam
Teal background featuring an image of the SoE - a beige stone building with green trees in front.

On the 17th of May, Katherin and Valentina presented findings from the BIPE project at the University of Bristol, School of Education (SoE) Research Celebration Day.

Katherin and Valentina presented preliminary results from the BIPE project investigating how students’ demographic, socioeconomic, and ethnic background influences teachers’ perceptions of the school performance and academic attitudes of primary school students in England, Scotland, and Germany using three large-scale longitudinal survey: the Millennium Cohort Study, Growing Up in Scotland, and the National Educational Panel Study.

The presentation started with preliminary findings exploring the associations between student background and discrepancies between teacher perceptions of student academic attitudes (or abilities) and the students’ own reports of these attitudes (or cognitive assessment of these abilities). It then focused on three different studies that used multivariate analysis to investigate, respectively, social class & discrepancies in perceptions of student effort and enjoyment, ethnicity & discrepancies in perceptions of student misbehaviour, and socioeconomic status & teacher biased perceptions of students’ language skills.

Slides from the workshop can be found on our ‘Teaching materials’ page.

Guest lecture at the University of the West of England

Posted on by lucy.haslam
Split image, with the UWE logo in red on the left hand side and a photo of the UWE campus on the right. The campus is a modern wood and glass building against a blue sky.

On 31st January, Katherin and Valentina were invited to give a guest lecture at the School of Education and Childhood of the University of the West of England in Bristol.

The lecture was delivered as part of the Policy and Contemporary Issues module offered to the students enrolled in Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) for Early Years, Primary, and Secondary education.

The lecture – titled Inequalities and bias in schools: using big data to detect injustices – provided an overview over ‘traditional’ and recent academic research on socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities in education, focusing especially on the role of teacher-student relationships and school and classroom environments.

BIPE preliminary findings on teacher bias were presented, providing an example of how academic research making use of big data can be used to engage in conversations with educational practitioners and policy makers. Students were encouraged to be diagnostic in recognising the influence that big data has today on educational policy and critically evaluate its value, limitations, and complexity, especially when considering the topic of biases and inequalities in existing across schools in England today.

After the lecture, the students had the chance to engage in reflective and creative group activities in their seminar groups. Guided discussions encouraged PGCE students to critically discuss BIPE preliminary findings on teacher bias in light of their own experiences and views and reflect on potential strategies and changes to fight such biases.

Participant feedback was very positive highlighting both the interest in the topic and its relevance for their own professional development. Particularly, as the students had just finished their first 3-month placement in primary and secondary schools, they found the opportunity to relate their own first-hand placement experiences to the academic research and findings presented very useful and motivating.

If you are interested in hearing more about our teacher workshops, further information can be found on our flyer.

Slides from the workshop can be found on our ‘Teaching materials’ page.

Katherin presents at the University of Bamberg

Posted on by lucy.haslam
University of Bamberg logo and name in German

Katherin presented initial results of the project at the Oberseminar of the Chair for Sociology (Social Stratification) of Professor Cornelia Kristen at the University of Bamberg. The title of the presentation was ‘Social and ethnic biases in primary school: Preliminary results from a study of teacher perceptions of students’ academic attitudes’.

The abstract for the presentation was as follows:

This study aims to investigate socioeconomic and ethnic biases in teachers’ perceptions of students’ attitudes to school. Here, we define a social or ethnic bias in teacher perceptions of the student’s attitudes as discrepancy between a teacher report of a student’s attitude (e.g., how much student finds school interesting, enjoys school, etc.) and the student’s own report that is systematically linked to the student’s socioeconomic status or ethnic background.

This talk presents results from a study using large-scale secondary data for England – the British Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). In a first step, a residual method was applied to estimate the discrepancies between teacher and student perceptions, and in a second step, the residuals were regressed on student socioeconomic and ethnic background, as well as a number of confounding and mediating variables. Preliminary results show important socioeconomic and ethnic biases in the teacher perceptions.

The study will be extended by corresponding analyses for Scotland (Growing Up in Scotland) and Germany (National Education Panel Study). The multi-country approach will enable us to explore how “macro-level factors” such as education policy and teacher training influence teacher bias. In this talk, theoretical assumptions on the possible impacts of such “macro-level factors” will be discussed.