| 来源类型 | Report |
| 规范类型 | 报告 |
| Creating birds of a feather: The potential of similarity to connect teachers and students | |
| Hunter Gehlbach; Carly Robinson | |
| 发表日期 | 2016-08-03 |
| 出版年 | 2016 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | Key Points Race- and income-based achievement gaps affect many schools, and racial mismatches between teachers and students can trigger problems of cross-cultural misunderstanding. Developing a diverse cohort of teachers will take time and extensive resources. Meanwhile, strengthening teacher-student relationships offers a promising solution to improve student outcomes in education now. We developed an intervention to improve teacher-student relationships by showing teachers and students what they have in common, and we found that when teachers saw similarities between themselves and their students, the achievement gap was reduced by more than 60 percent. Introduction Many schools struggle with race- and income-based achievement gaps. While gaps in test scores and grades garner most of the attention, other inequities compound these problems. Nominations for gifted programs vary by the student’s race. Discipline is meted out unequally. As a result, the road to academic success has many more potholes for poor, black, and Latino children than for their more affluent, white, and Asian peers. Many circumstances conspire to produce these inequitable student outcomes. Recently, the demographic differences between teachers and students in US public schools have received increased attention as a potential contributing factor. According to the National Center of Educational Statistics, in 2012 the proportion of white teachers hovered just above 80 percent in US schools, while the percentage of white students stood at 51 percent.[1] These racial mismatches between teachers and students can trigger problems of cross-cultural misunderstanding. However, strengthening teacher-student relationships offers a promising solution. Cultivating a teaching force that more closely matches the student population is one obvious solution. Unfortunately, developing a diverse cohort of teachers will take time and extensive resources. What to do in the meantime looms as a giant challenge. Changing attitudes and behaviors through diversity training is unlikely to help; these programs have typically shown lackluster results.[2] As society strives to diversify the teaching population, we advocate for greater focus on individual relationships between teachers and students. In a recent study, we developed an intervention to improve teacher-student relationships by showing teachers and students what they have in common with one another.[3] When teachers saw similarities between themselves and those they taught, relationships improved and students’ grades increased, reducing the achievement gap by over 60 percent. Thus, strengthening teacher-student relationships offers a promising approach to diminishing inequities in America’s schools. The Power of Similarity Social psychologists consistently find that when individuals perceive common ground with others, social bonds are strengthened. For example, if you share a birthday with someone, you will be more likely to do that person favors.[4] Small groups that contain members who share the same initials work more effectively together.[5] Speaking similarly bolsters attraction. In a speed-dating study, participants whose word choices matched more often were more likely to end up on second dates and still be dating months later.[6] In sum, we like those who are like us. Even when the similarities are trivial, we form better relationships with these similar others. Furthermore, because social relationships matter so much in our daily lives, they spawn a multitude of downstream benefits such as improved mental health, happiness, and even life span.[7] But how can similarity be leveraged between teachers and students? No magic potion can make students interested in teachers’ favorite topics. We cannot force teachers to change their musical preferences, clothes, or hobbies to match those of their students. Our recent study leverages the power of similarity to improve teacher-student relationships and other student outcomes. We show how the benefits of establishing similarities between teachers and students might be harnessed in a way that is efficient, powerful, and scalable. Study Summary As researchers, we could not change the reality of what students and teachers had in common. Instead, we focused on influencing teachers’ and students’ perceptions of what they had in common. In the study, we guided 25 teachers’ and their 315 students’ perceptions through a “get-to-know-you” survey delivered early in the school year. Each party responded to about 30 survey questions asking about personal characteristics, learning preferences, and values. By asking a large number of questions, we were able to find at least five things in common for each teacher-student pair, and we then directed the attention of the students and teachers toward only those shared beliefs or values. To test whether learning about commonalities mattered, we varied the feedback we presented to four different groups: In the first group, our “control group,”received feedback. In the second group,were told about five commonalities they shared with their teacher. In the third group,were told about five commonalities they shared with their students. In the fourth group,learned about the five things they had in common. Through a follow-up survey administered almost six weeks later, we measured perceptions of similarity and relationships from both teachers’ and students’ perspectives. We also had access to the grades students earned in the relevant class. Many worry that grades are a problematic measure. (For example, they might be influenced by teacher biases.) However, they wield a substantial effect on students’ academic trajectories, such as future course taking and college enrollment, and thus remain an important outcome. Read the full report. Notes |
| 主题 | K-12 Schooling |
| 标签 | achievement gap ; K-12 education ; school ; Student outcomes ; teachers |
| URL | https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/creating-birds-of-a-feather-the-potential-of-similarity-to-connect-teachers-and-students/ |
| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States) |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/206279 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Hunter Gehlbach,Carly Robinson. Creating birds of a feather: The potential of similarity to connect teachers and students. 2016. |
| 条目包含的文件 | ||||||
| 文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
| Creating-Birds-of-a-（1468KB） | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 | ||
除非特别说明，本系统中所有内容都受版权保护，并保留所有权利。
