Educational pedagogue Antoinette Kroes studied for her PhD research 247 reports from primary school students from different schools in several cities. “In the Netherlands it is quite common for the teacher to add something, this happens in two-thirds of the reports. I was curious about the differences,” Kroes tells RTL Nieuws.
‘Very helpful’
The educationalist discovered that in general there were more positive than negative comments in the reports, but the number of compliments was highest among white girls. “White girls relatively often received comments such as ‘you are a sweet, smart girl’ or ‘you are very helpful’. Boys were more likely to receive comments such as ‘You need to be neater and do your homework better’.”
According to Kroes, prejudices about gender are deeply rooted in society and many teachers are not aware of their bias. “Girls are often thought to be diligent and work more neatly. Boys are more likely to be seen as busy and they are said to misbehave more often, even if there is no actual difference in behavior.”
Children with a migration background received the most criticism. “I did not encounter any explicit racism. There is no teacher who thinks: let me give that child with that migration background a bad report. It is more subtle than that. Not a major point of criticism, but all small things. That makes children they doubt themselves or think they are acting out.”
Impact
One report that stuck with her was from a boy with a migration background. There were negative comments for each subject. “Only in visual education did it say: ‘Creative. You are committed to this, but you could do more’. Even that one positive comment was weakened by something negative.” Such a negative report has an impact on children, Kroes thinks. “People can often remember those kinds of comments for decades.”
That nagging feeling is recognizable for writer Anousha Nzume. She wrote the book Hello white schools, about inequality of opportunity in education. “What this research shows is also reflected in the data and the stories in my book. ‘You are not as smart as you thought, but that’s okay,’ a child was told. And: ‘You will get a pre-vocational secondary education advice, but that doesn’t matter. We also need cleaners’. These are all drops that eventually make a bucket overflow.”
Nzume hopes that schools will take action as a result of Kroes’ research. “If I accidentally run over your foot, I will check whether there is any damage, even if I did not mean it that way. It is important that the school management says that they will not tolerate this. We must take off the glasses of prejudice and look at the wealth of children with a migration background.”
Teachers’ prejudices go beyond just positive or negative comments in the school report, says the writer. “White children are looked at potential and children of color are looked at performance. Figures from Statistics Netherlands show that 80 percent of the children of highly educated parents receive pre-university education advice. Of the children with a non-Western migration background, 75 percent receive pre-vocational secondary education or practical education advice.”
Lower expectations
Educational scientist Fatima-Zohra Charki of the Netherlands Youth Institute also sees that teachers have prejudices. “We see that teachers unconsciously often have lower expectations of children from the lower socio-economic class. I say unconsciously because these teachers really have no bad intentions. But those low expectations influence the performance of the students,” she explains.
Kroes has not done any research into solutions to inequality in school reports, but he does have ideas about it. “Teachers are often driven and idealistic people who do their work with the best intentions. That sometimes makes it difficult to start a conversation, but an important first step is to empathize.”
Start at primary school
According to Charki, there has been more attention to prejudices and low expectations in education, especially in large cities, in recent years. “You see that schools are working to increase awareness, but as far as I’m concerned, that is still insufficient. That is also challenging because schools already feel that they have to do so much, for example due to the teacher shortage. But that does not make it any less important, it really makes a difference. As far as I’m concerned, that awareness starts earlier with teacher training.”
Elise Akkermans, training teacher in pedagogy at the Marnix Academy in Utrecht, says that it is an important theme that receives a lot of attention within their teacher training. “When I was a student, there was no attention paid to this subject at the training course. Later, when I worked as a teacher at a primary school in Utrecht Overvecht, I became aware of my own prejudices. Here at the training course I notice that those ideas still persist. to exist.” According to Akkermans, prejudices are deeply rooted in people. “That is why it is important that we continue to work on this and that we give our students an open attitude towards diversity.”
Researcher Kroes thinks it is good if teacher training students learn how to write a good school report, so that teachers no longer give their own interpretation to this. “I never learned that at teacher training college, even though a lot of research has been done into how to give feedback properly. That could be reflected more in the lessons.”
2023-11-25 06:53:30
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