According to recent research, young children who are taught by a teacher of the same ethnicity as themselves have better learning and problem-solving skills by the age of seven. The effect was most pronounced in black and Hispanic children, according to the results, which studied more than 18,000 students in the United States. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Early Education and Development, found that children were more likely to develop better working memory when children’s ethnicity was shared with that of their teachers.
This is the ability to retain and process information in one’s mind – a skill essential for learning and problem solving. “The diversification of the teaching staff represents an important step in promoting greater equity in schools in the United States,” says lead author Professor Michael Gottfried of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.
“Our findings add to the substantial evidence that ethno-racial representation is important among American educators by underscoring a key pathway in which students’ developmental skills are developed in schools. This is a critical step forward, as student working memory is a core component of executive function, has been consistently associated with improvements in student achievement, and is most malleable in early childhood.”
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It has been known for some time that being taught by a teacher of the same ethnic background can improve a student’s academic performance, for example in mathematics and reading test results. However, this study is one of the first to examine the effects of racial and racial identification of teachers and students in children under the age of nine and how it affects not only academic achievement but also development. The study analyzed data from 18,170 children who were part of the US Department of Education-led Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten class of 2011.
This study follows a representative sample of children from the US population who were in kindergarten in 2011 (preschool children aged 3 to 6 years). 7). Specifically, the research examined the impact of racial/ethnicity attribution by Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White teachers and students on two measures of brain performance known as “executive function,” which help children engage in goal-oriented behavior.
One measure was working memory; the ability to store and process information in our mind. The other was so-called cognitive flexibility; the ability to shift our attention and perspectives. To measure cognitive flexibility, the researchers tested children’s ability to switch between different concepts. This was done through a task that required them to sort cards by shape, color, and frame. Working memory was assessed by the researchers by asking the children to repeat a dictated series of numbers, adding an extra digit to the series each time the child correctly remembered the previous series.
The study also looked at the effect of matching the race/ethnicity of students and teachers on children’s reading and math achievement. All groups were compared to a control group taught by a teacher from a different ethnic background. The results suggested that their reading and math performance was higher when students had an ethnic/racial match with their teacher. The magnitude of the effect was greatest for Black students and Latinx students. Hand-in-hand with this, working memory also improved in Black and Hispanic children placed with a teacher of the same race/ethnicity. However, racial/ethnic match did not appear to affect cognitive flexibility.
These results held true regardless of differences in teaching standards, whether children were taught by a teacher of the same ethnicity for a year or two, and whether or not the child attended public or private school. The authors say that while the effect size is relatively small, when scaled up to the population level and across multiple school years, the effects could make a big difference. There is growing interest in leadership competencies because they can predict both strong human development and academic success.
Previous research has also shown that there are strong differences in executive function based on race/ethnicity and wealth. One study showed that, on average, Black and Hispanic children enter kindergarten well behind their white peers in terms of working memory and cognitive flexibility. The study authors suggest that Latinx and Black teachers may be in a better position to support their students’ development. If this is the case, encouraging racial teacher-student matches could help reverse the inequalities seen in younger children in executive functioning.
“Researchers have found that color teachers are more likely to offer culturally relevant pedagogy, and when they do so, they are better able to connect with students whose culture and experiences are often not reflected in schools’ standard curricula and approaches,” adds Dr . Gottfried added. Other factors at play could be student responses to having a role model of their race/ethnicity at the head of the class, or even unconscious bias from teachers.
“What a teacher believes about certain groups of students can change how they teach, interact with parents, and grade assignments, for example. This perspective could impact a mismatched teacher’s inability to accurately recognize a student’s ability or developmental level, and thus an appropriate level of scaffolding training, which is associated with improvements in executive functioning in addition to academic performance,” says Dr. Gottfried: Future research should attempt to uncover the reasons why racial and racial identification of students and teachers has this positive effect on achievement and development, the authors say.
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