Rookie Mistakes: The Interplay of Teacher Experience and Racial Representation

• Published in: Educational researcher 2019-10, Vol.48 (7), p.421-437
• Main Authors: Vinopal, Katie, Holt, Stephen B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: African American Students; African American Teachers; Beginning Teachers; Black students; Experienced Teachers; Minority Group Teachers; Racial Differences; Student attitudes; Student Characteristics; Student Improvement; Students; Teacher attitudes; Teacher Characteristics; Teacher Expectations of Students; Teacher Student Relationship; Teaching (Occupation); Teaching Experience; Whites
• ISSN: 0013-189X; 1935-102X
• DOI: 10.3102/0013189X19867699

A growing body of research has documented the important benefits teachers of color bring to students of color, including higher expectations. Separately, researchers have shown that teachers improve student achievement with increasing effectiveness over their careers. We bridge these two streams of research by examining the extent to which teachers’ perceptions of racially dissimilar students vary by experience in the teaching profession. Using nationally representative data, we show that while the expectations gap between non-Black and Black teachers regarding Black students’ academic potential persists regardless of experience, the gap is much larger among first year teachers. We demonstrate that non-Black teachers with more than one year of experience have higher expectations of Black students than non-Black rookie teachers, and perhaps surprisingly, Black teachers with more than one year of experience have lower expectations of Black students compared to rookie Black teachers. We do not find such results for Latino/a students. We discuss the implications of these results for both research and practice.