An experimental study of teachers' evaluations regarding peer exclusion in the classroom

While research has documented negative social and academic consequences that occur when students experience peer exclusion, few studies have been conducted to investigate teachers' evaluations of peer exclusion.

This study investigated whether ethnic and gender biases enter teachers' evaluations of classroom peer exclusion that met criteria for bullying.

Teachers (N = 740; 77% female) of early and middle adolescents participated in the study. Participants were recruited from 118 elementary and secondary schools across the Czech Republic.

Using a between-subjects design, teachers evaluated a scenario of classroom peer exclusion initiated by majority ethnic (Czech) students. The scenarios varied contextual characteristics: target's ethnicity (majority Czech vs. minority Arab), target's gender, and excluders' gender.

Analyses revealed several subtle contextual effects. Although teachers viewed exclusion as having a more negative impact for the fair treatment of Arab targets than for Czech targets, their reasoning about the wrongfulness of such exclusion was less focused on the moral concerns about fairness for Arab than for Czech targets. In contrast to girl targets, teachers were less concerned about the harmful impact on exclusion for boy targets when considering intervention. Excluders' gender had significant interactions with the target's gender on reasoning about wrongfulness of exclusion and the target's ethnicity for viewing exclusion as impairing the target's academic engagement.

The findings of subtle ethnic and gender biases underscore the need for research on teacher perspectives on peer exclusion and for training teachers how to address peer exclusion in the classroom across various contexts.