Beyond Achievement: A Vignette Experiment on How Intersecting Student Characteristics Shape Teachers’ Expectations and Recommendations

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Teacher expectations and transfer recommendations might be shaped by more than achievement. This study adopts an intersectional approach, examining how combinations of student characteristics shape teacher expectations and recommendations in Dutch secondary education. Using a factorial vignette experiment with 140 teachers, we manipulated SES, ethnic background, gender, work effort, and track-type while holding achievement constant. Cross-classified multilevel models estimated main and two-way interaction effects. Work effort was the strongest predictor of both teacher expectations and transfer recommendations. Teacher expectations were highest for high-SES ethnic-majority students, whereas work effort had a stronger positive effect for ethnic-minority students. For transfer recommendations, the positive influence of high work effort on the predicted probability of a recommendation to the highest track was stronger for girls than for boys, whereas the probability was lowest for low-SES students from the ethnic majority. Thus, an intersectional perspective appears to be key to understanding bias in teacher judgments.