The student inventory: how student characteristics bias teacher judgments

Teachers' judgments regarding student achievements significantly affect students' academic careers. Although student characteristics should not influence judgments of academic achievement, empirical studies show systematic biases among teachers in this regard. For the present study, an experimental approach was chosen to study these biases, namely the student inventory. Thereby relevant (oral and written achievement in mathematics) and irrelevant information (e.g. family background) for judging the school achievements of 16 students were presented to trainee teachers (N = 251). The task of the participating teacher candidates' was to grade students in mathematics based on the information presented. Different measures of judgment accuracy were calculated and compared with findings from previous field research. As expected, systematic effects were found for performance evaluation based on information regarding student intelligence and achievement in German. Contrary to expectations, we found no bias on account of family background and self-concept.