Student names as predictors of prejudice in school teachers: Do students names associated with Islam influence teacher willingness to help students in the classroom?

For years, research has consistently documented that negative stereotypes and prejudices can generate a performance decrease in minority students (Chatraw et al., 2008). Prejudice, or negative attitudes towards an outgroup (Dovidio et al., 2004), can lead to social distance between ingroup and outgroup members. Social distance is the degree of closeness or separation that individuals perceive between themselves and members of various outgroups (Hodgetts & Stolte, 2014). The core mechanism that leads to social distance is an individual's prejudiced ideas for an outgroup (Williams, 1964). Social distance has been applied to the classroom, conceptualized as teacher distance. Researchers have found that when teachers have less knowledge of their students’ ethnic backgrounds, teacher distance is greater, meaning that it is less likely that teachers would be willing to work with students’ families (Schlosser, 1992). Using social distance as a guide, the proposed study will use the term education distance to indicate teachers' willingness to help students struggling in the classroom. Much of the research on prejudices is done by looking at the physical features of individuals (i.e., race); however, names also carry biases (Conaway & Bethune, 2015) because of their deep roots in culture and religion (Miller, 1927). Religious names will be used in this study, as they can closely be traced back to specific religious scriptures. Teachers’ expectations greatly influence student achievement (Glock & Bohmer, 2018). Furthermore, the age of teachers was found to influence negative attitudes toward ethnic minority students (Glock & Bohmer, 2018). The objective of the proposed research is to investigate whether there is a bias among schoolteachers toward students based on their names, the impact of students' names on education distance, and the extent to which years of experience predicts prejudice based on student names.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

School Psychology

Grantor

Texas Woman's University

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Rafi, Faiza

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kim, Samuel

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Palomares-Fernandez, Ronald
• Banks, Courtney

• Stereotypes in the classroom
• Names
• Minority
• Islamophobia
• Prejudice
• Stereotypes

Language dc:language.iso

English

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/11274/16889

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:twu-ir.tdl.org:11274/16889