Teacher ethnicity, student ethnicity, and student outcomes

Abstract

A review of the empirical literature was conducted to establish the relation between teacher and student ethnicity, and cognitive and noncognitive student outcomes. It was hypothesized that ethnic teacher–student congruence results in more favorable outcomes for especially minority students. A total of 24 quantitative studies focusing on primary and secondary education in the United States were reviewed. The results show that there is as yet little unambiguous empirical evidence that a stronger degree of ethnic match be it in the form of a one-to-one coupling of a teacher to students with the same ethnic background, or a larger share of ethnic minority teachers at an ethnically mixed school, leads to predominantly positive results. Insofar positive effects were found, they apply to a greater extent to subjective teacher evaluations than to objective achievement outcome measures.

Keywords:

• teacher–student congruence
• ethnic matching
• cognitive and noncognitive effects
• literature review

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the FORUM, Instituut voor Multiculturele Vraagstukken, Utrecht, The Netherlands.