Performance feedback to immigrant students in Germany: Evidence for a positive feedback bias?

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Ursula Kessels
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 414345023

Much evidence exists for a negative "ethnic bias" at school regarding teachers’ expectations and judgements of minority students’ performance. For example, studies from the US have shown that teachers expect lower performance from African American students and rate an identical performance more negatively when ascribed to an African American student. Recent research found a corresponding ethnic bias regarding students from Turkish origin in Germany. Several studies have shown that teachers judged performance more negatively and had lower expectations for future performance for students from Turkish origin; actual performance was held constant. However, the evidence reporting a negative bias when judging minority students performance are in contrast to studies that found just the opposite effect in case of giving personal feedback to a minority student. When a person expected not only to judge a performance, but to directly give the respective feedback to an African American student, a positive bias instead of a negative bias was found. The so called "positive feedback bias" and the "failure-to-warn phenomenon" indicate that personal performance feedback given to minority students is more positive and less critical than feedback given to majority students. The present research aims at studying to what extent a positive feedback bias occurs in Germany when personal performance feedback is given to students of Turkish origin. A series of experimental studies will test for various feedback situations the expected positive bias when target students are of Turkish instead of German origin. Identifying potential moderators of a positive bias will help to understand the process in detail and to develop interventions ensuring realistic feedback. Since the lack of realistic feedback might lead to a less realistic judgment regarding one's own performance, further research, in a later project, will study effects of positively biased feedback on minority students’ academic self-concepts and engagement.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants