Pranavi Jarugula
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Matthew Ronfeldt
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Educational Studies / Education
Program: UROPF
Session: Session 5 (2:40pm – 3:30pm)
Authors: Pranavi Jarugula, Matthew Truwit, Matthew Ronfeldt
Abstract
Past research showed that there was a bias between gender and race in how teachers were evaluated by graders. Black male teachers received the lowest scores in their teaching and discussion techniques, and then followed by black female teachers. This study looks if black and white women teachers’ questioning techniques and discussion prompts actually differ, highlighting the reason why there are lower scores for black women teachers, or if there is an underlying race bias. Furthermore, we wanted to see if there is a student-driven score difference because due to the difference in the kinds of classrooms that each teacher works at, it can lead to differences in student engagement as well. The first process is to transcribe the teachers’ lessons to the first 15 minutes and last 10 minutes, paying attention to the questions asked by the students and teachers, and the discussions that occur throughout the class. Then, we established our codebook on how to score the discussion prompts and teacher questions based on quality, complexity, open-ended/close-ended, wait time, and student engagement. Lastly, we compare our scores in the “Use of Questioning and Discussion Prompts†area of the rubric with the official graders to see if there is bias or something underlying. We are still continuing our research and have not found clear results yet.
