Teachers' perceptions and judgments of student skills are key to measuring children's academic progress. But educators' own biases can distort these perceptions and judgments.
For example, research in Canada has shown that racialized students were less likely to be perceived as "excellent" in their achievement and learning skills than white students, despite doing well academically. To our knowledge, no work has been done focusing specifically on teachers, assessment, bias and the Canadian kindergarten population.
Our team at the Offord Centre for Child Studies set out to understand more about how educators perceive the system for assessing kindergarten children's development, in the context of children's race, gender and family socioeconomic status.
In Ontario, kindergarten features five full days of play-based learning every week. Classes are led by a team of one teacher and one early childhood educator (ECE). Teachers have knowledge of the curriculum and are responsible for student learning and reporting to parents. ECEs have knowledge of early childhood development and plan age-appropriate activities to support development.
