Universität zu Köln

Becker, Dominik (2013). Pygmalion's Long Shadow - Determinants and Outcomes of Teachers' Evaluations. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

This volume comprises two papers analyzing the predictors of teachers' evaluations, and another two with the latter's outcomes as the crucial objective. In the underlying data, the Cologne High School Panel (CHiSP), teachers had been asked whom of their 10th class students they consider to be suitable to start academic studies, and whom of them not. The first paper models these evaluations as an outcome of students' cognitive ability in terms of intelligence scores, their average grades, their parents' social class, and their aspirations. Structural equation modeling is used to control for both measurement error and indirect effects of latent and observed variables The second paper adds another level of analysis by investigating to what extent teachers' evaluations depend on reference-group effects in the classroom. Contextual effects of both class-room achievement and social composition as well as their interaction with student achievement and teachers' frame of reference (in terms of grading concepts) are analyzed by three-level cross-classified multilevel models. The third paper uses Esser's (1999) subjective expected utility theory to develop a formal theoretical model of self-fulfilling prophecy effects on students' educational transitions. Teachers' expectations are supposed to affect students' subjective expected probability of educational success, and thereby their educational transition propensities. Analyses control for both sample selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity. And finally, the fourth paper models decreasing self-fulfilling effects over a sequence of educational transitions as a result of actors' belief updating. Hypotheses are tested by means of sequential logit modeling amended by a variety of sensitivity analyses. The four papers are preceded by an elaborate introduction that aims to approximate the underlying causes and effects of all research questions by unveiling the respective social mechanisms.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Becker, Dominik dombecksoz@googlemail.com UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-53137
Date:	2013
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Management, Economy and Social Sciences
Divisions:	Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Sociology and Social Psychology > Department of Scociology
Subjects:	Psychology Social sciences General statistics
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language social mechanisms English analytical sociology English self-fulfilling prophecies English teachers' evaluations English educational inequality English subjective expected utility English reference-group effects English Big Fish Little Pond English educational transitions English structural equation modeling English multilevel English sample selection English sensitivity analysis English statistical matching English
Date of oral exam:	5 December 2012
Referee:	Name Academic Title Meulemann, Heiner Prof. Dr. Becker, Rolf Prof. Dr.
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/5313