 Teacher personality and the perceived socioeconomic gap in student outcomesGiorgio Brunello, Clementina Crocè, Pamela Giustinelli and Lorenzo Rocco Economics Letters, 2025, vol. 247, issue C Abstract: We randomly assign student profiles to teachers and elicit teachers’ beliefs about the student's likelihood of success in alternative high school tracks. We document a large and statistically significant gradient in teachers’ beliefs about students’ high school prospects with respect to students’ socioeconomic background (SEB), ceteris paribus. We find that this gradient varies with teacher's personality, a hard-to-observe and understudied teacher trait. Specifically, higher levels of teacher's extraversion and openness are associated with a steeper negative SEB gradient in teachers’ beliefs about students’ success prospects in an academic track. Conversely, more conscientious and agreeable teachers assign to low-SEB students, on average, a higher probability of success in a vocational track. We discuss some policy implications of our findings. Keywords: Teachers’ beliefs and personality; Choice of high school tracks; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:247:y:2025:i:c:s0165176524005809 DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2024.112096 Access Statistics for this article Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.