Racial (Mis)Match in Middle School Mathematics Classrooms: Relational Interactions as a Racialized Mechanism

Abstract

While research has consistently shown the positive effects of having a teacher of the same race on various student outcomes, the literature has not examined how racial match affects the everyday interactions within classrooms. This research article by Dan Battey, Luis A. Leyva, Immanuel Williams, Victoria A. Belizario, Rachel Greco, and Roshni Shah addresses this underexplored area by documenting relational interactions in classrooms to find one mechanism that could be producing racialized effects on learning. Using a dataset from a study of twenty-five mathematics classrooms across predominantly white and black US middle schools, they examine the quality of relational interactions when teachers and students are racially matched and mismatched, as well as the effects on student achievement in mathematics. Their analysis shows how various dimensions of relational interactions significantly predict increases and decreases in achievement due to racial match.