(Where) are teachers’ expectations of immigrant students really lower?

Teachers typically base their expectations on ‘valid’ criteria such as student performance and motivation. However, there is mixed evidence demonstrating that teachers hold lower expectations for immigrant students. We argue that the existence and strength of this relationship may depend on the framing effect of contextual settings. To establish this, we use data from the German National Educational Panel Study and analyze (1) whether teachers’ expectations of their elementary school students are influenced by students’ immigrant background; and (2) how this effect varies with the immigrant classroom composition, local neighborhood demographics, and teachers’ own immigrant background. Using multilevel panel models, we find negative associations between students’ immigrant, particularly Turkish, background and teachers’ expectations. These associations remain significant even when accounting for students’ aspirations and performance but disappear when accounting for students’ social background. However, we observe that the negative relationship between students’ immigrant background and teachers’ expectations remains robust and stable in contexts in which the immigrant category is salient, particularly in classrooms with high concentrations of immigrant students. We conclude that both research and educational practice could benefit from taking greater account of the contextualized formation of teachers’ stereotypes.