Laureau finds that the social class of parents affects the parent-school-child triad. Middle class parents get more involved in their children's activities than do working class parents. This involvement has a positive impact on the child's educational attainment. According to Lareau, due to the parents' education, occupation, income, and social networks, middle class parents feel more equal to teachers than do working class parents. This enables them to question and monitor teachers rather than deferring to teachers. Additionally, they have the financial resources to purchase educational resources and usually have more flexibility in their jobs to permit greater involvement. Therefore, they have more frequent abilities to participate in their child's educational pursuits, which results in greater educational success for the child.
Eder found that teachers' perceptions of students, and therefore their treatment of students, were based on students' family backgrounds and social mannerisms. Differences in social mannerisms were often misinterpreted as being reflective of the students' abilities. These attitudes toward students' intellectual abilities led to ability grouping in reading and math, which become sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy for these students.
Alexander considered the social class origin of the teacher and his or...
Alexander found that teachers from high socioeconomic backgrounds perceived lower SES and Black students as lacking in maturity. Additionally, these teachers had lower academic expectations for lower SES and Black students. However, teachers from lower SES backgrounds did not have these perceptions. These perceptions impacted the grades the students received at the end of the year. In classrooms of lower SES teachers, there was no correlation between student's SES or race and his or her year-end grade. Conversely, in classrooms of teachers of high SES backgrounds, students of lower SES and Black students had significantly lower grades than those who were white or of higher SES. Alexander attributes this to the social distance between teachers and students.
According to the Wisconsin Social-Psychological Model, how we see ourselves depend on our interpretations of how other people see us. As has been stated in the other models, when parents and teachers have high expectations of students, they perform better. Mistry et al. (2009) found that both parents' and teachers' expectations of students impacted student achievement. They also found that teacher perceptions were based on the perceptions of earlier teachers, so if as indicated in the Eder and Alexander models, teachers base their expectations on misunderstandings
