Student teachers’ judgements of students’ academic and social characteristics: exploring the roles of teaching motivation and students’ socioeconomic status

We explored student teachers’ judgements of students from various socioeconomic backgrounds and the relationships between these judgements and student teachers’ motivation for becoming teachers. In an experimental vignette study, student teachers judged a welfare student less favourably than students with low and high socioeconomic status (SES), respectively. Four motivational profiles emerged – most student teachers were highly motivated, balanced, or altruistic, whereas a few were extrinsically motivated. Altruistic, balanced, and extrinsically motivated teachers judged the academic performance of high-SES students most favourably, whereas most extrinsically motivated teachers judged welfare students unfavourably in general. However, the altruistic and intrinsic profiles did not support these ratings of welfare students.