Teachers’ judgment of students’ self-evaluation bias of competence and the quality of their relationship
The objective of this study was two-fold : 1) examine the judgment of teachers on the usefulness or harmfulness of students’ overvaluation and undervaluation of competence and 2) whether this judgment was related to the quality of the relationship reported by the teachers and their students. 49 teachers and their 277 sixth graders (128 girls) completed a questionnaire in class. The results show that a majority of teachers consider that overestimation of competence is better than the opposite. They also show what students underestimating their academic competence reported having a warmer relationship with their teacher when the latter believes that such undervaluation is adaptive. The quality of the relationship reported by the teachers of these same students was also better than what they reported having with the other students. These results suggest the importance of further examination of teachers’ beliefs about students’ bias in their self-evaluation of competence.