Racialized reprimands: A mobile eye-tracking study on teachers’ responses to students’ norm-violating behaviors

• Mobile eye-tracking is a promising low-inference indirect measure to use in classrooms. • Teachers pay more attention to Black students than White students. • Black students are more likely to commit learning-approach infractions. • Teachers reprimand Black students more for the same infractions as White students. • Expert teachers address norm violations more efficiently but with more bias. With mobile eye tracking, we recorded in 46 classrooms how often teachers focused on each student during a regular classroom period. We matched data with video footage identifying student behaviors that violated classroom norms. We found different profiles of behavior by student gender and race and differences in teacher responses based on the type of norm violation and teacher expertise. Teachers did not focus on one gender more than another, but they looked at Black students more often than at White students. Teachers observe Black students violating norms more often than White students, but only for infractions that indicate active participation. This corroborates Black students’ perception that teachers scrutinize their behavior more. While this could indicate a sensitivity to pedagogical needs, we interpret it as teacher bias with potentially drastic downstream effects.