Teachers’ perceptions of students with different disabilities through the lens of the stereotype content model

Abstract According to the stereotype content model (SCM), individuals with disabilities are commonly stereotyped as “warm but dumb.” Thereby, disabilities are used as an umbrella term encompassing various types of disabilities. The current study pursues the question of whether different types of disabilities are associated with different patterns of stereotype content. The relevance of this question has increased since the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities : Students with disabilities or special educational needs (SEN) are increasingly included in regular classrooms, where the social category of students with SEN is particularly salient. Thus, teachers’ stereotypes of these students may be activated more easily and may affect their (teaching) behavior. In the main study, involving N = 57 teachers, we investigated teachers’ stereotypes of students with different types of SEN using the SCM approach. Students with social-emotional disabilities were rated as colder than students with other types of SEN. Students with intellectual disabilities were rated as comparatively incompetent. This pattern of results perfectly matched the results of a pre-study investigating N = 259 German citizens’ stereotypes of people with different types of disabilities. Findings suggest the importance of considering differentiated stereotypes of people with different disabilities or SEN. Moreover, teachers’ stereotypes of students with different SEN appear to be comparable to those regarding disabilities in people outside the school context, implying socially shared stereotypes when differentiating between types of disabilities. We discuss the practical implications of these results in terms of their relevance for school.