Research question/goal:

This project investigates how appearance shapes educational evaluations, teacher treatment, and educational trajectories, ultimately contributing to the (re-)production of long-term social inequalities. Drawing on large-scale survey data (NEPS, CILS4EU, TwinLife), large-scale assessment data (PIRLS, TIMSS), and experimental methods, we examine how body weight, skin colour, visible religious markers (i.e., veiling), ethnicity, and perceived attractiveness influence teachers’ perceptions, evaluations, and treatment of students. Furthermore, we examine how these characteristics intersect with gender, ethnic stereotypes (including mixed heritage through name-based cues), and socioeconomic background (e.g., language, clothing) and reinforce cumulative disadvantages in educational outcomes. By explicitly linking micro-level biases in teacher judgments to macro-level patterns of social reproduction, the project moves beyond description to explain how appearance-based stigmas become durable axes of inequality across the life course. By integrating insights from theories of social and cultural reproduction (cumulative disadvantage), status characteristics theory, theories of discrimination, and theories of contextual effects, the project advances our understanding of how physical appearance and intersecting axes of social differentiation, including socioeconomic background, shape educational inequalities in contemporary European societies. It will extend a strong European research tradition on class-based and ethnic educational stratification to issues of (implicit) bias and discrimination.