Achievement and engagement: How student characteristics influence teacher judgments

• We examine the accuracy of teachers' judgments of two student characteristics.
• One field study and two experimental studies provide similar results.
• The experimental studies are conducted with the Simulated Classroom.
• Achievement judgments are biased by students' engagement.
• Conversely, engagement judgments are biased by students' achievement.

Teachers' judgments of student characteristics are affected not only by the characteristic in question, but also by other factors. This article presents three studies examining whether students' achievement influences teachers' judgments of their engagement (as a proxy for motivation) and vice versa. First, a field study was conducted with N = 52 teachers and N = 1135 students. Structural equation modeling revealed an effect of student achievement on teacher judgments of student engagement and an effect of student engagement on teacher judgments of student achievement—above and beyond the association of each student characteristic with teacher judgments of that characteristic. These results were then replicated in two experimental studies involving a computer simulation of an instructional situation, the Simulated Classroom, with N = 40 and N = 181 teacher candidates, respectively. The psychological determinants of the effects observed are discussed, as are their practical implications.