RACIAL/SOCIAL CLASSES

How children from different racial/social classes are viewed by their teachers and how this affects them developmentally



How children from different racial/social classes are viewed by their teachers and how this affects them developmentally

Introduction

Teacher-Child Racial Congruence and Teacher Ratings

Although it has been contended that racial congruence enhances teacher awareness of African American children's learning styles and teaching methods that work for them (Irvine, 1989), research findings on this issue are inconsistent. Supporting the hypothesis, Batty (1980) discovered that African American, in evaluation to White, teachers had less contradictory mind-set in the direction of African American children, and Zimmerman, Khoury, Vega, Gil, and Warheit (1995) described that African American teachers judged African American children to have less problem behaviors than White or Hispanic teachers did. Relatedly, Meier, Stewart, and England (1989) discovered that the higher the percentage of African American teachers in a school, the less the number of African American students hovering or expelled.

Findings from other experimental (Adams, 1978) and naturalistic (Bahr, Fuchs, Stecker, & Fuchs, 1991) studies, although, show that African American teachers outlook the behavior and academic performance of African American children much as White teachers do. Wilson's (1992) study matching rankings of Hispanic, White, and African American children by teachers of alike or different racial backgrounds, discovered that African American and White teachers ranked the social and academic performance of African American and White students comparably. Relatedly, Tom and Cronan (1998) discovered no dissimilarities in academic performance between African American and White students employed with identical versus different race tutors.

Findings carrying the congruence hypothesis have been understood to signify that African American teachers have a better comprehending of African American children's backdrop and heritage (Zimmerman et al., 1995). Negative findings have been understood to signify that because numerous African American teachers glimpse themselves as more like White middle-class co-workers than low-income African American students, they may assess all children by White middle-class measures (McLoyd, 1998). Thus, a second study aim was to check the congruence hypothesis under firmly controlled conditions.

 

Hypotheses

Prior research findings propose that (a) teachers referee African American children to have more grave problems, less adaptive behaviors, more contradictory character traits, and poorer informative prognoses than White children; and (b) White teachers rate African American children less positively than African American teachers on the overhead dimensions. Negative teacher judgments about the behavior and academic promise of African American children are probable to sway their socio-educational development adversely (Wong, Derlega, & Colson, 1988). Children become aware of race dissimilarities early in life (Clark and Grant) and internalize the outlooks of pertinent others. Negative notes expressed in an open way and subtly to juvenile African American children make it tougher for them to set up affirmative self-identity or to sustain motivation in school (Comer and McCarthy).

Findings from studies analyzing the function of teacher race and teacher-pupil racial congruence in teacher judgments about children's school change and informative futures have been rather inconsistent, and prior studies in this locality have often been marred by SES-race ...