Classroom Behavior, Intelligence, and Achievement

Abstract

PUPILS WHO behave in aggressive, disruptive, and other socially unacceptable ways in school are serious problems for their teachers. The day by day effort to lead the activities of 30 to 40 children in pursuit of a broad spectrum of educational goals is a difficult task. Systematic learning, particular ly in basic skill subjects such as reading and arith metic, requires the cooperation of the individual pu pil and orderly behavior from the classroom group as a whole. The refractory and disruptive child m ay jeopardize learning for himself and for the entire class. It is possible, of course, that a child's socially maladaptive classroom behavior may be partially a reaction to the frustrations he encounters as he at tempts to learn. Thus , for some children a s itua tion may arise in which some academic failure leads to maladaptive social behavior which in turn inter feres with new learning activities. The child's general mental ability also plays a key role in this interaction between social behavior and learning. Presumably the child of lower mental ability will have more difficulty in learning basic subject matter, and, therefore, he is more likely to experience frustrations which may produce socially maladaptive behavior. The intelligence and school achievement of delin quents and pre-delinquents have been studied b y a number of researchers. The Gluecks (3) reported that poor school performance characterized delin quents who were matched on the basis of IQ with non delinquents. Powers and Witmer (8) reported that there was a significant relationship between educa tional retardation and delinquency. A majority of the delinquent youth whom they studied were academic ally retarded two or three years, and their average IQ was significantly lower than the average for nor mal youngsters. Wattenberg (10) reported that d e linquents had low IQ's,poor academic records, and poor relationships with teachers. Liddle (5) re viewed studies of reading achievement and mental I ability in relation to delinquency and concluded that the mean IQ of juvenile delinquents is about 90 and that there is substantial reading retardation among delinquents. Neumeyer (6) reviewed evidence from studies of the relation of intelligence to delinquency and crime and concluded that intelligence is proba bly crucial in individual cases. Studies of classroom behavior in relation to achievement and mental ability are far less numer ous than the delinquency studies. Kvaraceus (4) re ported that youngsters who were serious discipline problems in school or on the playground had low IQs and were frequently low in reading ability. He sug gested that the low reading ability may either con tribute to or result from the misbehavior. Scarpitti (9) studied sixth graders who had been nominated by their teachers as potential delinquents. They had a significantly lower mean IQ than normal children and were at least one year below their grade level in arithmetic and reading achievement. Powell and Bergen (7) reported that 10th, 11th, and 12th grade boys who had records of disruptive and socially dis approved behavior in high school were achieving at significantly lower levels than conforming boys in reading, English, physical education, and in all school subjects combined. The groups were matched according to IQ. The present research was concerned with the problem of youngsters who persistently exhibit so cially disapproved, disruptive, and aggressive be havior in the classroom. They were compared with children who display socially approved behavior. The following questions were investigated at two grade levels (three and six) and for boys and girls: 1. Are there differences in achievement in the basic skills of reading and arithmetic? 2. Is there a difference in intelligence? 3. Are there differences in reading and arithmetic achievement which exceed the differences which