Cultural Factors of Science Classroom Learning Environments, Teacher‐Student Interactions and Student Outcomes

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an instrument to assess culturally sensitive factors of science students' learning environments, and to examine associations between these factors, students' achievement of enquiry skills, students' attitudes to science and teacher‐student interactions. A measure of culturally sensitive factors of the learning environment, namely the Cultural Learning Environment Questionnaire (CLEQ), was developed. The instrument, which was influenced by Hofstede's four dimensions of culture (power‐distance, uncertainty‐avoidance, individualism, and masculinity‐femininity) and past learning environment research, contained seven scales. With a sample of over 3500 secondary science students, the reliability of the CLEQ scales ranged from 0#lb69 to 0#lb86 and showed acceptable discrimination between the scales as the mean correlation between scales ranged from 0#lb04 to 0#lb22. Regression analyses indicated that the most consistent predictors of teacher‐student interpersonal behaviour were the collaboration, deference, competition, teacher authority and modelling scales. The most consistent predictors of students' attitudes and achievement were equity, competition, deference, modelling and congruence.