Teacher Attitudes and Cultural Differentiation

Abstract

Children from poor homes, especially from homes where the parents have neither the time nor the ability to arouse interest in the development of a complex vocabulary are assumed to be at a disad vantage in the competition for such social awards as schooling, jobs, and money. Such hereditary depri vation is contrary to the American Creed (8) and the schools especially are concerned lest their selection and treatment procedures aggravate the disadvan tages already burdening these children. Certain teachers are subjectively considered by principals, supervisors, and colleagues to hold attitudes and possess skills that make them successful with dis advantaged children and youth. During the course of a recent research and train ing project in which the departments of criminology and education at the Berkeley campus of the Univer sity of California cooperated, an inventory of a 11 i tudes was prepared to assess dimensions of teacher affect that might prove relevant to success in the ed ucation of underpriviledged children and youth. (For full inventory, contact author. ) Preparation and use of the inventory with the se lected group of teachers will be described and pre liminary evidence for the relevance of the test scores to success in teaching underpriviledged chil dren and youth will be presented. More direct evi dence could eventually be obtained by comparing the scores of teachers known for their success with un derprivileged children with those of teachers known for their lack of success with similar children. Should the inventory scores so discriminate, the in ventory may prove useful in testing training pro grams for teachers of the disadvantagedo However, an unanticipated finding of the research project for which the inventory was constructed will be reported at the conclusion of this paper. This finding sug gests that use of the inventory to check pre-post changes in attitude may be inappropriate. Instead, the inventory may be most useful to increase teach er self-awareness so that the teacher can use his present self, with his basic attitudes relatively u n changed, to persuade, entice, and cajole the reluc tant learner.