Teacher–student interactions and their relationship to student achievement: A comparison of Mexican-American and Anglo-American children.

J. E. Brophy and T. L. Good's (1969) teacher–child dyadic interaction system was used to record 5 teachers' interactions with 40 Mexican-American (MA) and 59 Anglo-American (AA) 4th and 5th graders in 5 classrooms. 14 interaction variables were subjected to an Ethnicity?×?Sex?×?Classroom ANOVA. The correlation between these interaction variables and students' achievement was computed separately for MAs and AAs. Results show that AAs received more teacher affirmation following correct responses than MAs. Teacher affirmation was also significantly related to achievement for MAs but not AAs. Overall, teacher interaction variables showed a stronger relationship to achievement for MAs. A significant main effect of sex revealed that girls initiated more work-related contacts with teachers. There were no Ethnicity?×?Sex interactions. Findings indicate that even after controlling for potentially confounding variables, ethnicity still affects teacher–student interactions. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship of three field-dependence measures to the reading and math achievement of Anglo American and Mexican American children.

Previous studies relating field dependence to the superior academic achievement of Anglo-American children relative to Mexican-American children have relied exclusively on single-method approaches of measuring this cognitive style. The present study attempted to make a more comprehensive test of the relationship between field dependence and achievement by comparing members of both cultural groups on 3 commonly used measures of field dependence in order to determine the consistency of cross-cultural differences, intercorrelations, and predictive validity of these measures for Anglo-American and Mexican-American schoolchildren. 40 Mexican-American and 40 Anglo-American 1st–4th graders served as Ss and were administered the WISC Block Design subtest, the Children's Embedded Figures Test, and the portable rod-and-frame test. Results generally fail to support the assumptions that (a) Mexican-American children are more field dependent than Anglo-American children, (b) intercorrelations between the 3 field-dependence tests should be significant and comparable for members of both cultural groups, and (c) field dependence is of substantial importance to the school achievement of Anglo-American and Mexican-American children. The educational implications of the findings are discussed. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)