White American pre-service teachers' judgments of Anglo and Hispanic student behaviors

Abstract

Previous research has linked ethical caring, high expectations, and instructional practices relevant to student culture as three fundamental characteristics of exemplary teachers for children from ethnic minority groups in the American school system. Praise and criticism, as overt behaviors of care and expectations, were examined in a questionnaire survey. Eighty-six White pre-service teachers were asked to evaluate the behaviors of Anglo and Hispanic students in 16 scenarios. The results indicated that the participants tended to assign more praise to positive behaviors than criticism to negative behaviors across the two races. However, the participants assigned more praise to Hispanic children than to Anglo children for positive behaviors. The implications of the results on instructional practices relevant to Hispanic students' culture are discussed. (Contains 1 note and 1 figure.)