TEACHER PERCEPTIONS AND EXPECTATIONS OF THE LOCUS OF CONTROL AND LEVEL OF ASPIRAT'ION OF UPPER LEVEL ELEMENTARY WHITE AND BLACK, ST UDENTS; AND STUDENT SELF- RATINGS OF LOCUS OF CONTROL AND LEVEL OF ASPIRATIO‘N Dissertation for the Degree of Ph. D. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY EVA LOIS EVANS 1977 .‘_,‘ LIBRARY Michigan State University 7111 III III" III ,,._._ “1: This is to certify that the thesis entitled TEACHER PERCEPTIONS AND EXPECTATIONS OF THE LOCUS OF CONTROL AND LEVEL OF ASPIRATION 0F UPPER LEVEL ELEMENTARY WHITE AND BLACK STUDENTS: AND STUDENT SELF-RATINGS OF LOCUS OF CONTROL AND LEVEL OF ASPIRATION presented by Eva Lois Evans. has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph.D. degreein Administration and Higher Education 672W Major professor Date June 27, 1977 0-7 639 ABSTRACT TEACHER PERCEPTIONS AND EXPECTATIONS OF THE LOCUS OF CONTROL AND LEVEL OF ASPIRATION OF UPPER LEVEL ELEMENTARY WHITE AND BLACK STUDENTS; AND STUDENT SELF-RATINGS 0F LOCUS OF CONTROL AND LEVEL OF ASPIRATION By Eva Lois Evans Educators and non-educators have been concerned with those factors which influence the quality of life for students and teachers in the classroom. A large portion of the research focused on the concern for the quality in the classroom has been geared toward teacher expectations of students in the classroom. The controver- sial subject of teacher expectations has generated much debate in and out of educational circles. Several researchers have helped to shape and give direction to research in teacher expectations. They have identified phenomena which influence teacher expectations of students as: the physical appearance of students, conduct of stu- dents, achievement, I.Q. scores, general characteristics of siblings or parents. Socioeconomic status and race have been identified as two potent sources of input into the formulation of teacher expec- tations. This is a descriptive study which investigates: What are some of the perceptions and expectations of teachers in urban settings of Eva Lois Evans the racially and socioeconomically different students in classrooms? What are the students' perceptions of themselves? Locus of Control and Level of Aspiration are the theoretical constructs which address the questions: l. Are Black students generally perceived by teachers to be as responsible for their academic success in classrooms as White students? 2. Are teachers' expectations of the level of aspiration of Black students similar to their expectations of the level of aspiration of White students? 3. 00 teachers expect that Black students are likely to set as realistic levels of career aspirations as White students? 4. Do White and Black students of similar socioeconomic status differ in their belief in their ability to influence their academic success in schools (internal/external locus of control)? 5. Do White and Black students of similar socioeconomic status differ in their levels of aspiration as measured by their selection of a career? The findings of this study were: l. On the average, White students were perceived by teachers as more likely to take responsibility for academic success in school than Black students, or that White students had a more internal locus of control than Black students. 2. Teachers expected that Black students would have levels of aspiration as high as White students. Eva Lois Evans 3. Teachers expected that White students would set a more realistic level of aspiration than Black students. 4. When White and Black students were grouped by similar socioeconomic levels on locus of control, level of aspiration, and student realism, the differences in teacher responses were not significant. 5. The difference between the self-ratings of White and Black students' level of aspiration were not significant by race or socioeconomic status. 6. The difference between the self-ratings of White and Black students on the degree to which they felt they could influence their academic success in school (internal/external locus of control) was not significant by race or socioeconomic status. TEACHER PERCEPTIONS AND EXPECTATIONS OF THE LOCUS OF CONTROL AND LEVEL OF ASPIRATION 0F UPPER LEVEL ELEMENTARY WHITE AND BLACK STUDENTS; AND STUDENT SELF-RATINGS OF LOCUS OF CONTROL AND LEVEL OF ASPIRATION By Eva Lois Evans A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Administration and Higher Education 1977 GIST-95¢ This dissertation is dedicated to my husband, Howard, who was always quietly and strongly supportive. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The help and encouragement of the following persons is gratefully acknowledged by the writer: Dr. Archibald Shaw whose support and patience were unwaver- ing during the writing of this dissertation. The members of my committee, Dr. Judith Lanier, Dr. Louis Romano, and Dr. Stephen Judy, whose assistance was greatly appre- ciated. Dr. Jonas Chenault, a friend and colleague who was never too busy to confer. Dr. I. Carl Candoli, Superintendent of the Lansing School District, for the foresight, care, and help he gives to persons in the Lansing School District, and Dr. David Schulert. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES . LIST OF APPENDICES . Chapter I. INTRODUCTION Statement of the Problem Research Questions . Purpose of the Study . Statement of Hypotheses . Definition of Terms . . Limitations of the Study Assumptions . . Theoretical Background Summary Overview of the Dissertation II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE . Teacher Perceptions and Expectations Socioeconomic Status . . . Race . . Level of Aspiration . Achievement- Motivation Theory. Locus of Control Summary III. METHODS AND PROCEDURES . Population and Sample Procedure for Testing the Hypotheses. Design of the Study Summary . iv Page vi viii ix Chapter Page IV. FINDINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Hypothesis l 76 Hypothesis 2 77 Hypothesis 3 78 Hypothesis 4 79 Hypothesis 5 84 Hypothesis 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Hypothesis 7 . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Other Related Findings . . . . . . . . . . 90 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 V. SUMMARY, DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . 102 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lOS Implications for Future Research . . . . . . . ll4 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 APPENDICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Table 10. 11. 12. 13. LIST OF TABLES Achievement-Motivation Theory Teacher Responses on Locus of Control of White and Black Students Teacher Responses on the Expectations of White and Black Students' Level of Aspiration Teacher Responses on the Realism of the Career Choices of White and Black Students Teacher Responses on the Locus of Control of Black and White Students of Similar Socioeconomic Status Mean Difference Between Teacher Ratings on Students of the Same Race of High and Low Socioeconomic Status . . . Teacher Responses on the Level of Aspiration of Black and White Students of Similar Socioeconomic Status Mean Difference Between Teacher Ratings on Students of the Same Race of High and Low Socioeconomic Status 'eazner Pezponze: an tue keei'2" 2‘ Career Choices cf Black and White Students of Similar Socioeconomic Status Mean Differences Between Students of Same Race of High and Low Socioeconomic Status Correlations Between Urban Teacher Ratings and Student Self-Ratings on Locus of Control and Level of Aspiration . . Correlation Between Non-Urban Teacher Ratings and Student Self-Ratings on Locus of Control and Level of Aspiration . . . . . Level of Aspiration of Black and White Students vi Page 43 76 77 78 81 81 82 82 83 83 86 87 88 Table Page l4. Level of Aspiration of Black and White Students of Similar Socioeconomic Status . . . . . . . . . 88 l5. Student Occupational Group Choices . . . . . . . 89 l6. Student Self-Ratings on Locus of Control . . . . . 9l l7. Student Self— -Ratings on Locus of Control by Race and Socioeconomic Status . . . . . . 9l l8. Teacher Responses by Years of Experience on the Locus of Control (Student Academic Responsibility) of White and Black Students . . . . . . . 93 l9. Teacher Responses by Teacher Race on the Locus of Control (Student Academic Responsibility) of White and Black Students . . . . . 93 20. Teacher Responses by Teacher Background (Urban, Non- Urban) on the Locus of Control (Student Academic Responsibility) of White and Black Students . . . . 94 2l. Teacher Responses by Years of Experience on Student Level of Aspiration . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 22. Teacher Responses by Teacher Race on Student Level of Aspiration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 23. Teacher Responses by Teacher Background (Urban, Non- Urban) on Student Level of Aspiration . . . . . . 95 24. Teacher Responses by Years of Experience on Student Realism of Career Choice . . . . . . . . . . 96 25. Teacher Responses by Teacher Race on Student Realism of Career Choice . . . . . . . . . . 96 26. Teacher Responses by Teacher Background (Urban, Non- Urban) on Student Realism of Career Choice . . . . 97 27. Teacher Responses on Achievement Motivation Level of White and Black Students of Similar Socioeconomic Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 28. Standardized Achievement Test Averages . . . . . . 98 vii Figure 1. LIST OF FIGURES Typical Time Sequence, Level of Aspiration . viii Page 38 LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix Page A. Teacher Questionnaire . . . . . . . . . . . . l25 Demographic Information (Teachers) . . . . . . . 128 ('5 The Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale . . 130 U Ranking of Occupations in Order of Academic Preparation for Entry Level into the Occupation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l35 E. Student Occupational Questionnaire . . . . . . . 137 ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Anyone who has worked, observed, or been a student in a classroom knows that a classroom is a busy, unique, and special place. It constitutes a complex environment involving students and their characteristics, teachers and their characteristics. School is a place to which students must go, and where teachers must attend to them. School is a place in which there are formal rules estab- lished, and informal understandings which are operative. Teachers and students attempt to develop coping mechanisms that enable them to function in a setting which is sometimes joyful, with pleasant interaction and exchange between students, their peers, and teachers; but a setting that is sometimes punitive and usually evaluative. Educational research has helped educators to account for, understand, and cope with some of the complexities of modern educa- tion, but not all of them. The fields of psychology and sociology have given educators some understandings of how humans function in social situations and why they function as they do. More recently educational researchers have been concerned with the classroom, as a microcosm of educational research on the whole, but as a macrocosm in helping to understand what variables account for the quality of life for students and teachers within the educational setting. One significant piece of this line of 1 inquiry has been the concern with the nature of teacher expectations on students and teachers in classrooms. The publishing of Robert Rosenthal's and Lenore Jacobson's Pygmalion in the Classroom1 gave rise to a flurry of controversy and debate among persons in and out of the educational arena. The con- cern of the book in the authors' words is "how one person's expecta- tions for another person's behavior can quite unwittingly become a more accurate prediction simply for its having been made." Specifically, the authors of Pygmalion in the Classoom investigated whether a teacher's expectations for the academic ability of his/her students could serve as self-fulfilling prophe- cies. In the study, teachers in a lower class neighborhood elemen- tary school were given the randomly selected names of twenty percent of the students in each classroom who would be expected to show unusual academic growth during the school year. All of the students were given a non-verbal I.Q. test at the beginning of the school year. The test was disguised as one that would show "intellectual blooming." Rosenthal and Jacobson reported eight months later that the "magic" children showed significantly greater I.Q. gains than the remaining students. 2 Among the critics of the study was Robert L. Thorndike, who questioned the use of I.Q. tests as being unreliable. He also 1Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, P malion in the Classroom (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., I968). 2 Robert L. Thorndike, "Review of Bygmalion in the Classroom by R. Rosenthal and L. Jacobson," American Educational Research Journal 5 (l968): 708-ll. questioned the use of the same test as pre- and post-test instruments as well as the teacher administration of the test. The most compre- hensive critique of the study was made by Janet Elashoff and Richard 3 Snow, who completely reanalyzed the data generated from Pygmalion in the Classroom. The nature of the criticism has been aimed pri- marily at the methodological imperfections of the study, focusing on the instrumentation and the analysis of the data by Rosenthal and Jacobson. Robert Rosenthal maintains, however, that research has yet to disprove the existence of the expectation phenomenon. Pygmalion in the Classroom continues to be provocative. Rosenthal4 reported that at least 242 studies had been completed that researched the expectation theory. Of these, 84 supported the self-fulfilling prophecy hypothesis, or that teacher expectations do make a difference on the student's performance in the classroom. Rosenthal notes that five percent of the 242 studies (about l2) would have been enough to satisfy the rules of statistical signifi- cance. The fact that 84 studies supported the self-fulfilling hypothesis would indicate that there is substantive evidence to support it. A part of the controversy surrounding teacher expectation research has been the question of how the phenomenon is to be defined. Rosenthal and Jacobson in Pygmalion in the Classrooms 3Janet Elashoff and Richard Snow, Pygmalion Revisited (Worthington, Ohio: Charles A. Jones Publishing Co., 197I). 4Robert Rosenthal, "The Pygmalion Effect Lives," Psychology Today (September I973). 5Rosenthal and Jacobson, p. 2. limited the scope of teacher expectations to be a function of 6 in information supplied by the researcher. Rubonits and Maehr their study apparently assumed that teacher expectations were the attitudes on the parts of teachers from information supplied by the researcher and these attitudes were manifested in certain observed teacher behaviors. Brophy and Good7 defined teacher expectations to be ". . . inferences that teachers make about the present and future academic achievement and general classroom behaviors of students." Finn8 characterized the expectation phenomenon as a complex relationship among interacting variables. Psychological and soci- ological characteristics that the teacher brings to the classroom as well as the psychological and sociological charactersitics that the student brings to the classroom interact to formulate teacher expectations that may be manifested in teacher behavior towards students. Despite the definition, it should not be assumed that teacher expectations necessarily become self-fulfilling prophecies. If that were the case, students for whom teachers hold high expec- tations would become high achievers; as well as students for whom 6Pamela C. Rubovits and Martin L. Maehr, "Pygmalion Black and White," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 25 (I973): 210-18. 7Jere E. Brophy and Thomas L. Good, Teacher-Student Relation- ships: Causes and Consequences (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Win- ston, Inc., l974). 8Jeremy D. Finn, "Expectations and Educational Environment," Review of Educational Research 42 (l972): 387- 4lO. teachers hold low expectations would become low achievers. Some teachers do not act on their expectations of students. Not all stu- dents are susceptible to expectations that teachers might hold. How- 9 ever, as Brophy and Good point out in a volume which catalogs the myriad of research in teacher/student interaction, teacher expecta- tions do exist; to hold expectations is not abnormal or unusual. They further state, ". . . teacher expectations regarding students are neither good or bad hi themselves. The effect of teacher expecta- tions depends on how accurate they are, and how they are used." An abundance of research has been carried on in socio- psychological dynamics which have added to the ways we can think about the complex notion of how teachers formulate expectations. IO Elashoff, Dixon, and Snow, in summarizing the impact of the sources of input to teacher expectancies, observed that: Teachers . . . form impressions based on physical appear- ance and conduct . . . achievement, I.Q. scores, or gen- eral characteristics of siblings or parents. These impressions based on a day's or a week's experience may produce expectations about pupil behavior and future achievement . . . . 11 Brophy et al. have placed current expectation research into two categories: (I) experimentally induced expectations from 9Brophy and Good, 10Janet Elashoff, Dixon, and Richard E. Snow, Pygmalion Reconsidered: A Case Study in Statistical Inference: Reconsidera- tion of the Rosenthal-Jacobson Data on Teacher Expectancy (Belmont, Calif}: WadSworth PubliShing Co., 1971). nJere Brophy, Carolyn Evertson, Theresa Harris, and Thomas Good, "Communication of Teacher Expectations: Fifth Grade," Report Series No. 93, The Research and Development Center for Teacher Education, University of Texas at Austin, 1973. which student gain data are gathered; (2) naturalistically formed teacher expectations from which student gain data can be gathered or naturalistically formed teacher expectations from which student- teacher interaction data can be gathered. The area of inquiry for the large body of research already generated around the discrepant findings of the teacher expectancy theory asks such questions as: How are expectancies formulated in the teacher's mind? How do teachers communicate these expectations? What are some of the variables which interact that aid in the formu- lation of teacher expectations and generate the cues to which stu- 12 note that naturalistic dents respond? Mendell and Flanders factors such as information from other teachers, parents, and administrators, cumulative records, previously established behavioral patterns, standardized test information, physical characteristics including sex, physical attractiveness, motivation, and socioeconomic status are much more potent variables than contrived ones in the formulation of teacher expectations. In the review of literature, there are studies cited which show that researchers have investigated the sex, race, intelligence, socioeconomic level, and physical attractiveness of the child as causal factors in the formulation of teacher expectation. Geneva Gay13 added race to this list of input variables to the formulation 12Gene E. Mendell and James P. Flanders, "Teacher Expecta- tions and Pupil Performance," American Educational Research Journal 10 (Summer l973): 203-l2. 13Geneva Gay, "Differential Dyadic Interactions of Black and White Teachers with Black and White Pupils in Recently Desegregated Social Studies Classrooms: A Function of Teacher and Pupil Eth- nicity,“ O.E. Project No. 2F ll3, January, l974. of teacher expectations. She found that her own research corrobora- ted that of others in that all teachers (Black and White) act simi- larly in differentiating their verbal behaviors with Black and White students. She found: (1) elementary and secondary teachers expect the quality of White students' classroom participation to be better than that of Black students, although they do not differentiate the quantity of participation according to ethnicity; (2) Black stu— dents do not participate as often; (3) White students participate in more academic and substantive ways, and receive more praise and encouragement from teachers, while Blacks participate more in pro- cedural and behavioral or discipline interactions; (4) teachers' attitudes and expectations are reflected in their behavior with ethnically different students; and (5) Black students' behavior is clearly a function of how they perceive teachers to think and behave, and how teachers, in fact, do behave.14 The personalities of students are salient factors which influence teacher attitudes towards students and their expectations of them. Realistically, not all teachers will like all students. Some teachers will like students whom others will not. Given the very nature of life in classrooms, it is reasonable to assume that there would be students with certain personalities who exhibit cer- tain behaviors that would be acceptable to more teachers than other 14Geneva Gay, "Teachers' Achievement Expectations of and Classroom Interactions with Ethnically Different Students," Contemporary Education 46, No. 3 (Spring l975): l66-72. students with certain personalities and behaviors. Feshback's15 study showed that teachers more often preferred orderly, conforming students than non-orderly, assertive ones. In a study using 240 female (White) undergraduate student teachers as subjects, Norma Feshback gathered information about the kinds of students that student teachers preferred. The results of her study showed that these student teachers preferred rigid, conforming and orderly students first. The next preferred type were dependent, passive, and acquiescent students. Thirdly, flexible, non-conforming, and untidy students were preferred, followed last by independent, active, and assertive students. This is not to say that all teach- ers prefer passive, non-disruptive pupils, but to point out that in general certain kinds of students with certain kinds of personalities and behaviors will be liked by some teachers while others will be 16 in Life in Classrooms, disliked by some teachers. Phillip Jackson, described vividly the uneven quality of life for some students as they venture into the world of understandings and misunderstandings that arise when humans interact in settings such as classrooms. Teachers' likes and dislikes of students have been behaviorally mani- fested in higher expectations and higher grades for students who were most liked. As Brophy and Good point out: 15Norma Feshback, "Variations in Teachers' Reinforcement Style and Imitative Behavior of Children Differing in Personality Characteristics," Journal of Educational Psychology 60 (l969): l26-32. 16Phillip W. Jackson, Life in Classrooms (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., l968). In addition to their direct effects on student opportunity to learn, teacher expectations also have indirect effects on student achievement via their effects on student moti- vat1on, level of asp1rat1on, and self-concept. Statement of the Problem Urban American cities have become increasingly inhabited by the poor. Often the bulk of the poor are comprised of minority populations. As the populations of inner cities change, so do the populations of inner city schools. In schools and classrooms in urban settings there is the pressing need for teachers to provide for the educational, social, and emotional needs of an increasingly racially, socioeconomically, and value orientedly diverse student population. As these varying populations meet in classrooms, it becomes clear that some students, possibly because of an unclear understand- ing of what is valued within the school or by the teacher, possibly because of an unwillingness to "buy into" what is valued within the school setting, or possibly because they have not seen the efforts that they make pay off in ways that are valuable to them, rarely expend the necessary effort, and thus rarely receive some of the rewards of success that schools can offer. Although there have been a number of studies specifically designed to discern the sources of input in teacher expectations, there is still a need to gather data that describe whether or not teachers do perceive significant differences in children in urban 17Brophy and Good, p. 6. \ 10 classrooms, as well as some of their expectations of children in urban classrooms. A factor which potentially influences the quality of inter- action in the classroom is the similarity or difference between the way in which the student is perceived and the way in which the stu- dent perceives himself. This is especially so in urban classrooms wherein gaps exist because of the socioeconomic distance between students and teachers or wherein cultural or ethnic differences exist. A second need, then, is to gather information/data about students' perceptions of themselves. Effort and responsibleness are considered valuable student attributes in schools. It is probably universal knowledge that teachers consistently remind or admonish students to complete home- work assignments, to remember to bring to school some necessary item, or in general to learn and practice being responsible. Suc- cess or failure in school sometimes rests on these variables. Weiner and Kukla18 noted from their studies in attribution theory that "despite ability, those pupils perceived (by the teacher) as having tried harder, are rewarded more and punished less than stu- dents who are believed not to have tried." The amount of effort and responsibility a student is per- ceived to assume in accomplishing school subjects and the student's disposition to strive as perceived by the teacher are among the 18Bernard Weiner and A. Kukla, "An Attributional Analysis of Achievement Motivation," Journal of Personality l5 (l970): l-20. 11 student personality variables that help to shape the teacher's atti- tude and expectations of the student. Assessed in this study will be teachers' perceptions of the amount of effort and responsibility White and Black elementary stu- dents assume for their own academic success in the classroom. Assessed in the study will also be teachers' expectations of the level of aspiration of White and Black upper level elementary stu- dents, and teacher expectations of whether these students are likely to have a realistic level of aspiration. Included in the study is an assessment of the students' self-rating of academic responsibleness and level of aspiration. An adaptation of the construct internal/external locus of control as restricted in use to the school setting by Crandall, ‘9 is used in this study to assess teachers' Katkovsky, and Crandall perceptions of whether students are likely to expend effort to achieve success on schoolwork assignments. The Crandall, Katovsky, and Crandall Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale will be used to assess children's belief that they, rather than others, are responsible for their intellectual-academic success. The importance of the restricted use of the locus of control construct and level of aspiration construct to achievement-oriented experiences within academic or school situations is to differentiate these concepts in the academic context from the way they have been 19Virginia C. Crandall, Walter Katkovsky, and Vaughn J. Crandall, "Children's Belief in Their Own Control of Reinforcement in Intellectual-Academic Situations," Child Development 36 (l956): 9l-109. 12 used in other social contexts. Students' selection of careers with varying levels of academic preparation before entry into that career will be used to assess level of aspiration. A description of the theoretical background of locus of control and level of aspiration and achievement motivation appears in a subsequent section of this chapter. Locus of control and level of aspiration are the theoretical concepts used in this study to address the following research questions. Research Questions l. Are Black students generally perceived by teachers to be as responsible for their academic success in school as White students? 2. Are teachers' expectations of the level of aspiration of Black students similar to their expectations of the level of aspiration of White students? 3. Do teachers expect that Black students are likely to set as realistic levels of career aspirations as White students? 4. Do White and Black students of similar socio- economic status differ in their belief in their ability to influence their academic success in schools (internal/external locus of control)? 5. Do White and Black students of similar socio- economic status differ in their levels of aspiration as measured by their selection of a career? The major focus of this study is to examine whether there are significant differences in teacher ratings of their perceptions and expectations of (1) White and Black students on the amount of responsibility students assume for schoolwork; (2) the level of 13 aspiration of White and Black students; (3) the reality of the level of aspiration of White and Black students. A secondary focus of the study is to examine whether there are significant differences in the self-ratings of White and Black students on their own sense of academic responsibility (internal/ external locus of control) and their level of aspiration. Purpose of the Study The purpose of the study is to seek data for the following research questions: l. 00 teachers when rating student academic responsibleness (internal/external locus of control), level of aspiration, and realism of student aspiration differ significantly in the degree and direction of their ratings on White and Black students? 2. Do teachers when grouped on certain characteristics (race, experience, background) differ significantly in their ratings of White and Black students on academic responsibleness (internal/ external locus of control), level of aspiration, and the degree of reality ascribed to students' levels of aspiration? 3. Does the socioeconomic level of students substantially influence teacher ratings of students on these variables? 4. Do White and Black students of similar socioeconomic status differ significantly on their self-ratings on locus of con- trol and level of aspiration? Hypothesis Hypothesis Hypothesis 14 Statement of Hypotheses l: There will be no difference between teacher percep- tions of White and of Black students on the amount of responsibility each takes for academic success in the classroom (internal/external locus of control). 2: There will be no difference in teacher expectations of the level of aspiration of White and Black stu- dents. 3: There will be no difference between teacher ratings Hypothesis on the degree of realism they ascribe to the level of aspiration of White and Black students. 4: There will be no difference between teacher expecta- Hypothesis tions and perceptions of White and Black students of similar socioeconomic levels on locus of control, level of aspiration, and student realism. 5: The ratings of students by teachers or urban back- Hypothesis Hypothesis In l. 2. 3. elementary 4. ground will be more similar to the self-ratings of students than will be the ratings of teachers of non-urban background on locus of control and level of aspiration. 6: There will be no difference between the levels of aspiration of Black and White students of similar socioeconomic status. 7: There will be no difference between White and Black students of similar socioeconomic status on their locus of control. Definition of Terms this study, terms are to be defined as follows: Minority students--Black students only. Majority students--White students. Minority teachers--Black teachers only, teaching in grades. Majority teachers--White teachers teaching in elemen- tary grades. 15 5. Locus of control--A construct found in sociopsychologi- cal literature used to define a personality variable. The terms internal and external locus of control describe a continuum which may characterize an individual's feeling of control over his own destiny or fate. An individual with an internal locus of control manifests a feeling of responsibility for the things that happen to him. An individual with an external locus of control feels what happens to him to be more a function of fate or destiny. In this study, locus of control assesses the child's belief that he/she, rather than others, can influence, or is responsible for, academic success or failure. The construct is used to gauge the teacher's perception of the amount of responsibility the student assumes for academic success within the classroom. 6. Level of aspiration--A career choice selected by the student, either high or low, as defined by the academic preparation necessary for entry into the career. 7. Achievement motivation--The individual's disposition to strive for success in an achievement-oriented setting; for purposes of this study, in a classroom. 8. A "non-realistic" level of career aspiration will be viewed as a level of aspiration held by students whose recorded achievement on a standardized achievement instrument shows the students to be two or more grade levels below national norms and whose selection is of a career demanding high academic standards. 9. A "realistic" level of career aspiration will be viewed as that held by students whose recorded achievement on a standardized 16 achievement test is less than two grade levels below national norms and whose selection is of a career demanding high academic achieve- ment standards Limitations of the Study The data collected applies pertinently to the teachers in the sample. However, care should be taken in making generalizations because of the small number of teachers in the study. Assumptions Because of the timing of the study, teachers were familiar with the students on whom they responded. Theoretical Background Locus of Control The construct locus of control generates from social learn- 20 which is considered to describe a generalized expec- ing theory, tancy operating across a number of situations which relates to whether or not the individual feels some sense of power over what happens to him. Locus of control describes the degree to which an individual attributes what happens to him as a function of his own effort or as a function of the influence of powerful others, or fate, luck, or chance. Individuals may be distributed along an internal/external locus of control continuum depending upon the degree of personal responsibility accepted for what happens to 20Julian B. Rotter, Social Learning and Clinical Psychology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1954). 17 him. Internals would feel that their ability, competence, perse- verance, and intellect more control their destiny. Externals would feel their destiny to be more a matter of luck, chance, or influence by significant others.21 Reinforcement is a key concept in the locus of control con- struct as conceived by Rotter. The degree and direction from which an individual perceives his rewards to come are crucial to the amount of effort he/she will generate in the acquisition of knowledge or skills. The potential for any behavior to occur in a given situ- ation is a function of the person's expectancy that the behavior will occur and the value of the reinforcement to that person. The belief in fate, chance, or luck according to social scientists and discussed by Rotterzz represents a non-productive, passive orientation to life. Such beliefs also are seen to be defense mechanisms which enable people to preserve their self-esteem in the face of failure. The belief in luck, or fate, or chance, 23 as discussed by Dweck, is that the important variable is not the occurrence of an adversive event, but the perception of the rela— tionship between one's behavior and the occurrence of that event. 2IEsther Battle and Julian B. Rotter, "Children's Feelings of Personal Control as Related to Social Class and Ethnic Group," Journal of Personality 3l (l963): 482-90. 22Julian B. Rotter, "Generalized Expectancies for Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcement," Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, Whole No. 609, 1969, 80, l. 23Carl S. Dweck, "The Role of Expectations and Attributions in the Alleviations of Learned Helplessness," Journal of Personality and Learned Helplessness 3l, No. 4 (1975): 674-85. 18 Dweck and Reppucci24 demonstrated in their study that two children may receive the exact same number of successes and failures and interpret the failure to be beyond or within their control. Battle and Rotter25 found that social class and ethnic group combined as two significant variables influencing internal/external locus of control. Crandall and Katkovsky held that with age and experience, most children should begin to feel that their own actions are often instrumental in attaining the outcomes they received. Achievement Motivation and Level of Aspiration The theory of achievement-motivation was developed by John W. Atkinson26 and evolved from a series of research projects designed by David C. McClelland, Russell Clark, and Thornton Roby. The theory of achievement-motivation attempts to account for the direc- tion, magnitude and persistence of behavior of an individual in an achievement-oriented context. Achievement-motivation theory revolves around an individual's "disposition" for achievement, which is conceived of as a capacity for taking pride in accomplishment. 24Carol 5. Dweck and N. D. Reppucci, "Learned Helplessness and Reinforcement Responsibility in Children," Journal of Person- ality and Social Psychology 25 (1973): 109-16. 25 Battle and Rotter, p. 19. 26John W. Atkinson, An Introduction to Motivation (Prince- ton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc., 1964). 19 Achievement-motivation theory (discussed in the Review of Literature section of this dissertation) provided the valuable theoretical link between level of aspiration theory and career striving as an indicator of the individual's achievement motivation as a function of his selection of a career which indicates high or low level of aspiration. Mahone27 ordered occupations into levels of difficulty and prestige, which provided the theoretical link. Atkinson later likened the ordering of occupations of similar diffi- culty and prestige in modern industrialized societies to a hierarchi- cal ordering of tasks having the same conceptual properties as a game of ringtoss. The principle from achievement-motivation theory which applies is the more difficult the occupation, the lower the probability of success and the higher the incentive value of achiev- ing it. Students in the sample selecting an occupation into which the entry level is more academically demanding will be considered to have selected a higher level career and have higher level career aspirations. Summary All people hold expectations. To do so is not abnormal or unusual. The effect of an expectation depends upon how accurate it is and how it is used. Teacher expectations do not automatically become self-fulfilling prophecies. Some teachers act on their expectations, others do not. 27L. C. H. Mahone, "Fear of Failure and Unrealistic Voca- tional Aspirations," Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology (1960): 253-56. 20 Teacher expectations constitute a complex relationship of interacting variables between teacher and students. Naturalistic factors such as information from other teachers, parents, and administrators, cumulative records, previously established behavioral patterns, socioeconomic status and race are considered more potent input variables in the formulation of teacher expectations of stu- dents than contrived factors. Given the demands and complexities of urban schools and classrooms, there is a need to generate informa- tion about teachers' expectations and perceptions of the racially, socioeconomically and value orientedly different students who come to school. This study is designed to assess teachers' perception of the degree of responsibleness of upper level majority and minority ele- mentary school children (internal/external locus of control), their level of aspiration, and the reality of students' levels of aspira- tion. A second focus of the study is to assess the locus of control of minority and majority students, and their levels of aspiration. Overview of the Dissertation Chapter II will contain a review of literature in three areas: teacher expectations, locus of control, and level of aspiration/achievement motivation. Chapter III contains a description of the methods, sample, and procedures used in the study. Chapter IV contains an analysis of the results of the data generated from testing the hypotheses. 21 Chapter V contains the summary, discussion and conclusions drawn from the study. Implications for future research are also a part of Chapter V. CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE The review of literature relevant to this study provides an overview in three areas. The first section reports key literature on the perceptions and expectations of teachers, particularly as they relate to the race and socioeconomic status of students. The second area examines level of aspiration theory, and achievement- motivation theory and studies that describe the occupational aspirations of minorities. The third area reviews research on locus of control and some concepts related to locus of control. Teacher Perceptions and Expectations Robert K. Merton1 describes in a l948 article the strange events surrounding the demise of The Last National Bank. Despite the real solidarity of the bank's standing in the economic world, a rumor of insolvency triggered a chain of events which caused the bank's depositors to withdraw their funds, first in small numbers and then in such large numbers as to cause the bank's failure. The solvency of the bank, in this case, depended upon the belief of its despositors in the soundness of the economic system underlying that bank. Robert Merton described and expanded upon a theorem of 1Robert K. Merton, "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy," The Antioch Review 8 (1948): 193-210. 22 23 W. 1. Thomas basic to social sciences: "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." What he describes in his classic parable is the self-fulfilling prophecy. The concept was to form the basis of a body of work in educational research, the most famous of which was Rosenthal and Jacobson's book Pygmalion in the Classroom. Many researchers have cautioned the public and edu- cators against jumping on the self-fulfilling prophecy bandwagon and expecting it to serve as a panacea for educational ills. Carl Braun, Allan R. Neilsen, and Robert Dykstra reminded educators that the quest for educational solutions is not easy. They noted in thei their study that: Teacher traits may influence teachers' actions, but learn- ing is influenced by what teachers do in their interac- tions with children, and what teachers do is based on their beliefs and gltimately their expectations for indi- viduals or groups. They note the danger that expectations or self-fulfilling prophecies will be seen as something as elusive as "wishing can make it so." Brophy and Good,3 a research team from the University of Texas, hold that research on teacher expectations need not be con- fined to the esoteric. They reasoned that the fundamental assump- tions underlying the teacher's expectations would manifest themselves in observable, measurable behavior. They developed five hypotheses 2Carl Braun, Allen R. Neilsen, Robert Dykstra, "Teachers' Expectations: Prime Mover or Inhibitor?" The Elementary School Journal (December 1975): l81-88. 3Jere E. Brophy and Thomas L. Good, "Teachers' Communication of Differential Expectations for Children's Classroom Performance: Some Observational Data," Journal of Educational Psychology 6T, No. 5 (l970): 365-74. 24 as possible explanations for the teacher expectation effect, and as a guide for research in teacher expectancy: 1. Early in the year the teacher forms differential expectations for student performance. 2. The teacher then begins to treat the children in accordance with these expectations for their per- formance. 3. The children will respond differently to the teach- er's expectations because they are being treated differently; this reactive behavior will tend to complement and reinforce the teacher's expectations. 4. As a result, the performance of some students will be enhanced, others depressed, with changes being in the direction of the teacher expectations. 5. The cumulative effect of this cycle will be seen in end-of-the-year achievement test scores, thus pro- viding objective evidence that teacher expectations serve as self-fulfilling prophecies. Classroom data for this and subsequent studies were collected with the Brophy-Good Dyadic Interaction system, which allows a single coder to record qualitative and quantitative interaction of indi- vidual children with the teacher. In their initial studies Brophy and Good found that teachers demanded better performance from stu- dents of whom they had high expectations and these students were more likely to receive praise. Teachers were more likely to accept poor performance from students of whom they had low expectations and were less likely to praise good performance from these students when it occurred. Other naturalistic factors such as the sex of the student and teacher, physical attractiveness of the child, socioeconomic status and race have been investigated as input variables in the formulation of teacher expectations. 25 Goebes and Shore4 undertook to determine whether the expec- tations of male and female students were related to the sex of the teacher. On the whole, teachers tended to view the typical behavior of girls as closer to the Ideal Student than the typical behavior of boys. Closer analysis showed, however, that female teachers viewed the behavior of girls as significantly closer to the Ideal Student than did male teachers. Palardy5 asked teachers to check on a scale ranging from 10 percent to 100 percent what percent of first grade boys could successfully learn to read. They were also told that 80 percent of first grade girls learned to read. Teachers were divided into Group A, who checked that 80 percent of the boys would learn to read. They were matched with an equal number of Group 8 teachers, who checked that fewer than 60 percent of the boys would learn to read. There was a lower mean reading score among the boys in Group 8 whose teachers believed that first grade boys are less suc- cessful than girls in learning to read. Clifford and Walster's6 research concluded that physically attractive children were perceived by teachers as possessing higher 4Diane D. Goebes and Milton F. Shore, "Behavioral Expecta- tions of Students as Related to the Sex of the Teacher," Psychology, of the Schools l2 (l975): 222-24. 5Michael J. Palardy, "What Teachers Believe--What Children Can Achieve," Elementary School Journal 69 (1969): 370-74. 6M. M. Clifford and E. Walster, "The Effect of Physical Attractiveness on Teacher Expectations," Sociology of Education 46 (1973): 248-58. 26 I.Q.‘s, greater educational potential, and more interested parents than less physically attractive children. Dion7 found that physically attractive children were per- ceived as less antisocial. He reports that college students rated attractive children who committed unacceptable acts as more honest and pleasant than unattractive children committing similarly unattractive acts. 8 found that teachers rating the essay quality of stu- Kehle dents along with fictitious pictures of the students gave more sig- nificant verbal attention to above-average facially attractive children. Silberman9 looked at what ways teachers' attitudes toward their students are revealed in classroom beahvior. In this study, teachers' attitudes toward students were described as: attachment, concern, indifference, and rejection. Attachment was defined as an affectionate tie to students which derives from the pleasure they bring to the teacher's work. Concern was defined as sympathy and support for the student's academic problems. Indifference referred to a lack of involvement with the student because of the student's 7K. K. Dion, "Physical Attractiveness and Evaluation of Children's Transgressions," Journal of Personality and Social Psy- chology 24 (1972): 207-13. 8Thomas J. Kehle, "Teachers' Expectations: Ratings of Stu- dent Performance as Biased by Student Characteristics," The Journal of Experimental Education 43, No. 1 (Fall 1974): 54-60. 9Melvin J. Silberman, "Behavioral Expressions of Teachers' Attitudes Toward Elementary School Students," Journal of Educational Psychology 50, No. 5 (1969): 402-7. 27 failure to generate excitement or dismay in the teacher. Rejection indicated a refusal to consider students as worthy recipients of the teacher's professional energies. This study emphasized that teachers react differently to different students. The study points out that the attitudes teachers hold toward different students influence the ways in which these students are treated in the class- room in that students for whom the teacher had concern often had contact with the teacher. The teachers were open in their expres- sions of concern for these students in contrast to students for whom the teacher felt rejection. The teacher's contacts with rejec- tion students were brief, perfunctory, and infrequent. The study points out as well that certain student attributes trigger certain responses in teachers. The results of studies have shown many input variables to be varyingly powerful determinants of expectation formulation and sub- sequent classroom behavior. An apparently potent source of that input has been the race and socioeconomic status of the student. Socioeconomic Status Socioeconomic status is recognized as an important variable in the formulation of teacher attitude toward the student and in the quality of interaction between teacher and student. In a 10 poignant study by Ray C. Rist, the author explored the process whereby the teacher's expectations of the children and the nature 10Ray C. Rist, "Student Social Class and Teacher Expecta- tions: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Ghetto Education," Harvard Educational Review 40 (August 1970): 3. 28 of interaction with the children resulted hithe social organization of a kindergarten class. The classroom teacher was the recipient of four types of social information that had no bearing on the child's potential academic performance. The first was the kindergarten preregistration form, which included such information as address, phone, child's name, parent's name, etc. The second piece of information was a tentative list from the school social worker which provided the names of children in the class who lived in homes that received public welfare funds. The third source of information was gained from the child's mother, who indicated her concerns on a "Behavioral Questionnaire" which indicated her concern on 28 items. Some of the items were thumb-sucking, bed-wetting, loss of bowel control, lying, cheating, laziness, etc. The fourth source of information the teacher received, as a function of strong informal sources operat- ing within the school, was teachers reporting to other teachers information regarding their experience with siblings, etc. The children were divided in the classroom into Tables I, II, and III. The Criterion for Table I seemed to be those who wore clean, neatly pressed clothes, had no body odor, neater hair, and better verbal ability. The others were divided into Tables II and III, with the children at Table III at the lower end of the teacher's already formulated social scale. They were labeled "fast learners" and "slow learners" and were treated as such. Or. Rist followed these kindergarten children through the first and second grade. The higher status children stayed together as a favored group. The 29 grouping of these children seemed to remain fixed throughout the grades regardless of whether the child performed poorly or well. Goodwin and Sandersn asked teachers to rank seven variables as predictors of school success for first and sixth grade students. Teacher ranked socioeconomic status as the most important predictor for first grade students and third in importance for sixth grade 12 studies dealing with the importance of socio- students. Hoehn's economic status in teacher-student interaction and the quality of interaction showed that lower-class students received more dominative contacts from teachers while middle-class students received more supportive and integrative contacts. Yee13 found, after repeating an experiment that measured teachers' and students' attitudes in upper-class schools one year and students and teachers in lower- ]4 that teachers and students consistently class schools the next, were more favorable in their attitudes in middle-class schools than in lower-class schools. Furthermore, the data showed teachers in middle-class schools had more favorable attitudes on each subscale nW. Goodwin and J. Sanders, "An Exploratory Study of the Effect of Selected Variables Upon Teacher Expectation of Pupil Success," paper presented at annual meeting of the American Educa- tional Research Association, 1969. 12A. A. Hoehn, "A Study of Social Status Differentiation in the Classroom Behavior of 19 Third Grade Teachers," Journal of Social Psychology 39 (1954): 269-92. 13A. H. Yee, "Interpersonal Attitudes of Teachers and Advantaged and Disadvantaged Pupils," Journal of Human Resources 3 (1968): 327-45. 14A. H. Yee, "Source and Direction of Causal Influence in Teacher-Pupil Relationships," Journal of Educational Psychology 59 (1968): 275-82. 30 of the teacher attitude inventory used. Their attitude data, when aggregated, showed teachers in middle-class schools tended to be more modernistic, tolerant, warm, trustful and sympathetic compared with the attitudes of teachers in low socioeconomic level schools, whose attitudes were more traditionalistic, blaming, and punitive. She also demonstrated that teacher attitudes were more influential in setting the attitudes of lower-class children than middle-class children. Bape_ There are not very many students investigating teacher- student interaction as related to the race of the student, although desegregation of schools has been of great national concern since 15 cites Brown versus the Topeka Board of Education in 1954. Finn Davis and Dollard who, as early as 1940, pointed out that differen- tial expectations were held for the behavior of Black pupils, in 16 suggests either all-Black or integrated situations. Geneva Gay that perhaps because of America's long history of devaluing differ- ences between people within our society, who do not conform to middle-class value expectations of them, may in part explain the documented disparaging attitudes of teachers toward ethnically dif- ferent students. She explains that "teachers are products of 15Jeremy D. Finn, "Expectations and the Educational Environ- ment," Review of Educational Research 42 (3): 19, citing A. Davis and J. Dollard, Children of Bondage (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1940). 16 Gay, p. 8. 31 society and are likely to be influenced by these value attitude sys- tems associated with ethnically and racially different groups." 17 in a study designed for use in Dotta, Schaefer, and Davis, planning inservice programs for teachers to facilitate integration, investigated the extent to which the variables of sex and scholas- tic ability were associated with teachers' descriptions of Black and Other-than-Black students. They found that ethnic group accounted for a significant portion of the variance on task orientation and extroversion. Black students were more likely to be described as low in task orientation and were less likely to be described as helpful, cheerful, and gregarious than Other-than-Black. There was, however, a difference between the descriptiontrfBlack students with high and low I.Q. Black students with low I.Q.“s were more fre- quently described as low in task orientation, verbally aggressive, rebellious, asocial and unruly. Black students of high I.Q.‘s were likely to be described as task-oriented, methodical, persevering, sociable, trustful, submissive, and as low in rebelliousness and verbal aggression. In the discussion of the study the authors noted one important finding of the study was that the unfavorable description of the Black students was associated primarily with sub- jects of low aptitude status and confounded by low socioeconomic status. 17Lois-Ellin Dotta, Earl Schaefer, and Malcolm Davis, "Sex and Scholastic Aptitude as Variables in Teachers' Ratings of the Adjustment and Classroom Behavior of Negro and Other Seventh-Grade Students,” Journal of Educational Psychology 59, No. 2 (1968): 4-101. 32 18 in an experiment studied differences in Rubovits and Maehr teacher-student interaction based on the race of the student. Sixty-six female undergradudates, who were enrolled in a child development course for prospective elementary teachers, taught a lesson to each of four students, two Black and two White. Six of the eight measures of the scale showed significant differences based on race, all six of which favored White students. The teach- ers criticized Black students more, gave less attention to Black students, requested fewer statements from them, encouraged Black students to continue with an idea less often, ignored a greater per- centage of their statements, and praised them less. Brian Coates19 assessed the response of White trainers to Black and to White nine-year-old children. This was a laboratory experiment and the behavior of the children was controlled in the setting. It was found that White males used more negative state- ments when training a Black male child than a White male child. White females did not employ statements differentially across racial groups, although both the males and females judged the personality traits of Black children more negatively than White children. An interesting and disturbing study by Katz showed that in desegregated schools the schools tended to reinforce rather than 18Pamela Rubovits and Martin Maehr, "Pygmalion Black and White," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 25 (1973): 210-18. 1gBrian Coates, "White Adult Behavior Toward Black and White Children," Child Development 43 (1972): 143-54. 33 mitigate the differences of race that exist in the larger society.20 When measuring the amount of verbal interaction in the classroom, White students initiated interactions much more frequently than Black students. Teachers either accepted this state or reinforced the trend. 2] in a study designed to assess the degree Harvey and Slatin, to which teachers' expectations of children's school performance varied with the teacher's perception of the child's social class, found that teachers' expectations were positively and significantly related to the perceived socioeconomic levels of the photos of the children in the study. Teachers were asked to judge photographs of children for "success and failure" categories. Teachers were found to respond more often when choosing students for "success“ than "failure“ categories. Regardless of perceived socioeconomic levels, White children were more often expected to succeed in schools than Black children. Jaegar and Freijo,22 in an interesting related study, tested. whether some findings in sociological literature about the social 20M. Katz, "Attitudinal Modernity, Classroom Power and Status Characteristics: An Investigation," paper presented at American Education and Research Association Meeting, 1973; cited in Brophy and Good, Teacher-Student Relationships: Causes and Conse- guences . 2IDale C. Harvey and Gerald T. Slatin, "The Relationship Between the Child's SES and Teacher Expectations: A Test of Middle Class Bias Hypothesis," Social Forces 54, No. l (1975): 140-59. 22Richard Jaegar and Tom D. Freijo, "Race and Sex as Con- comitants of Composite Halo in Teacher Evaluative Rating of Pupils," Journal of Educational Psychology 67 (1975): 226-37. 34 distance of Whites from Blacks held true among teachers. The major findings of the sociological literature showed that the perceived differences of Whites from Blacks is greater than the perceived difference of Blacks from Whites. Even in school children the per- ceived social distance of White students from Black students was larger than the perceived difference of Black students from White students. Jaegar and Freijo tested the degree of composite halo among teachers. Composite halo as defined for this study was the degree to which holistic judgments of students were made rather than judg- ments that differentiate among a pupil's behaviors. The degree to which a teacher differentiated between behaviors of students and rated each behavior independently of every other behavior defined the degree to which the teacher evaluated the pupil accurately, and constituted less composite halo. Jaegar and Frijo hypothesized an order from least composite halo to most composite halo in the ten groupings listed below: 1. Teachers evaluating pupils of the same race and sex. 2. White teachers evaluating White pupils. 3. Teachers evaluating pupils of the same race. 4. Black teachers evaluating Black pupils. 5. Teachers evaluating pupils of the same race but opposite sex. 6. Black female teachers evaluating White pupils. 7. Black male teachers evaluating White male pupils. 35 8. Black male teachers evaluating White female pupils. 9. White male teachers evaluating Black pupils. 10. White female teachers evaluating Black pupils. The researchers used two statistical techniques to test the hypotheses of the study: factor analysis and multidimensional scaling. Their findings are listed below. Using factor analysis, the group showing the least composite halo was group 10, white female teachers evaluating Black pupils, with group 6, Black female teachers evaluating White pupils, next. The group showing the most composite halo was group 4, Black teachers evaluating Black pupils. The authors in their discussion surmised that because of the relatively few Black teachers teaching White students at the time and place of their collection, it might have been that the Black teachers teaching White students were in White schools because they were very good teachers. They secondly sur- mised that because the socioeconomic status of the student body in predominantly White schools was higher than that in predominantly Black schools, the perceived social distance between the Black teacher and middle-class student may have been less great than in a school of low socioeconomic status. 23 In a subsequent study, Freijo and Jaegar attempted to answer the questions: 23Tom D. Freijo and Richard M. Jaegar, "Social Class and Race as Concomitants of Composite Halo Teachers' Evaluative Rating of Pupils," American Education Research Journal 13 (Winter 1976). 36 1. Is the degree of composite halo in teachers' rat- ings of pupils' progress affected by the race of the teacher and the race and socioeconomic status of the pupils? 2. Is the degree of composite halo in teachers' rat- ings of pupils' progress affected more by socio- economic status differences than by race differences? The found that when the race of teacher and pupil were the same, teachers exhibited significantly less composite halo when rating high socioeconomic status students than when rating low socioeconomic students. When the socioeconomic status of the teachers and pupils was the same (high socioeconomic status) no significant difference in composite halo was found between teachers' rating of pupils of the opposite race and teachers' rating of pupils of the same race. This study supported some of the works found in sociologi- cal literature which contend that socioeconomic status is a more important variable than race in determining social distance and consequently rating accuracy. These studies also seem to show that in some ways teachers, by virtue of training and predilection, may be substantially differ- ent as a group from members of the general populace, who do not have the same training or desire to enter a profession as strongly humanistic as teaching is held to be. Level of Aspiration Level of aspiration was introduced into the set of psycho- logical problems dealing with motivation and personality by Tamara Dembo as a construct for conceptualizing and observing the 37 attainment or non-attainment of goals by an individual within a specific activity. Kurt Lewin, Tamara Dembo, Leon Festinger, and 24 in discussing level of aspiration, described a Pauline Sears, series of events which were considered typical of the experimental situations from which level of aspiration data were gathered. An individual scores 6 when shooting at a target with ring 10 in the center. Next time the individual tries for 8. The individual attains 5, is disappointed, and tries for 6 once more. There are four main points in this sequence of events that are illustrated in Figure 1. In the context of the situation described in the previous paragraph: (1) The individual scored 6 (last performance); (2) setting of goal or level of aspiration (next time try for 8); (3) new performance (individual gets 5); (4) the reaction to the new performance, such as success or failure (disappointment), abandoning the activity, or setting a new level of aspiration (try for 6 again). Kurt Lewin and his associates developed in their paper spe- cific questions around the construct: (1) What determines level of aspiration? (2) What are the reactions to achieving or not achieving a level of aspiration? The important terms in the devel- opment of a theory around the construct were: 24Kurt Lewin, Tamara Dembo, Leon Festinger, and Pauline Sears, "Levels of Aspiration," in Personality and Behavior Disorders, ed. J. McF. Hunt (New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1944), I, pp. 333-78. 38 .:0wpmgwqm< eo Fm>m4 .mucmacmm me_h mePQxH11.F weaned m use N mpm>m4 we mmocmcmeewa 0» uwpmfiwm mc=FWmd Lo mmmoozm mo mememu - J xocmamcomwo acmEconu< aucmamcomwo Poem _ _ _ _ mocmagoecmm zmz mucmscowcoa co_gmcwam< we mocmscoecma op cowpommm zmz ~w>m4 mcwpumm umm4 _ _ _ _ L _ 4 _ e m N p 39 Action goal: What the individual feels he can do. Criterion level of aspiration at a given time (when the individual tries for 8). Ideal goal: What the individual would really like to do (would like to hit center, 10). Inner discrepancy: When the distance between the ideal goal and the action goal becomes wider, this constitutes the inner discrepancy. Confidence level: What the individual believes to be the probability of his chances of reaching the goal, or the "subjective degree of probability." Lewin and his associates acknowledged some difficulty in obtaining a direct measure of level of aspiration, admitting that one of the best measures available is what the subject says, realizing, of course, that what the subject says may or may not be a true statement of his real ideal goal. In order to set a frame- work for inquiry of true goals and verbal goals within the experi- ments they conducted, they noted that the inquiry about the goal should occur during the individual's performance of a task. They felt the time of inquiry to be key because of the possibility of rationalization, particularly after failure at a task. An important result of the collaboration of Lewin, Dembo, Festinger, and Sears was the development of the Valence Theory of Level of Aspiration. The valence theory explains: l. The tendency to seek a relatively high level of aspiration. 2. The tendency of the level of aspiration to go up only to certain limits. 3. The tendency of the level of aspiration to stay out of an area too difficult and too easy. 40 The Valence Theory of Level of Aspiration involves the maxi- mum relative valence of variation (the weight assigned to the diffi- culty of success or failure at each level of the task) within the same activity. In situations where the individual makes a choice between different activities, a number of factors may determine the valences or attractiveness of the goal. The individual faces the possbility of success or failure at a complete task or any level of a task. The weight or valence of this future success or failure is a basic element in the level of aspiration decision. The individual is not only influenced by the attractiveness of the decision, but the probability of its occurrence as he sees it. The probability of success increases with the decreasing difficulty of the task and the probability of failure increases as the level of difficulty of the task increases. The valences of success and failure are influ- enced and modified by the probability of the occurrence of the events. Mathematically, the 50-50 level of probability of failure or success is identical with what Lewin et al. call the "most proba- ble achievement." When the individual uses realistic judgment, the expectation level will be placed somewhere within the bounds of his/ her ability. Lewin and associates concluded that using the distribution of valences developed in their theory, an individual's level of aspiration should lie close to the boundary zone of the ability of the individual at that time. They concluded also that their experi- ments had shown that the whole probability scale had sufficient weight to keep the level of aspiration close to the zone of what the 41 individual could realistically accomplish on the levels of a given task. They cautioned, however, that individuals differ in person- ality to the degree that they are motivated to achieve success or avoid failure, and that these differences decree that it would be incorrect to assume that the valences of success or failure are always inverse. That is, depending upon whether an individual is highly motivated to achieve success as opposed to an individual who is motivated to achieve failure might choose a task outside his "most probable success" area and succeed at the task. Achievement-Motivation Theory Achievement-motivation theory is considered to be an exten- sion of the work of Lewin and his associates' resultant valence theory of level of aspiration. It is important to this study in that it was used in later experiments as the basis for theory about career aspiration. The theory of achievement motivation attempts to account for what causes (the determinants) the direction, the mag- nitude, and persistence of behavior of an individual in the domain 25 The theory applies when an of achievement-oriented situations. individual's performance will be evaluated (by himself or others) either favorably (success) or unfavorably (failure). The important concepts in achievement-motivation theory revolve around what Atkinson describes as a "disposition" called achievement motivation theory, as it is in level of aspiration theory, is the individual's probability of success (PS). The 25John W. Atkinson, An Introduction to Motivation, ”A Theory of Motivation Achievement" (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1964). 42 individual's probability of success, as conceived in the theory, can be measured in numbers ranging from O to 1.00. When an individual is almost certain of success, the individual's subjective probability of success is very high, e.g., PS = .90. When the individual's sub- jective probability of success is low an example would be P5 = .10. If the subjective probability of success and failure are relatively equal outcomes, it might be weighted as PS = .50. An assumption of motivation theory is that the individual carries with him/her a motive to achieve success (Ms) from situation to situation and it combines multiplicatively with the two situational influences such that the tendency to approach success (TS) equals the motivation to achieve success (MS) x the subjective probability of success (PS) x the incentive value of success (IS), or T5 = M5 x PS x 15’ Since, as Lewin, Escalone, and Festinger noted in the 1944 work on levels of aspiration, the accomplishment of a difficult task is ordinarily more attractive to the individual than accom- plishing an easy task, the difficulty of a task is represented as Ps (the probability of success at achieving the task). The proba- bility of success as it appears to the individual is represented as 1.00 - PS. Incentive value is then greater, the more difficult the task. Incentive value is represented in relationship to the probability of success (PS). Incentive value is equal to 1.00 minus the probability of success, or IS = 1.00 - PS. An illustration of the concept would be: if PS = .90 ------- I = .10 and, conversely, if PS = .10 ------- S IS = .90. 43 If, then, the tendency to approach success (Ts) equals the motivation to achieve success (MS) x the subjective probability of success (PS) x the incentive value of success (IS) - T5 = MS x PS x IS--and it is assumed that the incentive value of success (IS) equals 1.00 minus the probability of success--IS = 1.00 - Ps’ then the tendency to approach success should be strongest on a task of intermediate difficulty. If a weight were assigned to the motiva- tion to achieve success times the probability of success times the incentive value of success, the product would be greatest when the probability of success is .50. The following table illustrates this idea: TABLE l.--Achievement-Motivation Theory. Tendency to achieve success (T ) as a joint function of Motive to achieve success (M ), Expectanéy of success (PsI. and Incentive value of success (IS) for individuals in whom M5 = 8. Assumed is that IS = l - P . (TS = MS x PS x Ix) 5 Task PS IS When MS = 1 When Ms = 8 A .90 .10 .09 .72 B .70 .30 .21 1.68 C .50 .50 .25 2.00 D .30 .70 .21 1.68 E .10 .90 .09 .72 44 The important extension of achievement-motivation theory into studies of aspiration and achievement in society was made by c. Mahone (1960).26 Mahone hypothesized that the degree of realism of a subject's vocational aspiration was the discrepancy between the subject's estimate of his own general ability and the level of gen- eral ability the subject felt was needed to be successful in the career to which he aspired. This, of course, can be related back to Lewin et al. and their sequence of goal setting related to past performance. Mahone's process of ordering occupations in order of difficulty and prestige using 100 college students as subjects was similar to the ordering of occupations which sociologists use to define social status and prestige. The principle which applies from achievement-motivation theory is that the more difficult the occupa- tion, the lower the probability of success. The lower the proba- bility of success, the higher the incentive value of achieving it. The assumption of achievement-motivation theory IS = 1.00 - PS leads to the prediction that the correlation between the high prestige or level of difficulty of an occupation, and the probability of success (ease of obtaining the goal) should be -l.00. Mahone's data from his 100 college students showed the correlation between the probability of success (PS) at different occupations correlated at -.85 with the rank ordering, prestigewise, of these occupations as gathered by sociologists from national surveys. When he used only the scores of students whose achievement was high and text 26L. C. H. Mahone, "Fear of Failure and Unrealistic Voca- tional Aspirations," Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology (1960): 253-56. 45 anxiety low the correlation was -.90. The correlations obtained by Mahone were sufficiently close to justify the assumption that the occupational hierarchy can be viewed as a series of tasks which differ in difficulty. Atkinson further explicated Mahone's experiment by asserting that the ordering of occupations, which sociologists use, and which have been found to be highly similar and stable in all modern indus- trialized societies, may be viewed as a hierarchical ordering of tasks which differ in apparent difficulty and have the same concep- tual properties as a ringtoss game. Thus the theory of achievement- motivation should apply directly to the problem of explaining career aspirations. An individual aspiring to an occupation demanding much more ability than he seemingly has is comparable to the selection of a very difficult task, that is, one which has a very low probability of success for him/her. The distance between the individual's aspiration and seeming ability constitute a positive goal dis- crepancy. An individual selecting an occupational aspiration far below his seeming capability implies that the individual has a nega- tive goal discrepancy in selecting a task that is too easy. Persons strong in achievement motivation, but weak in the motive to avoid failure would set "realistic" levels of vocational aspiration. Those setting less realistic goals, either high or too low, tend to do so using this as a protective strategy. If the goal is obviously far beyond the individual's grasp the failure to achieve the goal may be rationalized by the individual as being far too difficult 46 to possibly attain. Setting a goal level too low insures success even if at a very easy task for that individual. The literature profiling the vocational/occupational aspira- tions of Black adults and youth constitutes a disparate body of information. There were a number of studies undertaken during the Civil Rights Movement in the 19605 designed to find out what were the educational and occupational aspirations of Blacks and other lower socioeconomic status Americans. A profile of the more salient studies found surprisingly the occupational and educational aspira- ‘tions of disadvantaged Blacks to be higher than those of Whites of similar socioeconomic status. Antonovsky and Lerner,27 in account- ing for this in their study, suggested that the higher aspirations could be accounted for by several factors. Among them was the apparent dissociation of Black youth from Black parents as role models. They drew on the example found often among immigrant cul- tures, the need or desire on behalf of both the youth and the adult, in the Black and immigrant cultures, to "do better than" the parents had been able to do. Educational and vocational aspirations were seen in both Black and immigrant cultures as the key to upward mobility. They attributed the drive for higher occu- pational and educational aspiration in the Black community as part of the lack of self-esteem which accompanies being part of a minority group which has psychologically accepted its inferior 27Aaron Antonovsky and Melvin J. Lerner, "Occupational Aspirations of Lower Class Negro and White Youth," Social Problems 7 (1959): 132-38. 47 status. Thus the drive for success could be seen as an expression of the search for enhanced self-esteem. Gottleib28 disparaged the notion that Black lower-class parents are negative work role models for their children. He found that among Black and White lower socioeconomic status youth, they saw their parents as being understanding and encouraging of their occupational aspirations. The problem as he perceived it revolved around the parent's inability to assist their children in clarifying their goals. Much was made of Moynihan's29 celebrated report, which char- acterized the Black father as a poor and at best dubious role model for Black younqsters. While much was made of the role of the father in family stability, it was also pointed out that Black families seem to have a disproportionate number of homes with mothers only. 30 pointed out that perhaps the vocational psy- Moulton and Stewart chologists may be overestimating the influence of family insta- bility and, conjunctively, family role models on upwardly mobile. and low mobile Black youth. Moulton and Stewart assert that a "high proportion of a group of highly successful Black males came from families in which the father was frequently 'absent' or not 28David Gottleib, "Poor Youth 00 Want to Be Middle Class But It's Not Easy," Personnel and Guidance Journal 46 (1967): 116-22. 29Daniel P. Moynihan, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" (Washington, D.C.: Office of Policy Planning and Research, U.S. Department of Labor, 1965). 30R. W. Moulton and R. H. Stewart, "Parents as Models for Low Mobile Black Males," Vocational Guidance Quarterly 18 (1971): 165-76. 48 appreciably present at a11.‘I They concluded that matriarchal family structures were capable of producing “highly achieving males who may acquire many of the necessary skills and values through identification with their mothers." 3] posited that the high aspirations Antonovsky and Lerner of Black youth are due in part to the limited access of minority group members into middle level skilled trade occupations, thus creating an ethnic group of very highly trained professional indi- viduals or individuals who form the masses, with very little in between. In a study designed to measure whether the vocational or occupational interest of Blacks differs from that of White people, Garfield and Brink hypothesized that the difference between the Whites who chose ”thing"-oriented occupations and Blacks who chose "person"-oriented occupations may be related to racial backgrounds and values. Brazziel32 found among Black college students that, of a number who chose teaching as a career, over half noted that it was their second choice, but knew of the limitations in other occupations. Bayer33 reported the trends of Black college freshmen had not changed very much from 1968 to 1971. Whereas Black college 31 32William F. Brazziel, Jr., "Occupational Choices in the Negro College," Personnel and Guidance Journal 39 (1961): 739—42. 33A. E. Bayer, "The Black College Freshman: Characteristics and Recent Trends," American Council on Education Reports, 8, 1 (Washington: ACE, 1972). Antonovsky and Lerner, pp. 132-38. 49 freshmen continued to choose majors in the social sciences, educa- tion, business or health fields, non-Black college freshmen continued to select majors in the physical sciences, agriculture, the biologi- cal sciences or engineering. Differences in actual career choices followed the same pattern. 34 in their comparative monograph between Dreger and Miller, Black and White subjects, noted that the studies have revealed that Black parents hold high aspirations for their children, the children hold high aspirations, but when concrete plans were assessed, Blacks have been found to be more pessimistic and more realistic. That is, while holding high aspirations, Black people when assessed have planned less often than their White counterparts and appear to be less achievement oriented. 35 in summarizing the profile of the Black Elsie J. Smith, person in vocational research, questioned the current research para- digms used to measure Black aspirations. She speaks to their limitations because they fail to give us deep structure clues about the Black individuals' concept of work, their process and reasons for making choices, and interest patterns. It may be erroneous to generalize vocational theories from White people to Black people. She does not advocate a separate 34Ralph M. Dreger and Kent S. Miller, “Comparative Psycho- logical Studies of Negroes and Whites in the United States: 1959- 1965," Psychological Bulletin Monograph Supplement 70 (1968). 35Elsie J. Smith, "Profile of the Black Individual in Vocational Literature," Journal of Vocational Behavior 6 (1973): 41-59. 50 theory for the vocational development of Blacks, but rather a dif- ferent frame of reference, so as to pool what knowledge we do have into a coherent statement. Locus of Control The construct locus of control defines one personality variable that determines the degree of which the individual attrib- utes what happens to him as something over which he has control, or attributes what happens to him to forces outside his control. The difference is referred to as "internal versus external" control of reinforcement. Julius B. Rotter, in his classic monograph on locus of control, states: The effect of a reinforcement following some behavior on the part of a human subject, in other words, is not a simple stamping-in process but depends upon whether or not the person perceives a causal relationship between his own behavior and the reward. A perception of causal relation- ship need not be all or none but can vary in degree. When a reinforcement is perceived by the subject as following some action of his own but not being entirely contingent upon his actions, then in our culture, it is typically perceived as the result of luck, chance, fate as under the control of powerful others, or as unpredictable because of the great complexity of the forces surrounding him . . . this belief is an external control. If the person per- ceives the event is contingent upon hgg own behavior . . . we have termed this internal control. The construct locus of control generates from social learning theory, which is considered to describe a generalized expectancy operating across a number of situations which relates to whether or not the individual feels some sense of power over what happens to 36Julius B. Rotter, "Generalized Expectancies for Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcement," Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, Whole No. 609, 80, 1969. 51 him. The sociological and psychological investigation of this con- struct has involved the variables of race and social class as power- ful determinants of how the individual perceives his influence. Battle and Rotter37 found that in school situations: (1) lower middle-class Black children were more external than middle-class White children; (2) middle-class children were more internal than lower-class children; (3) lower-class Black children with high I.Q.‘s were more external than lower-class White children with high I.Q.‘s. Because of the small number in the sample, the authors recommended caution in the acceptance of these findings and posited that lower- class bright Black children might develop extreme external attitudes as a defense mechanism against perceived reduced choices for cul- tural or other rewards. In another study similar to Battle and Rotter's, Shaw and Uhi,38 using the Bailer Locus of Control Scale for Children, found that middle-class White subjects were significantly more internal than any of the other three groups (lower-class Blacks and Whites and middle-class Blacks). No other group contrasts reached signifi- cance. There is consistency among the two studies in that internality tended to be associated with higher socioeconomic status and majority group membership. 37 38R. L. Shaw and N. P. Uhl, "Control of Reinforcement and Academic Achievement," Journal of Educational Research (1964): 226-28. Battle and Rotter, p. 20. 52 Rotter initially hypothesized that the locus of control variable would be of major importance in understanding the nature of the learning process in different kinds of learning situations. Crandall, Katovsky and Crandall,39 in attempting to ascer- tain the degree of internality or externality with children, found that it would be important in their research to limit the sources of external control to those persons who most often come face-to- face with children, their parents, teachers, and peers. Their restrictions had to do with, first, the lack of standardized informa- tion about children's generality in their belief in the various kinds of external forces, although Rotter et al. have shown such evidence in adult populations. Secondly, from a developmental perspective, it was important to focus on children's belief in the viableness of their own actions as compared with that of others in their immediate environment. It would not be surprising, however, to find that infants and preschoolers, if they could do so, would ascribe rein- forcement responsibility to powerful others in their environment. But with age and experience, most children should begin to feel that their own activities are often important in the reinforcement they receive. Crandall et a1. limited the context of their environment to the academic setting, thus further restricting the other possi- ble environmental milieu which might potentially become part of the context. 39Virginia C. Crandall, Walter Katkovsky, and Vaughn J. Crandall, "Children's Belief in Their Own Control of Reinforcement in Intellectual-Academic Achievement Situations," Child Development 36 (1965): 91-109. 53 The work of Atkinson et al. in achievement motivation sug- gests that individuals who are high in achievement motivation prob- ably have some belief in their ability to influence the outcomes of their efforts. Wolk and DuCette,40 however, in a study which included two separate samples and two measures of n-achievement motivation found achievement motivation to be unrelated to locus of 4] using the control except in one subsample. Pedhazur and Wheeeler, Bailer Locus of Control Scale for Children and the Graphic Expres- sion Scale, found a small but significant correlation between locus of control and achievement motivation. Carol S. Dweck42 investigated the phenomenon of learned helplessness in students, in an experiment designed to ascertain whether such students perceived themselves to be helpless in their ability to influence the rate of their success in classroom situ- ations. The subjects were identified as "helpless" as characterized by the expectation of failure and the deterioration of performance in the face of failure. The two treatments given to two groups of students were (1) the Success Only Treatment, that was expected to raise the child's expectation of success, thereby enabling him to 40Stephen Walk and Joseph DuCette, "Lows of Control and Achievement Motivation: Theoretical Overlap and Methodological Divergence," Psychological Reports 29: 755-58. 41L. Pelthazur and L. Wheeler, "Locus of Perceived Control and Need Achievement," Perceptual and Motor Skills 33: 1281-82. 42Carl S. Dweck, "The Role of Expectations and Attributions in the Alleviation of Learned Helplessness," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31, No. 4 (1975): 674-85. 54 sustain his performance despite failure; (2) the Attribute Retrain- ing Treatment, that was designed to alter responses to failure. Subjects with equal ability from the same classrooms as the treat- ment group, but characterized by their persistence at a task, were used as a control group. The control group enabled the researchers to differentiate how and how much helpless children differed in their task persistence from the treatment group. The more external or helpless subjects after treatment still differed from all per- sistent subjects on all measures. Between the two treatments, the students who were repeatedly given praise or other success responses did not show any consistent improvement in their response to failure, and displayed a marked impairment of performance following failure. The subjects who were taught to attribute failure to insufficient effort were able to persist after failure in the test situations. The study had a relatively narrow focus of the student's achievement behavior in that it was performed under experimental conditions. Another of the study's limitations was that because the study was conducted during the near end of the school year there was little time to determine the "overtime" effects of the attribution treat- ment under regular school conditions. The significance of the study was that it spoke to what kind of feedback was most effective if students were to sustain in persistence at a task. 43 Allan S. Bellack, in a study designed to provide further information on how internals and externals reinforce themselves as a 43Allan S. Bellack, "Self-Evaluation, Self-Reinforcement, and Locus of Control," Journal of Research on Personality 9 (1975): 158-67. 55 function of their own actions, found that (l) internals administered significantly more positive reinforcement to themselves than exter- nals under the conditions of the experiment; (2) externals admin- istered significantly more negative reinforcement to themselves than internals under the conditions of the experiment, when negative reinforcement was called for; (3) when the subjects had the oppor- tunity to reinforce themselves positively or negatively, internals gave themselves significantly more positive self-reinforcement than negative self-reinforcement, while externals gave themselves similar amounts of each. Bellack submits that this pattern has implications for the behavior of externals in real life in that most real-life situations do not provide for positive or negative external rein- forcement following events, or the reinforcement may be subtle or implied. Reimanis,44 in a 1970 study, suggests that a positive internal control is a necessary condition to the development of achievement striving in a school situation. When a child believes that the rewards or punishments he receives are in large measure due to his own efforts, he would then try to do things that minimize punishment and maximize reward. It would be expected that an internally oriented student would do those things that earn a posi- tive evaluation. That evaluation may take the form of additional teacher praise, being assigned highly prized classroom tasks, or receiving better grades. Conversely, a student who perceives no 44Gunars Reimanis, "School Performance, Intelligence, and Locus of Control Scale," Psychology in the Schools 10 (1973): 201-21. 56 relationship between his behavior and positive or negative school or teacher feedback that he receives will attribute little or no maning to achievement striving. The findings of the research of investigators attempting to show a positive relationship between internal locus of control and school achievement have not been consistent, nor have the findings of the research attempting to show a positive relationship between internal locus of control and intelligence been consistent. Reimanis reports that a good deal of the inconsistency in research may be due to the differences in methods used to assess locus of control. In a study designed to measure the interrelationship among the measures of locus of control, Reimanis found that there were sufficient dif- ferences among the scales to yield different correlations between school achievement and locus of control. The IAR scale seems best suited to assess locus of control for school activities since the items on the scale measure school situations. While the findings of the relationship between school achievement, intelligence and locus of control are discrepant, the cause may lie in the variableness and suitability of the current measures and not in the fact that 46 the relationships do not exist. Chance,4S Coleman, and 45J. Chance, "Mother-Child Relations and Children's Achievement," Terminal Report USDHS, Grant No. MHO 5268, 1965. 46d. S. Coleman et al., "Equality of Educational Oppor- tunity" (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, Superin- tendent of Documents, Catalog No. FS 5238:38001, 1966). 57 McGhee and Crandall47 have shown a positive relationship between internal control and school achievement in children. Chandler48 reports having found no studies which investiga- ted the degree to which internal-external locus of control develop- ment might be a forerunner of intellectual development or vice versa. DuCette and Walk in an important study felt it necessary to qualify the generally held notion that internality is a positive characteristic and externality is not. They held that a distinction must be made between different types of internality, especially for minority groups, and that no simple linear relationship exists between internality and adaptive behavior. The question of their paper was: Is there an interaction between locus of control and environmental milieu in predicting such educationally relevant vari- ables as levels of aspiration and risk taking? DuCette and Wolk49 argued for a more complex definition of the locus of control construct. They reasoned that an "internal" person does not simply perceive that environment can be controlled. Rather, he accurately perceives whether the environment can be con- trolled and then responds to this perception with appropriate behavior. 47p. E. McGhee and v. v. Crandall, "Beliefs in Internal- External Control of Reinforcements and Academic Performance," Child Development 39 (1968): 91-202. 48Theodore A. Chandler, "Locus of Control: A Proposal for Change," Psychology in the Schools 12, No. 3 (1975): 334-38. 49Joseph DuCette and Stephen Wolk, "Locus of Control and Level of Aspiration in Black and White Children," Review of Educa- tional Research (1972): 493-504. 58 The classic definition of the internal individual holds that this person feels himself to be influential in determining the out- come of an undertaking. The heart of the Wolk/DuCette argument contends that in order for the locus of control construct to have meaning as a per- sonality variable, an internal person should act the same in whatever set of circumstances he finds himself. Their reinterpretation of the locus of control construct implied that the genotypic consequences of an internal-external orientation were always the same, but must take into account what is rational for the individual in the environment. In their study, they found that Black external adolescents behaved more like White internals. Black internals behaved more like White externals. In this case, DuCette and Wolk reasoned that it may have been accurate and adaptive behavior for the internal Black to perceive that he was not completely "master of his fate" and that the correlation between action and reward may not have been strong. They found that they could generate two types of conclusions from their data: (1) How individual difference variable means different things for different people depending upon their environment. Their data would show that in some way the White internal was essentially the same as the Black external. (2) Or that the internal (or external) person does not differ as a func- tion of social setting but instead acts the same, in that both follow some deeper rule. 59 Summary The review of literature has shown that there are diverse input variables which are varyingly powerful in the formulation of teacher expectations. Among these are such naturalistic factors as the sex of the student and teacher, the physical attractiveness of the student and the two of interest to this study, race and socio- economic status of students. There is a note of caution throughout the literature that the nature of teacher expectations ia a complex phenomenon mitigated by the characterstics of teachers and students. The selected literature on the aspirations of minorities constituted a disparate body of information with disparate discus- sions from the authors about their findings. Some authors felt that the high levels of vocational aspira- tion among minority students was not supported by adequate, realis- tic, parental planning and thus constituted relatively low achievement motivation. The lack of concrete planning was inter- preted as reaching for a high goal that could be rationalized in the fact of failure. Other authors have called for a new, more deep structure look at the aspirations of the minorities. Their research has shown that contrary to popular belief, one-parent, matriarchal homes have produced a higher percentage of Black achievers. Vocational psychologists are questioning the use of White frames of reference to explain Black aspirations. The locus of control construct as conceptualized by Rotter prompted a great deal of research to investigate related psycho- logical constructs. The differences in the measuring scales have 60 been sufficient enough to yield conflicting results. The Crandall- Katkovsky Intellectual-Achievement Responsibility Scale differs from others in that it limits the focus of internality/externality to academic and intellectual achievement responsibility, thus restricting the broad use of the construct to a relatively specific context, the classroom. Some researchers have advanced a reinterpretation of the locus of control concept. While internal individuals will behave in more adaptive ways, in all situations, it is reasonable to assume that given situational and environmental contexts, the classical internal-external orientation may give way to a deeper rule that humans follow. In some situations an internal individual may accurately perceive that he has little ability to influence the outcome of his actions. An internal individual might accurately perceive his ability to influence a situation in his home more like the classic internal. The same individual might accurately per- ceive his influence in other situations to be limited. CHAPTER III METHODS AND PROCEDURES Population and Sample The population from which the sample subjects were drawn consisted of students and teachers from four medium-sized urban school districts. The four school districts in the study are dis- tricts in the Middle Cities Education Association. The Middle Cities Education Association is a consortium of sixteen urban school systems with diverse racial and ethnic populations. Schools Within the Sample The schools within the sample were selected by the research offices and other appropriate central staff personnel within each school district. The criterion for selection that each district was asked to apply was the selection of a school with a higher percent of ADC students for that district, and a school with a low percent of ADC students for that district. There were nine schools from four school districts in the sample. The purpose of selecting schools with the criterion stated was to get a range of students of varying socioeconomic levels. 61 62 Teachers in the Sample The teachers in the sample taught either fifth or sixth grade classes. These teachers agreed to participate. Students in the Sample The students in the sample were randomly selected from the principal's copy of the classroom teacher's class lists. Each third student in the list was selected until there were six students per teacher. An alternate student was added to the list in the event of the absence of another student. The Final Identification of the Student and Teacher Population Based on the information received from teachers and stu- dents, the identification process for inclusion in the statistical analysis was to: 1. Select those teachers whose grouping from the random selection of students yielded both minority and majority students. 2. Select those students for whom there was socio- economic status data available. Socioeconomic Status of Students Students' socioeconomic status levels were defined by using the occupations of their mothers, fathers, or whomever was the legal guardian of the student. 63 These occupations were then expressed on numerical indices from the Duncan Socio-Economic Index Scale.1 The scale ranks occu- pations from 1 to 100. For purposes of ranking in this study, class intervals were formed by using the first digit of the occupation's value on the index as ten-point intervals. In this study, an occupation with an index value greater than five was ranked as high socioeconomic status. Occupations with index values of three and four were ranked as middle or medium socioeconomic status. Occupations with index values of one or two were ranked as low socioeconomic status. (See Appendix F.) Procedure for Testing the Hypotheses Preceding entry into each school district, the Superinten- dent of Schools and/or his designee were contacted and apprised of the nature of the study. The research offices of each school dis- trict were then contacted. Copies of each of the questionnaires were then mailed to the research offices of the districts, and/or an appropriate central staff person. Schools in each school district identified by district officials as Title I (low socioeconomic status), non-Title I, inner city (medium socioeconomic status), and non-Title I, non-inner city (high socioeconomic status) were contacted by the district's research offices. Copies of the instrument and directions were sent by each school district's research offices to the appropriate 'Aibert a. Reiss with Otis Dudley Duncan, Paul K. Hatt, and Cecil C. North, Occupations and Social Status (New York: The Free Press, 1961). 64 school principals. Each principal was visited in each school district to: 1. Discuss the most expedient and efficient method of operating within the school with the princi- pal. 2. Answer any questions that may be asked by the staff. 3. Randomly select the students in the sample. 4. Select a date and time to return and administer all instruments. On the second visit to each school in each district: 1. All students in the sample were assembled in a room not being used for a class at that time. 2. Attendance was taken by the researcher and at that time the student's race was noted. 3. The two student instruments (The Intellectual Achieve- ment Responsibility Questionnaire and the Student Selection of Occupations Questionnaire) were administered to all students by the researcher. 4. Teacher instruments were distributed to teachers at this time. The names of the students on whom the teachers were to respond had previously been written on the student questionnaires when the teachers received them. 5. All student instruments were collected when they were completed and students returned to their classrooms. 6. Teacher instruments were collected before leaving the school. Any instruments not completed by teachers were returned to the principal by teachers. They were then mailed to the researcher. 65 Instruments The teachers in the sample responded to the Teacher Ques- tionnaire (see Appendix A) on six randomly selected students from their classrooms. There are ten statements on the questionnaire to which the teacher could respond. The statements were: 1. When this student is given a difficult assignment, he/she is likely to work hard at achieving the assignment. 2. This student sees a relationship between the amount of work done and how well the assignment is accomplished. 3. This student will make an effort to understand all parts of a lesson. 4. This student will study to insure a good chance of doing well on an assignment. 5. This student is likely to try harder when encouraged by parents and teachers to do so. 6. This student is likely to set his/her level of career choice as one he/she can achieve. 7. This student will select a career demanding more aca- demic preparation than high school. 8. When faced with a very difficult schoolwork assignment, this student's motivation to accomplish it would be very high. 9. If this student sets a high goal for him/herself on an assignment, and falls somewhat short of the goal, this student would set a subsequent goal on the same task, or a similar task, almost as high as the original goal. 66 10. If this student sets a high goal for him/herself on a schoolwork assignment and falls somewhat short of the goal, this student would set a subsequent goal on the same task, or a similar task, below his original goal. The teacher could select among possible responses on a Likert-type scale. The possible responses to each statement were: very likely, likely, unlikely, very unlikely, and not applicable. Statements 1-5 are designed to ascertain the teacher's perception of the degree of responsibility the student assumes for success in aca- demic schoolwork. They are taken directly from the student Intel- lectual Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire by Crandall, Katkovsky and Crandall. They are adapted as statements from the student questions. Statement 6 is to ascertain the teacher's expec- tation of how likely the student is to select a realistic career choice. Statement 7 is to ascertain the teacher's expectation ofthe student's level of aspiration. Statements 8, 9, and 10 are to ascertain the teacher's perception of the student's achievement motivation level. The weight attached to each possible response category ranged from 5 to 1: very likely likely unlikely very unlikely not applicable II II II II II de-bU'l Teachers responded as well to six demographic questions about themselves. The purpose of gathering this information was to be able to distinguish between characteristics of teachers and their responses on students (Appendix B). 67 The questions were: 1. Years of experience 0-5 +5 2. Are you a member of one of the national Yes minority groups which are a part of the No population listed below? 3. If yes, please indicate which one: American Indian Black Spanish-surnamed Persons of Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, or Spanish descent 4. Do you hold any of the following degrees Yes from a Michigan college or university? No 5. If yes, please indicate which one: B.A. M.A. Ed.S. Ph.D. 6. Have you lived over half your life in: Urban area Non- urban area The students in the sample were randomly selected from the principal's copy of the rolls of the classroom teachers by the researcher. Six students were selected from the classrooms of each teacher subject in the sample. In each school, students selected to participate in the sample were administered the Crandall, Katkovsky Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale and the Student Selec- ton of Occupation Questionnaire at the same time and at a single sitting (see Appendices C and E). The purpose of administering the Crandall, Katkovsky Intel- lectual Achievement Responsibility Scale was to ascertain the stu- dent's perception of his/her ability to influence academic 68 achievement (locus of control). The purpose in administering the Student Selection of Occupation Questionnaire was to ascertain the student's level of aspiration and the degree of realism of the stu- dent's level of aspiration. The Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale* was developed by Virginia C. Crandall, Walter Katkovsky, and Vaughn J. 2 to assess children's beliefs that they are responsible for Crandall their intellectual-academic successes and failures. While the gen- eral construct locus of control as conceived by Rotter and as measured by other scales include a variety of external agents such as luck, fate, social forces, other significant persons, the IAR limits the source of external control to those persons who are most often in contact with the student, his parents, teachers, and peers. The scale as 34 forced-choice items, each representative of an occurrence in the lives of children. The scale is constructed to sample an equal number of posi- tive and negative events based upon the developers' assumption that the dynamics involved in taking credit for causing good things to happen might be different from those operative in accepting blame for unpleasant consequences. The IAR thus assesses a total self- responsibility score, as well as separate subscores which could be *The Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale will hereafter be referred to as IAR. 2Virginia C. Crandall, Walter Katkovsky, and Vaughn J. Crandall, "Children's Belief in Their Own Control of Reinforcements in Intellectual-Academic Situations," Child Development 36 (1965): 91-109. 69 attained for beliefs internal responsibility for successes score (l+ score) and for failure (1- score). The scale is constructed so that positive event items are indicated by a plus sign and negative events by a minus sign follow- ing the "1." The 1+ score is obtained by summing all positive events for which the child takes credit. The 1- score is obtained by summing all negative events for which the child takes blame. The total score is the sum of the 1+ and l- subscores. The total score is of interest to this study. The "Student Selection of Occupations Questionnaire" was 3 "National Compari- adapted from Alex Inkeles and Peter H. Rossi's sons of Occupational Prestige." The clusters or groupings of occu- pations are based on those found to be represented in modern, technological societies (see Appendices D and E). 4 note in their study of occupational pres- Fossum and Moore tige rankings that there has been stability in the ordinal rankings of occupations. They also note that while there have been some shifts in rankings over time because of the declining demand for persons entering some occupations. only one occupation, electrician, has shifted one standard deviation in the past 50 years, when occu- pational ranks are normalized through Guilford's C-scale. 3Alex Inkeles and Peter H. Rossi, "National Comparison of Occupational Prestige," Journal of American Sociology (1956): 329-33. 4John A. Fossum and Michael L. Moore, "The Stability of Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Occupational Prestige Rankings," Journal of Vocational Behavior 7 (1975): 305-11. 70 The entry level difficulty on the "Student Selection of Occupations Questionnaire" is based on the years of formal academic preparation necessary before an individual can enter this career. The weighting of the student's choice of careers ranged from 5 to l. Careers demanding college training on the questionnaire (Doctor, Scientists, Teacher, Minister, Architect, Engineer, Factory Owner, Computer Specialist, Accountant) were rated as five points. Middle range occupations (Civil Servants, Policemen, Firemen, Mail Carriers) are rated as four points. Careers in the entertainment and athletic fields (Singer, Dancer, Professional Athlete, TV Announcer, Commer- cial Artist) are rated as three points. Trade careers and clerical careers (Electrician, Bricklayers, Carpenters, Trained Machinist, Bookkeepers, Traveling Salesmen, etc.) were rated as two points. Other career choices in the farm category and in lower service occu- pations (Farm Workers, Farm Owners and Operators, Bartenders, Bus Drivers, Waiter, Waitress, etc.) were rated as one point. Students were asked to rate what they thought was the highest educational level needed to enter each career, which career they would like to be, and which they think they would be. The first column, which indicates that the student would like to be, was to assess the stu- dent's level of aspiration. The third column, which the student indicates he can successfully be, was used to assess whether a dif- ference exists between the student's level of aspiration and real expectations. The second column, in which the student is to indi- cate the mpst_education the student thought was needed to enter this career, was used to discern whether the student had a realistic 71 idea of the amount of education needed to gain what he/she aspired to be. Design of the Study Standardized achievement data on the students in the sample were obtained from the research offices of each of the four school districts in the sample. The purpose of collecting achievement test data on the students in the sample was to objectively discern the degree of realism of the students' occupational choices. After raw data had been tabulated on the teacher and student instruments, the SPSS computer program was used to perform the sta- tistical computations. The variables on which teachers responded on White and Black students were symbolically represented and will be presented on the data tables as: TLOCW = Teachers on Locus of Control of White Students TLOCB = Teachers on Locus of Control of Black Students TLASPW = Teachers on the Level of Aspiration of White Students TLASPB = Teachers on the Level of Aspiration of Black Students TREALW = Teachers on the Career Reality of White Students TREALB = Teachers on the Career Reality of Black Students TACHMW = Teachers on Achievement Motivation of White Students TACHMB = Teachers on Achievement Motivation of Black Students 72 The symbolic representations of the student variables were: SLASPW = Student Level of Aspiration of White Students SLASPB = Student Level of Aspiration of Black Students SLOCW = Student Locus of Control on White Students SLOCB = Student Locus of Control on Black Students Socioeconomic status of students will be numerically repre- sented beside each variable. (1. 2) (3. 4) (5. 6) Low socioeconomic status Medium socioeconomic status High socioeconomic status There were no Black students in the study whose socioeconomic level was six. The t-test of significance was used to test the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: There will be no difference between teacher percep- tions of White and Black students on the amount of responsibility taken by each for academic success in the classroom (internal/external locus of control). Hypothesis 2: There will be no difference in teacher expectations of the level of aspiration of White and Black students. Hypothesis 3: There will be no difference in teacher expectations on the degree of realism they ascribe to the level of aspiration of White and Black students. Main effect ratings between White and Black students will be tested using the t-test of significance on locus of control and level of aspiration. 73 The mean values, mean differences, and standard deviations will be used to describe the findings for the following hyptheses: Hypothesis 4: There will be no difference between teacher percep- tions and expectations of White and Black students of similar socioeconomic levels on locus of control, level of aspiration, and student realism. Hypothesis 6: There will be no difference between White and Black students of similar socioeconomic status on their level of aspiration. Hypothesis 7: There will be no difference between White and Black students of similar socioeconomic status on their locus of control. The Pearson product-moment correlation was used to test the similarity of teacher ratings and student ratings in Hypothesis 5 which states: Hypothesis 5: Teachers of urban background expectations and per- ceptions of students will be more similar to stu- dents' self-expectations and perceptions than those of teachers of non-urban background on locus of control and level of aspiration. A discussion section will follow the data presentation of each hypothesis. Student achievement test data was gathered on White and Black students. The data was averaged on both groups by medium/high and by low socioeconomic level. The purpose of gathering achieve- ment test data was to tabulate whether on the average the levels of aspiration of the students were realistic or unrealistic. A realistic or unrealistic level of aspiration is used as defined in the Definition of Terms. 74 Summary The information gathered from the teacher questionnaire pro- vided the data to assess teachers' perceptions of the amount of responsibility that majority and minority students accept for their own academic achievement, teachers' perceptions of the degree of realism of students' selection of a career, teachers' expectations of students' level of aspiration, teachers' perceptions of students' achievement motivation. Data gathered from the student career selection instrument provided information of students' levels of aspiration. Student responses on the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Question- naire provided information on students' perceptions of their ability to influence their academic success (internal/external locus of control). Student achievement test data was weighted to objectively assess the realism of students' occupational choices. The t-test and Pearson's product-moment correlation were the statistical applications used to test the hypotheses. CHAPTER IV FINDINGS The findings in this chapter are presented in keeping with the procedures outlined in Chapter III. The data sought to test the hypotheses outlined in Chapters I and III will be presented in this chapter as well as other related findings. The hypotheses were stated in the null to find out whether there were significant differences in teacher perceptions and expectaions of White and Black students on (1) the amount of respon- sibility students assume for their own academic success in the class- room (internal/external locus of control); (2) the level of aspira- tion of students; (3) the degree of realism ascribed to the level of aspiration of students. Hypotheses were stated in the null to test (1) whether teachers' perceptions of students significantly differed when stu- dents were grouped by socioeconomic levels; (2) whether teachers when grouped by urban/non-urban background differed when they rated students on the three variables listed; (3) whether students when grouped by race and socioeconomic levels differed significantly on their self-ratings on locus of control and level of aspiration. 75 76 Hypothesis 1 There will be no difference between teacher percep- tions of White and Black students on the amount of responsibility taken by each for academic success in the classroom (internal/external locus of control). This hypothesis was tested using the t-test of significance on the variables teachers on locus of control for White students (TLOCW) and teachers on locus of control for Black students (TLOCB). The t-test showed there were significant differences between teacher ratings on White and Black students. The table illustrates the t-test data. TABLE 2.--Teacher Responses on Locus of Control of White and Black Students. . Standard Var1able Mean Deviation t-Value TLOCW 20.3773 2.726 3.55 TLOCB 17.6824 3.429 2-tailed probability df = 36 p = .001 n = 37 Discussion On the average, teachers felt that White students were more likely to take responsibility for their own success in the classroom than Black students. In the context of the internal/external locus of control frame of reference, White students were perceived by teachers as more likely to be internal than Black students. On the average, teachers' perceptions were that White students were more likely to work hard at a difficult assignment, to see a relationship 77 between the amount of work done and how well the assignment is accomplished than Black students. The null hypothesis was rejected based on the t-test find- ings. There were significant differences between ratings on Black and White students. Hypothesis 2 The question raised in Hypothesis 2 is whether teachers have similar expectations of the level of aspiration of White and Black students. The null hypothesis states: There will be no difference in teacher expectations of the level of aspiration of White and Black stu- dents. The t-test of significance did not yield significant differences in the ratings of teachers on this varible for White and Black students. TABLE 3.--Teacher Responses on the Expectations of White and Black Students' Level of Aspiration. Standard Variable Mean Deviation t-Value TLASPW 3.7059 .619 2.52 TLASPB 3.3582 .586 2-tai1ed probability p = .017 df = 33 Discussion Teachers on the average indicated that they expected that Black students were as likely as White students to select a career 78 demanding more academic preparation than high school. They expected that Black students would have levels of aspiration as high as their counterparts. The data showed that at p = .017 the t-test value was not sufficient to reject null Hypothesis 2. Hypothesis 3 The question in Hypothesis 3 is whether teachers ascribe the same degree of realism of choice to the career selections of White and Black students. The null hypothesis states: There will be no difference between the ratings of teachers on the degree of realism they ascribe to the level of aspiration of Black and White students. The t-test showed there were significant differences between the ratings of teachers on White and Black students. The data is illus- trated in the table. TABLE 4.--Teacher Responses on the Realism of the Career Choices of White and Black Students. . Standard Var1able Mean Deviation t-Value TREALW 4.0779 .541 3.61 TREALB 3.6512 .538 2-tai1ed probability p = .001 df = 33 79 Discussion The t-value of 3.61 at the .001 level of probability was sufficient to reject the null hypothesis. That is, on the average, teachers felt that White students were more likely to select a career choice that they could achieve than Black students. Or teachers felt that White students were more likely to be realistic in their career choices than Black students. Hypothesis 4 The question of student socioeconomic status is raised in Hypothesis 4. The hypothesis asks whether there are differences between the ratings of teachers on Black and White students of similar socioeconomic status on their locus of control, level of aspiration, and degree of realism. The null hypothesis states: There will be no difference between teacher expecta- tions and perceptions of White and Black students of similar socioeconomic levels on locus of control, level of aspiration and student realism. The mean rating differences between teacher ratings on both Black and White students of similar socioeconomic levels showed that teacher ratings of Black and White students were consistent and were not significantly different when the students' socioeconomic status was similar. The mean difference between teacher responses of the amount of responsibility students take for academic success in classrooms was greater between White students of high and low socioeconomic levels than between Black students of high and low socioeconomic levels. 80 The mean difference between teacher responses on the level of aspiration of White students of high and low socioeconomic level was greater between White students than between Black students of high and low socioeconomic level. The mean difference between teacher responses on the realism of student career choices was slightly larger between White students of high and low socioeconomic levels than Black students of high and low socioeconomic levels. These findings are reported cautiously, because of the few Black students of high socioeconomic level. Tables 5 through 10 show the mean difference ratings. Discussion The small differences between mean average of teacher rat- ings on Black and White students of similar socioeconomic status indicated that racial differences give way when socioeconomic levels of students are comparable. This finding was similar on the three variables of interest. Teachers did not feel that White and Black students were very different when grouped by socioeconomic levels on how likely they were to study hard to do well on an assignment, or to generally take responsibility for assignments. Teachers did not show much variance in the way they rated White and Black stu- dents, when grouped by socioeconomic levels, on whether or not they were likely to select a career they could achieve, or whether they would select a career demanding more academic preparation than high school. When teacher ratings were aggregated on students wherein 81 TABLE 5.--Teacher Responses on the Locus of Control of Black and White Students of Similar Socioeconomic Status. var'ab'e “ea" SESIgiign oifI§32nce high" 1942:: 3:123: 1:39;; 49:13:? 2:92;; 1182:; 13:52: 2:25: IISEII: 3123333 323% 0-6910 IISEE’; 12122239 323?? 16969 11111 = 10 nw4 = 11 NB] = 23 N84 = 5 nwz = 40 nus = 11 N82 = 37 N85 = 3 nw3 = 32 NW6 = 11 NB3 = 15 NB6 = 0 TABLE 6.--Mean Difference Between Teacher Ratings on Students of the Same Race of High and Low Socioeconomic Status. Variable Mean Mean Difference TLOCW * 21.3535 TLOCW? 15.7000 4'5535 TLOCB 19.5557 TLOC85 17.2273 2'4394 1 *Hereafter socioeconomic status will be indicated beside the variable. Socioeconomic levels will be represented as: Low = (l, 2), Medium = (3, 4), High = (5, 6). 82 TABLE 7.--Teacher Responses on the Level of Aspiration of Black and White Students of Similar Socioeconomic Status. Variable Mean 3:3?giign Dingignce 31333: 33333 13333 333333; 3:333 1:333 0-1588 333:; 3:333: 1:333 31331; 33313 13:33 3333333 33333 133333 0-6667 NW1 = 10 NW4 = 11 NB.I = 23 N84 = 5 NW2 = 40 NW5 = 11 N82 = 37 N85 = 3 NW3 = 32 NW6 = 11 N83 = 15 N86 = 0 TABLE 8.--Mean Difference Between Teacher Ratings on Students of the Same Race of High and Low Socioeconomic Status. Variable Mean Mean Difference TLASPW 4.0000 TLASPW? 2.8000 ' '2000 TLASPB5 3.3333 0.9015 TLASPB 3.4318 1 83 TABLE 9.--Teacher Responses on the Realism of Career Choices of Black and White Students of Similar Socioeconomic Status. Variable Mean DESIHEIgn Difggignce 333333} 33333 13333 0-3682 333333; 33333 3333 0-1595 333333; 3:333? 323333 0.2083 3333333 33333 33333 0-0182 3333333 33333 33333 0-0909 NW.l = 10 NW4 = 11 N81 = 23 N84 = 5 NW2 = 40 NW5 = 11 N82 = 37 NBS = 3 NW3 = 32 NW6 = 11 N83 = 15 N86 = 0 TABLE 10.--Mean Differences Between Students of Same Race of High and Low Socioeconomic Status. Variable Mean Mean Difference TREALW 4.0909 TREALW5 3.2000 0:8909 1 TREALB 4.0000 TREALB? 3.5682 0'43'8 84 socioeconomic level differences were compared within race, teachers marked greater differences between White students of high and low socioeconomic levels than Black students of high and low socio- economic levels. The mean level differences were not sufficient to reject the null hypothesis. Hypothesis 5 The question raised in Hypothesis 5 is whether teachers whose backgrounds are similar to those of their students, in terms of being urban, have more insight into the way students rate them- selves than teachers whose backgrounds are non-urban. The null hypothesis states: The ratings of students by teachers of urban back- ground will be more similar to the self-ratings of students than will be the ratings of teachers of non-urban background on locus of control and level of aspiration. The data indicate that the correlation between the ratings of urban teachers and student self-ratings was low on locus of control with a slightly negative correlation on level of aspiration. The correla- tions between the ratings of urban teachers were slightly higher on majority students than minority students. The data showed a low positive correlation between the response of urban teachers on students and the self-ratings of White students on locus of control. There was a small negative correla- tion between the ratings of urban teachers and the self-ratings of Black students, indicating that urban teachers more often rated 85 Black students differently from the way the students rate themselves than they did White students. There was a small negative correla- tion between the ratings of teachers on the level of aspiration on White and Black students and the self-ratings of those students. This indicated that teachers rated both groups slightly differently than the students rated themselves. This could be seen by the large number of students who selected careers in the singer, dancer, pro- fessional athlete category (see Table 15). There was a low positive correlation between the ratings of non-urban teachers and the self-ratings of White and Black students on locus of control. Though the correlation was low, non-urban teachers rated Black students slightly closer to the way they rated themselves than did urban teachers. There was a negative correla- tion between the ratings of non-urban teachers and the self-ratings on both White and Black students on level of aspiration, again indi- cating teachers rated both groups of students slightly differently than students rated themselves. Urban teachers did not rate students more closely to the way they rate themselves than did non-urban teachers. Discussion Ratings of students by teachers, despite teacher background, were similar. Though the correlations were low, teachers seemed to see White students more closely to the way White students see them- selves than they did to the way Black students see themselves on the amoung of their feeling of responsibility for academic success in 86 TABLE ll.--Correlations Between Urban Teacher Ratings and Student Self-Ratings on Locus of Control and Level of Aspiration. Urban Teachers White Students Black Students Locus of control .3802 -.0322 Level of aspiration -.O935 -.059O Nt* = 25 Ns* = 150 TABLE 12.--Correlati0n Between Non-Urban Teacher Ratings and Student Self-Ratings 0n Locus of Control and Level of Aspiration. Urban Teachers White Students Black Students Locus of control .3770 .1933 Level of aspiration -.2741 -.1623 N * = 12 N:* = 72 in the classroom. The negative correlation between the level of aspiration attributed by teachers and that expressed by both Black and White students indicates that teachers tended to respond more often that students would not select a career demanding more aca- demic preparation than high school, whereas students did in fact select a career demanding more academic preparation than high school. This observation holds true for Black and White students, though it is obviously compounded by the socioeconomic status of the students. Number of teachers Number of students *N N t s 87 Table 8 showed that teachers expected a higher level of aspiration from high socioeconomic level students than low socioeconomic level students. This was particularly true of White students. Hypothesis 6 In Hypothesis 6 the self-ratings of students on their levels of aspiration were examined first as they related to the race of the student and a t-test difference by race was computed. The mean level of aspiration of students classified by race and socioeconomic status was then computed. The null hypothesis states: There will be no difference between the levels of aspiration of Black and White students of similar socioeconomic status. The levels of aspiration of students were not significantly different by race or socioeconomic status. Discussion The level of aspiration of White and Black students did not differ significantly by race, or by socioeconomic status. A number of students, Black and White, selected careers in the occupational group which included singers, dancers, artists, and professional athletes. Many boys wanted to be football or basketball players, and many girls wanted to be singers or dancers. The popularity of these occupations on television could in part account for the large number of students in this study who selected this occupational group. 88 TABLE 13.--Level of Aspiration of Black and White Students. Standard Variable Mean Deviation t-Value SLASPW 3.4632 .814 1.01 SLASPB 3.2849 .670 2-tailed probability = .317 df = 36 NW = 121 NB = 83 TABLE l4.--Leve1 of Aspiration of Black and White Students of Similar Socioeconomic Status. . Standard Mean Var1able Mean Deviation Difference SLASPW * 3.30 1.53 SLASPB} 2.95 1.17 0'45 SLASPW 3.55 1.13 SLASPB; 3.48 1.07 0'07 SLASPW 3.58 1.20 SLASPB; 3.33 1.44 0'35 SLASPW 2.90 0.94 SLASPB: 3.40 0.89 1’50 SLASPW 2.54 1.50 SLASPB: 2.55 0.57 0'98 SLASPW6 3.70 1-15 NW] = 10 nw4 = 11 N81 = 23 N84 = 5 NW2 = 40 nws = 11 N82 = 37 N85 = 3 NW3 = 32 11116 = 11 N83 = 15 N86 = 0 89 TABLE 15.--Student Occupational Group Choices. Occupational Group White (1.2)* Black (1.2)* White (3,4)* Black (3.4)* White (5.6)* Black (5)* . Singer, dancer, professional athlete, TV announcer, commercial artist . Engineer, factory owner, computer specialist, accountant . Civil servant, policeman, fireman, mail carrier . Doctor, scientist, teacher, minister, architect . Electrician, bricklayer, carpenter, trained machinist . Bartender, beau- tician, bus driver, housewife, waiter/ waitress . Farm worker, farm owner & operator . Booker, sales- person, secretary, insurance agent, traveling salesman 28 2 20 38 15 23 11 13 *Socioeconomic status of students. 90 Hypothesis 7 The question posed by null Hypothesis 7 is whether there is a significant difference by race and socioeconomic status in student self-ratings on the construct locus of control. The null hypothesis states: There will be no difference between the internal/ external locus of control of White and Black stu- dents of similar socioeconomic status. The t-test of significance by race showed the difference in student responses were not significant. The mean average differ- ences by race and socioeconomic status did not yield significant differences between student groups. Discussion Student groups in this study did not differ significantly in the belief that they more than others were responsible for their own academic success in school. Neither race differences, nor socio- economic level differences, on the average, were significant factors in altering students' self-assessment that they could influence academic outcome in the classroom, particularly as the Crandall, Katkovsky, Crandall instrument leans heavily toward the student's working hard to achieve this success. Other Related Findings Teacher ratings did not differ significantly from the main effect ratings when they were grouped by racial background, years of experience, urban or non-urban background. 91 TABLE 16.--Student Self-Ratings on Locus of Control. Standard Variable Mean Deviation t-Value SLOCW 24.5611 2.573 .52 SLOCB 24.2292 2.599 2-tailed probability df = 36 p = .608 NW = 121 N8 = 83 TABLE 17.--Student Self-Ratings on Locus of Control by Race and Socioeconomic Status. Variable Mean Dggggiign Difggagnce 333:: 333333 3:33 33333; 3323333 3:333? 1.3723 3333; 3253133 3:33; 3333; 333333 33133 333333 333333 33333 32727 NW1 = 10 NW4 = 11 N81 = 23 N84 = 5 NW2 = 40 NW5 = 11 N82 = 37 N85 = 3 NW3 = 32 NW6 = 11 N83 = 15 N86 = O 92 The main effect ratings of teachers showed that teachers in general rated White students as more internal or more likely to take responsibility for their own academic success in classrooms than Black students. Teachers did not perceive majority students as more likely to aspire to a career demanding more academic preparation than high school or that majority students are more likely to have a higher level of aspiration than minority students. Teachers rated majority students as more likely to select a career that they could achieve than minority students. When White and Black students of similar socioeconomic levels were grouped, the racial differences disappeared. Teachers tended to rate Black and White students of similar socioeconomic levels similarly. There was a greater gap between the ratings of teachers on White students of high and low socioeconomic levels than there was between the ratings of teachers on Black students of high and low socioeconomic levels. The tables that follow show that on the teacher character- istics of interest to this study, teachers were both consistent and similar in their ratings. Teachers, when grouped on years of experience, did not dif- fer significantly in their ratings of Black and White students on (l) the degree of academic responsibility attributed to students; (2) the degree of realism they attributed to the career choices students would select; (3) their expectations of students' levels of aspiration. 93 TABLE 18.--Teacher Responses by Years of Experience on the Locus of Control (Student Academic Responsibility) of White and Black Students. Degrees . . Standard t- 2-Ta11 Variable Mean - . . of . . Dev1ation Value Freedom Probability TLOCW Group l 20.0800 3.784 -.29 8.69 .779 Group 2 20.4879 2.457 TLOCB Group 1 17.1662 3.547 -.57 11.59 .582 Group 2 1719741 3.697 Group l = 0-5 years N1 = 8 Group 2 = 5+ years N2 = 29 TABLE l9.--Teacher Responses by Teacher Race on the Locus of Control (Student Academic Responsibility) of White and Black Students. Degrees . Standard t- 2-Tail Variable Mean . . of . DeViation Value Freedom Probability TLOCW Group 1 20.0552 2.919 -l.50 23.41 .148 Group 2 21.3300 2.024 TLOCB Group 1 17.5400 3.863 -0.80 20.85 .433 Group 2 18.5000 2.984 Group 1 = Majority N1 = 27 Group 2 = Minority N2 = 10 94 TABLE 20.--Teacher Responses by Teacher Background (Urban, Non— Urban) on the Locus of Control (Student Academic Respon- sibility) of White and Black Students. Degrees . . Standard t- 2-Tail Variable Mean . . of . . DeViation Value Freedom Probability TLOCW Group 1 20.3025 1.850 -.18 33.15 .862 Group 2 20.4464 3.112 TLOCB Group 1 18.2217 2.997 .53 28.00 .598 Group 2 17.5968 3.942 Group 1 = Non-Urban N1 = 12 Group 2 = Urban N2 = 25 TABLE 21.--Teacher Responses by Years of Experience on Student Level of Aspiration. Degrees Standard t- 2-Tail Variable Mean . . of . . DeViation Value Freedom Probability TLASPW Group 1 3.4543 0.551 -1.31 10.12 .219 Group 2 3.7675 0.616 TLASPB Group 1 3.0000 0.000 -3.57 26.00 .001 Group 2 3.4759 0.693 Group 1 = 0-5 years N1 = 8 Group 2 = 5+ years N2 = 29 95 TABLE 22.--Teacher Responses by Teacher Race on Student Level of Aspiration. Degrees . Standard t- 2-Tail Variable Mean . . of . DeViation Value Freedom Probability TLASPW Group 1 3.6208 .657 -1.56 24.46 .132 Group 2 3.9150 .428 TLASPB Group 1 3.3333 .534 -0.51 11.84 .622 Group 2 3.4850 .883 Group 1 = Majority teachers N1 = 27 Group 2 = Minority teachers N2 = 10 TABLE 23.--Teacher Responses by Teacher Background (Urban, Non- Urban) on Student Level of Aspiration. Degrees 2-Tai1 Variable Mean Standard t- of Probabilit Deviation Value Freedom y TLASPW Group 1 3.7183 .650 .09 20.96 .928 Group 2 3.6978 .602 TLASPB Group 1 3.2850 .809 -.55 16.71 .590 Group 2 3.4286 .551 Group 1 = Non-Urban N1 = 12 Group 2 = Urban N2 = 25 96 TABLE 24.-~Teacher Responses by Years of Experience on Student Realism of Career Choice. Degrees Standard t- 2-Tail Variable Mean . . of . DeViation Value Freedom Probability TREALW Group 1 4.2383 .345 1.35 15.34 .197 Group 2 3.9782 .696 TREALB Group 1 3.5417 .415 -.51 12.03 .62 Group 2 3.6507 Group 1 = 0-5 years N1 = 8 Group 2 = 5+ years N2 = 29 TABLE 25.--Teacher Responses by Teacher Race on Student Realism of Career Choice. Degrees Standard t- 2-Tai1 Variable Mean . . of . DeViation Value Freedom Probability TREALW Group 1 3.9704 .691 -.81 20.96 .427 Group 2 4.1530 .555 TREALB Group 1 3.5904 .643 -.55 15.82 .592 Group 2 3.7300 .693 Group 1 Majority N 27 Group 2 = Minority N; 10 97 TABLE 26.-~Teacher Responses by Teacher Background (Urban, Non- Urban) on Student Realism of Career Choice. Degrees . . Standard t- 2-Tail Variable Mean . . of . . DeViation Value Freedom Probability TREALW Group 1 4.0192 .353 Group 2 4.0268 .776 ”'04 31°34 '959 TREALB Group 1 3.6250 .533 _ Group 2 3.6350 .719 '05 28°82 '954 Group 1 = Non-urban N1 = 12 Group 2 = Urban N2 = 25 TABLE 27.--Teacher Responses on Achievement Motivation Level of White and Black Students of Similar Socioeconomic Status. Variable Mean 33333333,. oif’f‘SiEnce 333333} 33333 3:333 0-2909 333333; 33333 3:333 1-2000 333333; 1323333 3:333 0-8333 3333333 133333 3:333 0-4364 333333; 3123333 3333 0-3726 N101.l = 10 NW4 = 11 NB1 = 23 NB4 = 5 NNZ = 40 NW5 = 11 NB2 = 37 N85 = 3 NW3 = 32 NW6 = 11 N83 = 15 NB6 = 0 98 Teachers when grouped by race did not differ significantly on their ratings of Black and White students on the variables listed. Teachers when grouped on urban or non-urban background did not differ significantly on their ratings of students on the vari- ables listed. The standardized test data gathered on students was averaged into groups of White and Black students of high and low socioeconomic status by grade level as shown on the table below: TABLE 28.--Standardized Achievement Test Averages. Student Group Test Average White (medium/high SES), 5th grade 5.6 White (1ow SES), 5th grade 5.1 Black (medium/high SES), 5th grade 4.4 Black (low SES), 5th grade 4.6 White (medium/high SES), 6th grade 5.1 White (low SES), 6th grade 5.1 B1ack (medium/high SES), 6th grade 4.6 Black (low SES), 6th grade 4.1 99 When the test was administered, these students were fourth and fifth grade students. At that time, neither of the student groups were two grades below grade level. The criterion established in this study for a realistic or non-realistic choice of careers was based on student standardized achievement test data. Students whose achievement test data showed them to be two or more years below grade level, and having selected a career demanding high academic preparation, would have selected a potentially non-realistic career choice. Students whose achievement test data indicated that they were two or more years above grade level who selected careers necessitating very little academic preparation would have selected a potentially non-realistic career choice. Motivation achievement theory postulates that the non- realism in both cases springs on the one hand from the individual's aspiring to careers which it appears he cannot realistically attain, thus the individual absolves himself of blame or fault by the seem- ing impossibleness of the choice. The individual who selects a career that is obviously very easy for him is assuring himself of non-failure. The achievement test data shows that there was no group of students, on the average, whose standardized averages were two grades above or below their grade level when the test was adminis- tered. When the test was administered, the fifth grade students were in the last months of the fourth grade and the sixth grade students were in the last months of the fifth grade. 100 The averaged achievement test data on students indicated that on the average each group of students should be able to accom- plish their aspired careers. Summary The t-test for significance was performed on Hypotheses 1, 2 and 3. The t-value indicated for Hypothesis 1 that the differences found between teacher ratings on the amount of responsibility for academic success in classrooms taken by White and Black students was great enough to not be attributed to chance. Null Hypothesis 1 was rejected. The t-value for null Hypothesis 2 was not sufficient to reject the null hypothesis which stated: There will be no differ- ence in teacher ratings on their expectations of the levels of aspiration of White and Black students. Teachers did not feel that White students were more likely to select a career demanding more academic preparation than high school than were Black students. The t-value for null Hypothesis 3 indicated that the differ- ences between teacher ratings on Black and White students was sta- tistically significant. Teachers felt that White students were more likely to select a career that they could achieve than Black stu- dents. The small mean differences between teacher ratings of stu- dents, based on race and on socioeconomic status of students, showed that when grouped on both variables the significant differences found on students by race disappeared. 101 Pearson product-moment correlations yielded low correlation coefficients between urban and non-urban teacher ratings on students. Urban teacher ratings on students' level of aspiration and locus of control were not closer to student self-ratings than the ratings of non-urban teachers in Hypothesis 5. The t-value on the self-ratings of White and Black students on their level of aspiration were not significantly different. The mean values for White and Black students of similar socioeconomic level were not sufficiently different to reject the null hypothesis which stated: "There will be no difference between the self-ratings of White and Black students of similar socioeconomic status on their level of aspiration. The t-value was not sufficient to indicate a difference between White and Black students' self-ratings on locus of control in Hypothesis 7. The mean value differences between White and Black students of similar socioeconomic level were not sufficient to reject the null hypothesis. Teacher ratings on students were very similar. Teachers when grouped on race, years of experience, and urban or non-urban background were remarkably similar in their perceptions and expec- tations of White and Black students. The t-values yielded no sig- nificant differences among teachers when grouped on these characteristics. CHAPTER V SUMMARY, DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS This was a descriptive study which assessed teachers' per- ceptions of White and Black students from four medium-sized, urban school districts. Moreover assessed in the study were student per- ceptions of themselves. The variables of interest were teachers' perceptions of the amount of responsibility taken by students for their own academic success in the classroom (internal/external locus of control). The second variable of interest was teacher expectations of the level of aspiration of students. Teachers were asked whether students were more or less likely to select a career demanding more academic preparation than high school. The third variable of inter- est was teachers' expectations of the reality of student expecta- tions. Teachers were asked to rate whether or not students were likely to select a career they could achieve. The t-test of significance was used to test whether the differences in teacher responses on White and Black students was significant. The t-value on locus of control was sufficient to indicate that there were significant differences between teacher ratings on White and Black students. Teachers felt that White students were 102 103 more internal or more likely to be academically responsible than Black students. When teachers responded on student level of aspiration, the findings were that the t-value test of significance was not suffi- cient to show that teacher ratings of student level of aspiration was sufficient to reject the null hypothesis. Teachers did not feel that White students were more likely to select a career demanding more academic preparation than high school. When teachers responded on the degree of realism ascribed to student career choices, the findings were that the t-test value test of significance was sufficient to show that there was a sig- nificant difference between teacher ratings on White and Black stu- dents. Teachers felt that White students were more likely to select a career that they could achieve than Black students. When teacher ratings on students were grouped by student socioeconomic levels, the differences found on the three variables by race disappeared. The mean differences between the ratings of teachers on White and Black students of similar socioeconomic status were not significant. When teacher response data on students were grouped to show the mean differences between White students of high and low socio- economic levels, and the mean difference between Black students of high and low socioeconomic levels, the sum of the mean differences was greater between White students on each variable than Black stu- dents. 0r, teachers tended to see a greater difference in responsi- bleness, aspiration, and reality between White students of low 104 socioeconomic status, and White students of high socioeconomic sta- tus. In each case, White students of high socioeconomic status were rated more favorably than White students of low socioeconomic status. While the same was true for Black students, as well, the sum of the mean differences was not as great, indicating that teach- ers tended to see less difference between Black students of high socioeconomic levels and Black students of low socioeconomic levels. The correlation between the ratings by teachers of urban background and White students' self-ratings on locus of control was positive, though it was not a very high correlation. The correla- tion between ratings by urban teachers and Black and White students' self-ratings showed a low negative correlation. There was a small but negative correlation between the ratings of teachers of urban background and Black students' ratings of themselves on locus of control. With teachers whose backgrounds were basically non-urban, there was a low positive correlation between their ratings of Black and White students and students' ratings of themselves. Again, there was a low negative relationship between the ratings of teachers on students and students' ratings of themselves on level of aspiration. Black and White students did not differ significantly in their choice of careers. Students' selection of careers indicated their level of aspiration. The mean values and t-values showed that the differences between the level of aspiration between White and Black students was not significant. Nor were they significantly 105 different between White and Black students of similar socioeconomic levels. White and Black students did not differ significantly in the degree to which they rated themselves to be internal on locus of control. That is, White and Black students did not differ signifi- cantly in the degree to which they felt that they were responsible for and could influence the outcome of their own academic achieve- ment levels. The t-test for significance yielded the following: The mean differences between students of similar socioeconomic sta- tus were not significant. Discussion Br0phy and Good pointed out in their book on teacher per- ceptions and expectations that teacher expectations do exist; to hold expectations is not abnormal or unusual. They go on to state that ". . . teacher expectations regarding students are neither good nor bad in themselves. The effect of teacher expectations depends upon how accurate they are and how they are used." The problems and complexities of urban classrooms, and the multiplicity of diverse values and racially different students prompted this research which asks: What are some of the perceptions and expecta- tions of teachers who daily face White and Black students of high and low income? When the test for differences in teacher responses on students was confined to race of the student, teachers followed the patterns described earlier in the paper by Geneva Gay and Schaefer. 106 1 study expected the quality of the White The teachers in Gay's students' classroom participation to be better than that of Black students, and that teacher attitudes and expectations were reflected in their behavior with ethnically different students. Schaefer et al.2 found that Black students were more likely to be described as low in task orientation, and less likely to be described as helpful, gregarious, and cheerful than other-than-Black students. Teachers in this study responded that their perceptions were that White stu- dents were more likely than Black students to work hard at achiev- ing a difficult assignment, to see a relationship between the amount of work done and how well the asssignment is accomplished. More- over, they felt that White students were more likely than Black students to make an effort to understand the lesson, to study to insure a good chance of doing well on an assignment, and to work harder when encouraged by parents and teachers to do so. The com- posite of these items showed that teachers felt that White students were more likely than Black students to accept responsibility for academic success in the classroom. These reflected the teachers' perception of the students' internal or external locus of control. Teachers perceived White students to be more internal than Black students. Teachers expected that Black students would aspire to careers that would demand more academic preparation than high school, or higher level careers, but they also expected that Black 1 2 Gay, p. 7. Dotta, Schaefer and Davis, p. 35. 107 students would not be as realistic in their career choices as White students. When the teacher data were aggregated and averaged by race and socioeconomic status on the variables, amount of responsibility that students take for academic success (internal/external locus of control), level of aspiration, and student reality on their level of aspiration, teachers tended not to rate Black and White students differently. Interestingly enough, the range of teacher ratings of White students was greater than of Black students on each variable. The mean score for White students of high socioeconomic status was higher than the mean score for Black students on each variable. With the exception of a small difference on locus of control, the mean score for White students of low socioeconomic status was lower than the mean score for Black students of low socioeconomic status on each variable. It was not possible to make a comparison between teacher responses on White and Black students of socioeconOmic status six, since there were no Black students in the sample who fit into this category. The difference between White and Black students' self— selection of careers indicative of their level of aspiration was not statistically significant either by race or socioeconomic level. At least 55 percent of the total student population selected the occu- pational group which included singers, dancers, artists, TV announcers, and professional athletes. Fifty-nine percent of the Black students chose this occupational group and 53 percent of the White students chose this group. The p0pularity of this career 108 choice for students meant that the remainder of students were spread over the other seven occupational groups. It can be speculated that the popularity of this occupational group is due in part to the increased television time that this occupational group has garnered, as well as increased emphasis on the "arts" in many communities. Of course, the subjects of this study were fifth and sixth graders. Their occupational aspirations are subject to change. However, the general career choices did not indicate substantive differences between White and Black students. In the literature, locus of control has been shown to be 3 and influenced by race and socioeconomic status. Battle and Rotter Shaw and Uhl4 found that internal locus of control tended to be associated with higher socioeconomic status and majority group mem- bership. The findings of this study are more consistent with the findings of Wolk and DuCette5 in that there were not significant differences between White and Black students on the degree to which they perceive themselves to be internal. In the analysis of their findings Wolk and DuCette argued that the internal individual does not simply perceive that the environment can be controlled, rather he accurately perceives whether the environment can be controlled. The Crandall, Katkovsky, Crandall Intellectual Achievement Responsi- bility Scale limits the environment to the school milieu and the 3Battle and Rotter, p. 20. 4Shaw and Uhl, p. 55. SWolk and DuCette, p. 62. 109 significant others to peers, parents, and teachers. This is key in the understanding of why there was not significant differences between White and Black students of varying socioeconomic levels. The students were not responding to whether their academic achieve- ment would be influenced by fate, luck, or chance, but whether they, in their dealings with peers, parents, and teachers perceived themselves to be influential in managing the outcome of their school- work or a game situation. There has been increased emphasis on the affective domain in school curriculum in recent years. Values clarification, career education, and emphasis on individual self-worth have become part of the educational content that children receive. This, "you can do," is a recurring theme in much of the programming for children on tele- vsion. White and Black children are exposed to this content. In the classrooms, the lessons of responsibleness of individuals, the sense of self-acceptance and self-understanding that are more and more a part of curriculum and the entire content of early career education programs are not lost on Black or White youth. It is reasonable that, when the concept locus of control is limited to a focus that is similar and familiar to both White and Black students, both would respond similarly. The statements to which students can respond on the IAR could be said to have some responses which are in general more socially acceptable than others in the school milieu. Both White and Black students learn these responses, thus again mitigating against the chance of great differences between their responses. 110 Some covert assumptions about the similarity of student and teacher backgrounds making a difference in the way in which teachers would rate students were not borne out. The data show that teachers were very similar in their rat- ings of students. When teachers were grouped by race, by years of experience, or by urban, non-urban background, the differences in their responses were not significant. Black teachers tended to rate White students very similarly to the way White teachers rated White students. Black teachers tended to rate Black students very similarly to the way White teachers rated Black students. Teachers with five or more years of experience rated Black and White students similarly to the way teachers with fewer than five years rated Black and White students. It is interesting to note the similarity in the ratings on students of persons whose backgrounds both racially and environmen- tally, and in years of experience, are dissimilar. It would be interesting to test, for example, if these people would share as close a similarity on topics outside the school milieu. We educators speculate that this seeming sameness in teach- ers has to do with the notions that people who enter teaching may be predisposed to look at the world in a certain way. We also speculate that once the individuals begin to teach, the school milieu begins to systematically shape their point of view. Thirdly, we speculate that the reward systems of large organizations, one of whichis schools, are so operative that certain behaviors and responses are rewarded and rewardable, while others are not. 111 Teachers who actively and aggressively search for system options generally wind up in alternative education programs, or sometimes out of the system entirely. Interestingly enough, though the correlations were not high, teachers both urban and non-urban seemed to see White students more closely to the way the students saw themselves than they did Black students in the matter of their locus of control. Low though the correlation is between the ratings of teachers on White students and White students on themselves, it is still greater than the correla- tion between teachers on Black students and Black students on them- selves. This helps to shape and reinforce the notion that a gap exists between the school and some children, in this case, Black children. Both groups of teachers' ratings seemed to negatively corre- late with student ratings of their own level of aspiration. Why this was true is only speculative, but the disproportionate number of students selecting the occupational group comprised of singers, dancers, and athletes may have come as a surprise to teachers, given the current emphasis on the exploration of varied career choices in schools. The subject of teacher expectations and perceptions is an intriguing one. It raises many questions about what can possibly occur in the classrooms of one of America's most beleaguered insti- tutions, the schools. When placed in proper perspective, we realize, taken alone, teacher expectations cannot possibly account for the set of academic and social problems with which people in 112 schools must deal, but they do help provide insight to the day-to- day relationships among teachers and students. The degree to which teachers, administrators and others in schools understand this phe- nomenon and its potential impact has bearing on what it is that they choose to do and not do, what they choose to teach and not teach, and what behaviors from students are acceptable and not acceptable. It has been pointed out that holding an expectation is not unusual. It is the accuracy of that expectation and the resultant behavior that is of concern. In teacher training courses, and in teacher in-service programs, the heightened awareness that teachers hold expectations of students, sometimes high, sometimes low, could lay the foundation for teacher examination of their own expectations and behavior and the appropriateness of those expectations and behavior for students. In Retrospect The most surprising element of the findings of this research was the lack of significant difference among teachers' responses about students; particularly the lack of significant difference among the views of majority and minority teachers on minority students as defined in this study. It can be logically perceived that the sub- ject of research flows from either overt or covert assumptions held by the researcher. Some covert assumptions held at the conception of this research had to do with a cultural and ethnic similarity between the minority subjects of the research, Black teachers and Black students. Those assumptions flowed from a belief in a common 113 set of understandings that exist among ethnic groups as a function of shared environmental experiences and similar motivational drives that are based on the shaping of that ethnic group by society. These mores and drives generally rest beneath the surface of what is thought of as American culture as derived from the norms established by the majority of Americans. The fact that teachers, in general, did not perceive majority students' sense of responsibleness or level of aspiration signifi- cantly differently was, at least to this researcher, not surprising. For it has been White students or majority students, as a whole, who have shaped the academic and other norms of public school education. It has traditionally been minority groups who have deviated from those norms either as a function of their smaller number or as a function of the notion that norms are established by groups from whom power is derived. Traditionally, it has been the normative groups that teachers have been trained to teach. The surprising element was that Black teachers perceived Black students not differ- ently from their White counterparts. Their expectations of Black stu- dents were not greater than White teachers, nor was their belief that Black students were likely to be realistic in a career choice. This phenomenon is at once both comforting and disconcerting. The comforting element is that teachers do not seem to differ appre- ciably among themselves in what it is they think of the boys and girls whom they meet daily. The disconcerting element is that if then Black teachers have been so "acculturated" by the system so as to evidence no cultural identity with Black students, then who will 114 hold high expectations and beliefs for Black students? It need not . necessarily follow that White teachers cannot and dorunzhold high achievement hopes, perceptions, and attitudes for Black students. However, it seems logical that Black students could more likely see themselves mirrored in the success models that Black teachers can present than White teachers, since Black teachers and Black students to some greater degree share a common ethnic and cultural heritage. In any case, this researcher's belief that the commonality of understanding that exists among minority and Black peoples,shaped by similar tests for survival, would give rise to a different sig- nificant belief about Black students by Black teachers than White teachers was not borne out. As it happened in this study, teachers simply responded as teachers. Implications for Future Research This research was limited to teachers and students at the elementary level. Future research might include teachers and stu- dents at the secondary level. A replication and analysis of the research within each school district could provide a basis for the content of in-service training within districts. 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Journal of Educational Psychology 59 (1968): 275-82. APPENDICES 124 APPENDIX A TEACHER QUESTIONNAIRE 125 APPENDIX A TEACHER QUESTIONNAIRE Student's name Very Not Un- Un- Appli- Likely Likely likely, likely cable 1. When this student is given a difficult assignment, he/she is likely to work hard at achieving the assignment. 2. This student sees a rela- tionship between the amount of work done and how well the assignment is accom- plished. 3. This student will make an effort to understand all parts of the lesson. 4. This student will study to more insura a good chance of doing well on an assignment. 5. This student is likely to try harder when encouraged by parents and teacher to do so. 6. This student is likely to set his/her level of career choice as one he/ she can achieve. 126 10. 127 Very Un- Like1y_ Likely, likely Very Not Un- Appli- likely cable . This student will set a career demanding more academic preparation than high school. . When faced with a very difficult school work assignment, this stu- dent's motivation to accomplish it would be very high. . If this student sets a high goal for him/herself on an assignment, and falls somewhat short of the goal, he/she would set a subse- quent goal on the same task, or a similar task, almost as high as his/her original goal. If this student sets a high goal for him/herself on a school work assign- ment, and falls somewhat short of the goal, he/she would set a subsequent goal on the same task, or a similar task, below his/her original goal. APPENDIX B DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION (TEACHERS) 128 APPENDIX B DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION (TEACHERS) Dear Respondent: Thank you so much for taking time to respond to the questionnaires. Your help has been of value to the research I am engaged in to com- plete my dissertation requirements. Please check the statements which apply to you and return this paper with your student response questionnaires. Again, many thanks. ********************************** 1. Years of experience ___O-5 years ___5+ years 2. Are you a member of one of the ___Yes national minority groups which are ___No a part of the population listed below? 3. If yes, please indicate which one: ___American Indian ___Black ___Spanish-surnamed ___Persons of Mexican- American, Puerto Rican, or Spanish descent 4. Do you hold any of the following ___Yes degrees from a Michigan college ___No or university? 5. If yes, please indicate which one: ___B.A. ___M.A. ___Ed.S. ___Ph.D. 6. Have you lived over half of your ___Urban area live in: ___Non-urban area 129 APPENDIX C THE INTELLECTUAL ACHIEVEMENT RESPONSIBILITY SCALE 130 APPENDIX C THE INTELLECTUAL ACHIEVEMENT RESPONSIBILITY SCALE Name Grade School Male Female B W B 1. If a teacher passes you to the next grade, would it probably be 1+ ___a. because she liked you, or ___b. because of the work you did? 2. When you do well on a test at school, is it more likely to be 1+ ___a. because you studied for it, or ___b. because the test was especially easy? 3. When you have trouble understanding something in school, is it usually I- ___a. because the teacher didn't explain it clearly, or ___b. because you didn't listen carefully? 4. When you read a story and can't remember much of it, is it usually I- ___a. because the story wasn't well written, or ___b. because you weren't interested in the story? 5. Suppose your parents say you are doing well in school. Is this likely to happen 1+ ___a. because your school work is good, or ___b. because they are in a good mood? 6. Suppose you did better than usual in a subject at school. Would it happen 1+ ___a. because you tried harder, or ,___b. because someone helped you? 7. When you lose at a game of cards or checkers, does it usually happen I- ___a. because the other player is good at the game, or ___b. because you don't play well? 131 8. 1- 9. 1+ 12. 1+ 13. I4- 1- 15. 1- 1+ 17. 1+- 18w 1. ____b. because you needed some help, and other people didn't — ___b. because you gave the best answer you could think of? 132 Suppose a person doesn't think you are very bright or clever. a. Can you make him change his mind if you try to, or :::b. are there some people who will think you're not very bright no matter what you do? If you solve a puzzle quickly, is it a. because it wasn't a very hard puzzle, or :::b. because you worked on it carefully? If a boy or girl tells you that you are dumb, is it more likely that they say that a. because they are mad at you, or :::b. because what you did really wasn't very bright? Suppose you study to become a teacher, scientist, or doctor and you fail. Do you think this would happen a. because you didn't work hard enough, or give it to you? When you learn something quickly in school, is it usually a. because you paid close attention, or b. because the teacher explained it clearly? If a teacher says to you, "Your work is fine," is it a. something teachers usually say to encourage pupils, or :ZZb. because you did a good job? When you find it hard to work arithmetic or math problems at school, is it ___a. because you didn't study well enough before you tried them, or ___b. because the teacher gave problems that were too hard? When you forget something you heard in class, is it a. because the teacher didn't explain it very well, or :::b. because you didn't try very hard to remember? Suppose you weren't sure about the answer to a question your teacher asked you, but your answer turned out to be right. Is it likely to happen a. because she wasn't as particular as usual, or When you read a story and remember most of it, is it usually a. because you were interested in the story, or :ZZb. because the story was well written? If your parents tell you you're acting silly and not thinking clearly, is it more likely to be ___a. because of something you did, or ___b. because they happen to be feeling cranky? 133 19. When you don't do well on a test at school, is it I- ___a. because the test was especially hard, or ___b. because you didn't study for it? 20. When you win at a game of cards or checkers, does it happen ___a. because you play real well, or ___b. because the other person doesn't play well? 21. If people think you're bright or clever, is it 1+ ___a. because they happen to like you, or ___b. because you usually act that way? 22. If a teacher didn't pass you to the next grade, would it probably be I- ___a. because she "had it in for you," or ___b. because your school work wasn't good enough? 23. Suppose you don't do as well as usual in a subject at school. Would this probably happen a. because you weren't as careful as usual, or I-— ___b. because somebody bothered you and kept you from working? 24. If a boy or girl tells you that you are bright, is it usually ___a. because you thought up a good idea, or ___b. because they like you? 25. Suppose you became a famous teacher, scientist or doctor. Do you think this would happen ___a. because other people helped you when you needed it, or ___b. because you worked very hard? 26. Suppose your parents say you aren't doing well in your school work. Is this likely to happen more I- ___a. because your work isn't very good, or ___Jb. because they are feeling cranky? 27. Suppose you are showing a friend how to play a game and he has trouble with it. Would that happen a. because he wasn't able to understand how to play, or I- .___ ___b. because you couldn't explain it well? 28. When you find it easy to work arithmetic or math problems at school, is it usually ___a. because the teacher gave you especially easy problems, or ___b. because you studied your book well before you tried them? 29. When you remember something you heard in class, is it usually ___a. because you tried hard to remember, or ___b. because the teacher explained it well? 134 30. Ifyou can't work a puzzle, is it more likely to happen I- ___a. because you are not especially good at working puzzles, or ___b. because the instructions weren't written clearly enough? 31. If your parents tell you that you are bright or clever, is it more likely ___a. because they are feeling good, or ___b. because of something you did? 32. Suppose you are explaining how to play a game to a friend and he learns quickly. Would that happen more often a. because you explained it well, or 1+ :::b- because he was able to understand it? 33. Suppose you're not sure about the answer to a question your teacher asks you and the answer you give turns out to be wrong. Is it likely to happen a. because she was more particular than usual, or I-— ___b. because you answered too quickly? 34. If a teacher says to you, "Try to do better," would it be ___a. because this is something she might say to get pupils to I- try harder, or ___b. because your work wasn't as good as usual? APPENDIX D RANKING OF OCCUPATIONS IN ORDER OF ACADEMIC PREPARATION FOR ENTRY LEVEL INTO THE OCCUPATION 135 APPENDIX D RANKING OF OCCUPATIONS IN ORDER OF ACADEMIC PREPA- RATION FOR ENTRY INTO THE OCCUPATION* Professional Doctor, Minister, Teacher, Scientist, Architect. Industrial Factory Owner, Computer Specialist, Accountant. Arts-Sports Singer, Dancer, Professional Athlete, TV Announcer, Coniiiercial Artist. Civil Service Civil Servant, Policeman, Fireman, Mail Carrier. Traditional Crafts Electrician, Bricklayer, CArpenter, Trained Machinist. Clerical and Commercial Bookkeeper, Salesperson, Secretary, Insurance Agent, Traveling Salesman. Agricultural Farm Owner and Operator, Farm Worker. Service Bartender, Shoe Shiner, Barber, Beautician, Bus Driver, Restau- rant Cook, Waiter/Waitress, Custodian. *Based on Alex Inkeles and Peter H. Rossi's "National Com- parisons of Occupational Prestige," Journal of American Sociology 61 (1956): 329-39. The occupations listed under each heading serve only as examples of those categories and are not meant to be exhaustive. 136 APPENDIX E STUDENT OCCUPATIONAL QUESTIONNAIRE 137 APPENDIX E STUDENT OCCUPATIONAL QUESTIONNAIRE Name School Boy___, Girl____ Directions: 1. Mark column A--se1ect only one group. 2. Mark column B--select only the colum which shows the most education you think you need. 3. Mark column C--You have said what you want to be; select the one you gag_be. A B C Which The most education Which I Occupational Group I would I need feel I can like 10- College success- to be 1-6 7-9 12 4 more fully be A. Singer, Dancer, Profes- sional Athlete, TV Announ- cer, Commercial Artist 8. Engineer, Factory Owner, Computer Specialist, Accountant C. Civil Servant, Policeman, Fireman, Mail Carrier 0. Doctor, Scientist, Teacher, Minister, Architect E. Electrician, Bricklayer, Carpenter, Trained Machinist F. Bartender, Beautician, Bus Driver, Housewife, Waiter/ Waitress 138 139 A B C Which The most education Which I Occupational Group I would I need feel I can like 10- College success- to be 1-6 7-9 12 4 more fully be G. Farm Worker, Farm Owner and Operator H. Bookkeeper, Salesperson, Secretary, Insurance Agent, Traveling Sales- man APPENDIX F SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS SCALE 140 APPENDIX F SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS SCALE Professional Managers, Officials and Proprietors Clerical and Kindred Workers Craftsmen, Foremen Service Occupations (Civil Service, Policemen) Service Workers (Waitresses, Maids) Labor Range High Socioeconomic Status Medium Socioeconomic Status Low Socioeconomic Status 141 2-1 6-5 2-1 MICHIGAN STATE UNIV. LIBRARIES llll1111llHI11111111111111111111II 31293101906711