Acculturation and Teacher Ratings of Hispanic and Anglo-American Students.

The underrepresentation of Hispanics in gifted and talented classes continues to be a concern to both school psychologists and educators. Behavior rating scales have been suggested as an efficient and psychometrically sound method to identify gifted children (Argulewicz, Elliott, & Hall, 1982). Results of past research have concluded the Scales for Rating Behavior Characteristics of Superior Students (SRBCSS, Renzulli, Hartman, & Callahan, 1971) may be a promising method to identify gifted Hispanic students (Elliott, Argulewicz, & Turco, 1986) and may aid in understanding the nature of giftedness among both Mexican-American and Anglo-American students (Argulewicz, Elliott, & Hall, 1982). Acculturation has been suggested as a variable that can help to predict intelligence (Valencia, Handerson, & Rankin, 1985) and academic achievement (Manaster, Chan, & Safady, 1992), In light of the interest in identifying gifted Hispanic students, the suggestion that behavior ratings scales be used to identify these students and the relationship of acculturation to educationally related variables, the present study was designed to determine if there were differences between teacher ratings of Anglo-American and Hispanic students based on the student's ethnic status and acculturation level.

Method

Of the 274 fifth-grade students invited to participate, 150 (55%; 63 males, 87 females, 63 Hispanics, 87 Anglo-Americans) returned parental consent forms and participated in the study. The mean age of the sample was 11.5 years (SD = .57) and 51% replied they speak Spanish almost never, while 49% indicated they speak Spanish at least part of the time. All fifth grade teachers completed four scales (Learning Characteristics, Motivational Characteristics, Creativity Characteristics, and Leadership Characteristics) of the SRBCSS for each of their students, and each student completed the Children's Hispanic Background Scale (CHBS; Martinez, Norman, & Delaney, 1984).

Results

The results of an ANOVA to determine ethnic group differences on teacher ratings on the SRBCSS indicated Anglo-American students were rated significantly higher (see Table 1) on the Learning characteristics scale, F (1,149) = 19.6, p [is less than] .001; Motivational characteristics scale, F (1,149) = 13.2, p [is less than] .001; Creativity characteristics scale, F (1, 147) = 15.7 p [is less than] .001, and Leadership characteristics scale, F(1,146) = 9.9, p [is less than] .002. To ascertain the impact of acculturation on the teacher's ratings of the SRBCSS, the group was divided into two groups based on the mean CHBS scores (Mean = 104; SD = 19.5) for the total sample. All Anglo-American students scored above the CHBS mean score. Results of the Analysis of Variance on the teacher's SRBCSS ratings for the two acculturation groups showed significant differences on the Learning characteristics scale, F(1,149) = 17, p [is less than] .001; Motivational characteristics scale, F(1,149) = 11.6, p [is less than] .001; Creativity characteristics scale, F(1,147 = 15, p [is less than] .001; and Leadership characteristics scale, F(1,146) = 11.3, p [is less than] .001 (see Table 2).

Table 1

Means and Standard Deviations for the Scales of the SRBCSS

Scale                          Ethnic Group     Mean   S.D.

Learning characteristics       Anglo-American   21     7.8(*)
                               Hispanic         15     7.1
Motivational characteristics   Anglo-American   23     7(*)
                               Hispanic         19     6.5
Creativity characteristics     Anglo-American   23     8.1(*)
                               Hispanic         19     6.6
Leadership characteristics     Anglo-American   30     7.2(**)
                               Hispanic         26     8.8

(*) p<.001 (**) p<.002

Table 2

Teacher's SRBCSS Ratings for the Two Acculturation Groups

                                  High acculturation

SRBCSS scales                         Mean   SD

Learning characteristics              20     7.8
Motivational characteristics          22     7
Creativity characteristics            23     8
Leadership characteristics            30     7.1

                                  Low acculturation

SRBCSS scales                       Mean   SD

Learning characteristics            15     7.2(*)
Motivational characteristics        18     6.5(*)
Creativity characteristics          18     6.7(*)
Leadership characteristics          26     7.1(*)

(*) p<.001

Discussion

This study sought to determine if there were differences between teacher ratings of Anglo-American and Hispanic students based on the student's ethnic identification and acculturation level. The results indicated there were significant differences between teacher ratings of Anglo-American and Hispanic students based on the student's acculturation level as well as ethnic group identification. To account for these results we suggest that the attitudes of teachers toward Hispanic students or the socioeconomic backgrounds of these students may have confounded teacher judgment. The literature provides ample evidence that classroom teachers' judgments are influenced by students' ethnicity (Clifton, Perry, Personson, & Hrynink, 1986; de Kanter & Frankiewicz, 1981; Demetrulias, 1990; Matute-Bianchi, 1986). Since highly acculturated Hispanic students received significantly higher ratings from teachers than did low acculturated Hispanics, further study is needed on acculturation and its impact on teacher perceptions of students.

The results of this study have implications for practitioners who are looking for ways to increase the number of Hispanic students in gifted and talented programs. If results from the SRBCSS are used to refer students to gifted and talented programs, it appears that Hispanic students who are high in acculturation may have a better chance of being referred for assessment than Hispanic students who are not high in acculturation.

The present study also raises questions about the effect that Hispanic students' acculturation level may have on teachers' ratings. In addition, due to the significant differences in the teachers' ratings of Hispanics and Anglo-Americans, additional questions about the way ethnicity may have impacted the general outcomes of this study need to be addressed.

This study makes a modest contribution to the knowledge base on teacher ratings and student acculturation and points to the need to further investigate acculturation as a variable in ratings of teachers as a first step in the assessment of gifted Hispanic students. Screening for gifted and talented students by classroom teachers independent of an understanding of the sociocultural and acculturation background of the Hispanic student should be avoided (Bermudez, & Rakow, 1990).

REFERENCES

Argulewicz, E. N., Elliott, S. N., & Hall, R. (1982). Comparison of behavioral ratings of Anglo-American and Mexican-American gifted children. Psychology in the Schools, 19, 469-472.

Bermudez, A. B., & Rakow, S. J. (1990). Analyzing teachers' perceptions of identification procedures for gifted and talented Hispanic limited English proficient (LEP) students at risk. The Journal of Educational Issued of Language Minority Students, 7, 21-33.

Clifton, R. A., Perry, R. P., Parson, K., & Hryniuk, S. (1986). Effects of ethnicity and sex on teachers' expectations of junior high school students. Sociology of Education, 1, 58-67.

de Kanter, E., & Frankiewicz, R. (1981). Measuring teachers' attitudes toward Mexican-American students. NABE Journal, 6, 77-92.

Demetrulias, D. M. (1990). Ethnic surnames. Educational Research Quarterly, 14, 2-6.

Elliot, S. N., Argulewicz, E. N., & Turco, T. L. (1986). Predictive validity of the Scales for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students for gifted children from three sociocultural groups. Journal of Experimental Education, 55, 27-32.

Manaster, G. J., Chan, J. C., & Safady, R. (1992). Mexican-American migrant students' academic success: Sociological and psychological acculturation. Adolescence, 27, 123-136.

Martinez, R., Norman, R. D., & Delaney, H. D. (1984). A children's Hispanic background scale. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 6, 103-112.

Matute-Bianchi, M. E. (1986). Ethnic identifies and patterns of school success and failure among Mexican descent and Japanese-American students in California high schools: An ethnographic analysis. American Journal of Education, 95, 233-255.

Renzulli, J. S., Hartman, R. K., & Callahan, C. M. (1971). Teacher identification of superior students. Exceptional Children, 38, 211-214, 243-248.

Valencia, R. R., Henderson, R. W., & Rankin, R. J. (1985). Family status, family constellation, and home environmental variables as predictors of cognitive performance of Mexican American children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 77(3), 323-331.

Manuscript submitted December, 1997.

Revision accepted April, 1999.

At Texas A&M University Commerce, William G. Masten, is Associate Professor and Director of the School Psychology program at Texas A&M University-Commerce with special interests in the evaluation of bilingual Mexican-American students; Maximino Plata, is Professor of Special Education and Director of Student Assessment and Evaluation with a long-standing interest in issues of Mexican-American students in education; and Karen Wenglar is a doctoral student in educational psychology with special interests are in humor. Joe Thedford, is an Associate Professor of Education at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi with research interest in organizational Improvement and school finance.3