PERCEIVED FUTURE EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS 1 ...

Running Head: PERCEIVED FUTURE EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS

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The Role of Race and Teachers' Cultural Awareness in Predicting Low-Income, Black and Hispanic Students' Perceptions of Educational Attainment Duhita Mahatmya1, Brenda J. Lohman2, Elizabeth L. Brown3, & Jameela Conway-Turner3 1

University of Iowa, 2 Iowa State University, 3 George Mason University

Corresponding Author: Duhita Mahatmya, Ph.D., College of Education, University of Iowa, N459 Lindquist Center, Iowa City, IA 52242; email: [email protected] Co-Authors: Brenda J. Lohman, Ph.D., Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Iowa State University, 2330 Palmer suite 2356, Ames, IA 50011; email: [email protected] Elizabeth L. Brown, Ph.D., Graduate School of Education, George Mason University, 4400 University Dr, MS 4B3, Fairfax, VA 22030; Ph: (703) 993-5345; email: [email protected] Jameela Conway-Turner, M.S., Department of Psychology, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MS 5D3, Fairfax, VA 22030, email: [email protected]

Acknowledgements: We acknowledge and thank the funding agencies that allowed for the collection of the data: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01 HD36093 “Welfare Reform and the Well-Being of Children”), The Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the Searle Fund for Policy Research. We also thank the universities that provided a large amount of internal support for the research team. Second, we extend a special thank you to the research firm, Research Triangle Institute (RTI) as well as to the children and caregivers who graciously participated in the Three-City Study and gave us access to their lives during the past 6 years. We gratefully thank the families for allowing us to approach the focal child’s teacher, and the school districts and individual schools that granted permission to contact their employees. Fourth, we are grateful to the teachers who participated in the study. We thank them for being a part of the TCTS project and their ongoing dedication to educating American’s children. The write-up of this work was supported by a grant from the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being at George Mason University. We also thank Dr. Pamela W. Garner for providing feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript.

PERCEPTIONS OF EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT

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Abstract Demographic shifts in the United States have resulted in similar demographic shifts between K12 teachers and their students, resulting in important implications for the educational outcomes of traditionally marginalized students and educators’ cultural awareness required in teaching diverse classrooms. Using data from the Three-City Teacher Study, this study examined students’ (N= 207; 55% female; 52% non-Hispanic Black, 48% non-White Hispanic; mean age = 16.70 years, SD = 1.67) and teachers’ (N = 202; 71.5% female; 64.3% white; mean years of experience = 13.80 years, SD = 10.83) agreement on the potential educational attainment of the student. Specifically, we explored the probability that teachers had lower, matched, or higher perceptions of educational attainment compared to their low-income Black and Hispanic students’ perceptions of attainment while accounting for teachers’ and students’ reports of school connectedness, teachers’ cultural awareness, and moderating effects of students’ race. Results from multinomial logistic regressions found that teachers were more likely to have lower perceptions of educational attainment for Hispanic students compared to Black students. Teachers were also more likely to have lower perceptions when they perceived students to have low school connectedness. For Black students, teachers’ cultural awareness attenuated this association; that is, teachers were more likely to have higher perceptions of educational attainment for Black students when they reported higher cultural awareness. The reverse was true for Hispanic students. These results enhance our understanding of how teacher and student perceptions shape expectations of educational attainment with implications for teacher education and professional development domestically and internationally.

Keywords: race, teacher perceptions, cultural competence, educational attainment


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1. Introduction High school dropout rates in the United States decreased for all races over the past twenty years, but Black students remain twice as likely to dropout compared to White students (8% versus 4%), and Hispanic students and foreign-born youth have the highest dropout rates (13%). Low-income students are six times as likely to dropout compared to students whose families are in the top 25 percentile of all family incomes (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014). Accounting for these disparate dropout rates along with the academic achievement gap by race and socioeconomic status (SES), previous research identified students’ perceptions of their school connectedness and educational attainment as important precursors of academic performance (Lowman and Elliot, 2010; Rothon, Arephin, Klineberg, Cattell, and Stansfeld, 2011). For students living in the racial and economic margins, teachers’ perceptions of students’ school experiences are also non-negligible factors. Literature denotes the negative association between dropout rates, grades, and post-secondary success of racial minority and low-income students and teachers’ subjective evaluations of those students (Delpit, 1995; Hughes, Gleason, and Zhang, 2005; Weinstein, Gregory, and Strambler, 2004). Scholars find the presence of teacher bias across international, multicultural classrooms as well (de Boer, Bosker, and van der Werf, 2010; den Brok and Levy, 2005; Glock and Krolack-Schwerdt, 2014). In the United States particularly, many are quick to blame the poor outcomes of traditionally marginalized students on teachers (Fine and Fabricant, 2014); however, perceptions of and students’ actualized educational attainment, especially for low-income students of color, are situated within pedagogical teacher-student interactions (Creasey, Mays, Lee, and D’Santiago, 2014; Obgu and Simmons, 1998).


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To that end, we investigated the probability that teachers and students share similar perceptions of educational attainment while accounting for teachers’ and students’ reports of school connectedness, teachers’ cultural awareness, and the moderating effects of students’ race. Existing work primarily documents the experiences of teachers from predominantly White backgrounds and Black students (Oates, 2009; Whaley and Noel, 2011). With the increasingly disproportionate racial makeup (United States Census Bureau, 2012) of United States teachers (15% racial minority) and students (40% racial minority), and the increase in international migration (den Brok and Levey, 2005), scholars need to consider teacher-student perceptions across more diverse student bodies. Here, we examined these associations specifically in a sample of low-income Black and Hispanic students in the United States. The students of color in the current study lived in households where the family income was 200% at or below the United States poverty line.1 Living in economic and racial margins can intersect to negatively impact students’ school perceptions, and future attainment. 2. Conceptual Framework for Understanding Teachers’ and Students’ Education-Related Perceptions When students are from a racial minority or low SES status, a conceptual framework must acknowledge the macro and micro factors that affect teachers’ and students’ perceptions of education-related outcomes (Nasir and Hand, 2006). Ogbu’s cultural-ecological theory of minority school performance (Obgu and Simmons, 1998) provides the umbrella under which the perceptions of students and their teachers can be understood at a macro-cultural level.

The United States poverty level is calculated by the Census Bureau and compares a family’s income with established income thresholds that vary by family size and composition. For example, an income threshold in 1999 for a family of 3 was $13,880; in this study, a family would be considered low-income if their income was $27,760 or below. 1


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Specifically, this theory identifies the broad institutional and social forces that shape experiences in and interpretations about schooling for traditionally marginalized students. The first component of the cultural-ecological theory, “the system”, addresses how society and schools treat marginalized students. At this macro-level, the theory considers how marginalized students experience discrimination in society and in school via educational policies (e.g., school funding and staffing) and pedagogical practices (e.g., teachers’ classroom management and expectations of students). In this study, we use teachers’ demographics, cultural awareness, and perceptions of student school connectedness and educational attainment as indicators of system forces. The second component, “community forces,” captures how marginalized communities respond to the system. Given the lack of uniformity in educational attainment across marginalized groups of students, this theory element attends to the variable ways in which communities shape beliefs about the instrumental value (e.g., returns on investment in education) and relational value (e.g., sense of trust in and connectedness with school) of schooling. We use students’ perceptions of their school connectedness and educational attainment as indicators of community forces in this current study. Overall, the theory explains differential educationrelated perceptions and outcomes in students as groups rather than the micro processes relevant to different perceptions and outcomes. Here, Weiner’s (1985) conceptualization of attribution theory refines the mechanisms through which teacher and student characteristics influence subjective evaluations of teacher-student interactions, perceptions of school connectedness and educational attainment. Attribution theory is applicable as it posits that perceptions of causality influence subsequent decisions or actions. In the context of education, teachers’ perceptions are robust


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antecedents to the type of feedback given to students with important implications for their learning (Graham, 1991; Weiner, 1985). As a commonly cited theoretical framework in educational psychology, attribution theory frames conversations on students’ achievement and motivation orientations (Forsyth, Story, Kelley, and McMillan, 2009) and elucidates incongruence between teachers’ ascriptions and students’ actual performance (Gill and Reynolds, 1999; Groulx, 2001; Hughes et al., 2005; Madon, Jussim, and Eccles, 1997; Tenenbaum and Ruck, 2007; Saft and Pianta, 2001; Zirkel, 2008). We applied attribution theory in this study to help conceptualize the intra- and inter-personal processes that contribute to teachers’ and students’ perceptions of and responses to schooling. Specifically, we measured the influence of attribution by the probability that teachers and students shared similar or dissimilar perceptions of school connectedness and educational attainment. 2.1. Teachers’ Cultural Awareness and Perceptions of Educational Attainment Teachers, as actors of the system, contribute to the educational attainment of low-income students of color through the way they treat and interact with those students (Ogbu and Simmons, 1998). Beyond their actual classroom practices and behaviors, teachers’ perceptions of their own cultural awareness may contribute to their interactions with and perceptions of students (Barry and Lechner, 1995; Garner, Mahatmya, Brown, and Vesely, 2014; Gorman, 2005; Tettegah, 1996; van den Bergh, Denessen, Hornstra, Voeten, and Holland, 2010). Teachers’ cultural awareness affects their perceptions of students’ school connectedness, specifically in terms of race and SES (Ewing and Taylor, 2009; Saft and Pianta, 2001; Thijs, Westhof, and Koomen, 2012). Over the past two decades, scholarship in teachers’ cultural awareness highlighted the need for intentional trainings and assessments about teachers’ beliefs regarding their perceptions of cultural diversity and their students within the classroom walls


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(Brown, 2004; Castro, 2010; Obgu, 1992). Specifically, this line of inquiry focuses on understanding how teachers’ own personal biases influence their interactions with students (Seidl and Hancock, 2011) and their students’ perceptions of future academic attainment (Oyserman, Bybee, and Terry, 2006; Oyserman, Gant, and Ager, 1995). Few studies examine the shared influence between teachers’ perceptions of their cultural awareness and students’ school connectedness on their beliefs of low-income students’ of color future educational attainment. The current work expands former research that shows how teachers’ attitudes relate to the persistent and growing achievement gap between racial minority and majority groups (van den Bergh et al., 2010). Only a few studies make comparisons between two racial minority groups rather than comparing either or both to a dominant White group (Maddon et al., 1998; McKown and Weinstein, 2002; Pigott and Cowen, 2000; Saft and Pianta, 2001). We focus exclusively on comparing low-income, Black and Hispanic students, who are especially vulnerable to lower quality teacher-student relationships and academic achievement (McKown and Weinstein, 2008; Murray, Waas, and Murray, 2008; Tenanbaum and Ruck, 2007; Zirkel, 2008). With the United States’ teaching force representing predominantly white, middle-class females (Causey, Thomas, and Armento, 2000) and classrooms becoming increasingly diverse, more research on teachers’ cultural awareness seems necessary to bolster their relationships and perceptions of youths’ educational attainment, especially for students of color. 2.2. Students’ Perceptions of School Connectedness and Educational Attainment School connectedness is one way to study students’ perceptions of school experiences, especially those from racially and socioeconomically marginalized communities (Ogbu, 1988). School connectedness builds individual capacity to communicate norms, exchange information, and create trusting relationships all necessary for educational success (Briones and Tabernero,


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2012; Crosnoe, 2004; Eccles, 2004). For instance, minority students mistreated by teachers may stop valuing school and may lose trust of the administrators and teachers within the school (Ogbu, 1988); these factors are related directly to student’s school connectedness (Libbey, 2004). Retaining and fostering school connectedness among all students may enhance positively student’s academic performance and educational attainment. The benefits of school connectedness are particularly salient for low-income students of color who are at greater risk for socio-environmental risk factors and demographically-based attributions that inhibit high educational attainment (Juvonen, 2007; Murray, Waas, and Murray, 2008). While low-income students hold lower perceptions of educational attainment for themselves (Mello, 2009), racial minority students hold higher perceptions of educational attainment, but receive lower levels of actual achievement (Rothon et al., 2011). One reason for this effect could encompass the struggles that racial minority, low-income students may have in perceiving “what is possible” and setting goals for achieving success (Oysterman, Johnson, and James, 2011). Consequently, it is crucial to investigate how students’ perceptions of school connectedness, in lieu of their teachers’ cultural awareness and perceptions of school connectedness, work jointly to determine perceptions of educational attainment for students who live in the racial and economic margins. 3. Current Study and Hypotheses Based on the conceptual framework and extant literature, the study examined the factors that contribute to the perceptions of future educational attainment of low-income Black and Hispanic students and their teachers; specifically, we investigated the influence of teachers’ and students’ perceptions of school connectedness, teachers’ cultural awareness, and moderating effects of students’ race. We hypothesized that the likelihood that teachers and students hold


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different perceptions of future educational attainment will be associated positively with teachers’ perceptions of school connectedness. Specifically, regardless of students’ own perceptions of their school connectedness, students perceived by their teachers to have greater school connectedness would be more likely to have teachers that hold the same or greater perceptions of future educational attainment. In addition, we postulated that higher cultural awareness would attenuate the negative association between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of school connectedness, especially for students perceived to have low school connectedness. Finally, we examined these hypotheses by race of the student. This is one of the first studies to test these associations in a primarily low-income, racial minority population. 4. Method 4.1. Sample and Procedures We used data from Wave 3 interviews of the Welfare, Children, and Families: A ThreeCity Study (Three-City) and the Three-City Teacher Survey (TCTS). The Three-City Study is a longitudinal, household-based-stratified-random-sample survey administered to families living in low-income neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio (see Winston et al., 1999 for a full description of the dataset). Wave 3 of data collection took place in 2005, six years after Wave 1, with 80 percent of the original families participating. Data for this study were taken from interviews with the children and their teachers in Wave 3. In the child interview, children (aged 15-20 years) participated independently in 30-minute in-person interviews and answered questions about their social, emotional, and behavioral functioning, and schooling. Their teachers participated in the TCTS, administered during Wave 3 only. The TCTS is a component of the Three-City Study wherein families with children currently enrolled in school or had been in school in the past 7 months gained eligibility for


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participation. Eighty-five percent of the families who participated in the main Three-City Study survey gave permission to contact the focal child’s teacher for the TCTS. Accounting for parental consent, school consent, and teacher completion rates, the overall response rate for the TCTS was approximately 78%. The TCTS was a web-based survey that took approximately 50 minutes to complete and teachers answered questions around eleven topic areas including academic performance and competence, school connectedness, the student-teacher relationship, parent and teacher information, and information on the teacher’s background. A total of 816 children had data from the child interview and teacher surveys. Principal Investigators for the Three-City Study and TCTS determined that parents and teachers who consented and completed the surveys were more likely to have elementary-school aged children/students and children with higher levels of academic achievement and family engagement in school (Lohman, ChaseLansdale, Coley, and Matjasko, 2005). Here, the unit of the analysis was the focal child (student) who ranged in age from 15 to 20 years old (M = 16.70, SD = 1.07). Of the 816 students who had teacher reports, 226 were old enough to complete the child interview. We further limited the sample to only non-Hispanic, Black, and Hispanic students, which resulted in a final sample size of 207 students. The final sample included 202 distinct teachers; that is, five teachers reported on two participating students (the teacher-student ratio does not meet best practice requirements to run multilevel analyses (Maas and Hox, 2002, 2004)). Nonresponse analyses were conducted comparing Black and Hispanic students who were (n = 207) and were not (n = 557) included in the final sample. Students not included in the final sample were younger (t (762) = 71.15, p 0.80).


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5. Results 5.1. Descriptive Overview Table 1 presents characteristics for the sample and results from chi-square and ANOVA analyses. For most (64.2%) of the students in the sample, teachers reported lower perceptions of future educational attainment. Approximately 15% of the students had matched perceptions of future educational attainment with their teachers, and for 20.8% of the students, teachers reported higher perceptions than the students. Only students’ race had a significant association with the teacher-student perceptions groupings; black students were more likely to have teachers who held higher perceptions of educational attainment, while Hispanic students were more likely to have teachers who held matched perceptions of educational attainment. We also found that the groupings for teacher-student perceptions of school connectedness had a significant association with the groupings for teacher-student perceptions of educational attainment. When both teachers and students reported high perceptions of school connectedness or when only teachers reported high perceptions of school connectedness, students were more likely to have teachers who held higher perceptions of educational attainment; that is, teacher perceptions of students’ high school connectedness, regardless of students’ own perceptions of their own student connectedness, were associated with teachers having higher perceptions of future educational attainment for the low-income Black and Hispanic students. Students who were in the other two teacher-student perceptions of school connectedness groups (i.e., lower teacher perceptions of school connectedness) were more likely to have teachers who reported lower perceptions of educational attainment than their own.


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5.2. Multivariate Analyses 5.2.1. Main Effects. The parameter estimates for the main effects (see Table 2, Model 1) report the relative risk compared to the reference group - students in the group where teachers reported lower perceptions of future educational attainment (teacher < student). Hispanic students were 2.75 times more likely to have teachers with shared perceptions of educational attainment. Compared to the reference group, students who increased their Applied Problems score by one standard unit were 1.07 times more likely to have teachers who held higher perceptions of educational attainment. On the other hand, the relative risk of having teachers who held higher perceptions of educational attainment (relative to the reference group) decreased by a factor of 0.26 for students perceived to have low student connectedness by their teachers and a factor of 0.13 for students who themselves perceived and had teachers perceive higher levels of school connectedness. 5.2.2. Interaction Effects. The parameter estimates for the interactive effects (Table 2, Model 2) also represent the relative risk compared to the reference group - students in the group where teachers reported lower perceptions of future educational attainment (teacher < student). There was one significant three-way interaction among teachers’ lower perceptions of school connectedness, cultural awareness, and student’s Hispanic race. We describe the general twoway associations between teacher-student perceptions of school connectedness and teachers’ cultural awareness first. Figure 1 plots the predicted probabilities of membership in the dependent variable (teacher-student perceptions of educational attainment; y-axis) given teachers’ increasing cultural awareness (x-axis) and their membership in the teacher-student perceptions of school connectedness groups (solid and dashed lines). Focusing on only the students in the Low-


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Teacher-High Student school connectedness group, across all the outcomes, when teachers’ cultural awareness increased, students were more likely to have teachers reporting higher perceptions of future educational attainment. The predicted probability was approximately 0.80 for membership in the teacher > student group (bottom left graph) compared to 0.19 for membership in teacher < student group (upper left graph), and 0.00 for membership in the teacher = student group (upper right graph). The three-way interactions examine how students’ race moderates the two-way associations between students’ school connectedness and teachers’ cultural awareness illustrated in Figure 1. The interaction with race, in particular Hispanic students, finds that the associations displayed in Figure 1 were more descriptive of Black students. Figure 2 displays the significant three-way interaction between teacher-student perceptions of school connectedness, teachers’ cultural awareness, and Hispanic students. Compared to the graphs in Figure 1, for Hispanic students in the Low Teacher-High Student school connectedness group, the predicted probability of having teachers report higher perceptions of educational attainment (teacher > student) falls to almost 0.00. In other words, Hispanic students were more likely to have teachers who held lower perceptions of future educational attainment (teacher < student) when Hispanic students have mismatched reports of school connectedness compared to their teachers, and teachers reported high cultural awareness. Thus, the probability that students have teachers that report lower, matched, or higher perceptions of future educational attainment is contingent upon teachers’ and students’ matched reports of school connectedness and teachers’ cultural awareness. This in turn is dependent on whether the student is Black or Hispanic with Hispanic students having teachers that report lower perceptions of educational attainment overall.


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6. Discussion In the current work, we examined factors that contributed to the differing perceptions of educational attainment of low-income Black and Hispanic students and their teachers. Specifically, we investigated the influence of teachers’ and students’ perceptions of school connectedness, teachers’ cultural awareness, and moderating effects of students’ race. We first hypothesized that regardless of students’ own perceptions of their school connectedness, teachers’ perceptions of students’ school connectedness would associate directly with their perceptions of students’ educational attainment; that is, when teachers perceive students to have low school connectedness, they were more likely to hold lower perceptions of their students’ educational attainment. We based this hypothesis off the literature elucidating: 1) teachers’ perceptions of and relationships with students’ vary by race and SES (Ewing and Taylor, 2009; Glock and Krolak-Schwerdt, 2014; Saft and Pianta, 2001; Thijs et al., 2012); and 2) these differential perceptions of students strongly shape teachers’ perceptions of school connectedness and educational attainment above and beyond child characteristics (de Boer, Bosker, and van der Werf, 2010; Graves and Howe, 2011; Murray and Murray, 2004). Based on our analyses and in support of our first hypothesis, there was evidence that teachers’ perceptions more strongly influenced the probability of lower perceptions of educational attainment for marginalized students. Overall, a majority (64%) of the teachers reported lower perceptions of educational attainment than their low-income Black and Hispanic students. Teachers’ perceptions of low student school connectedness were associated with lower perceptions of educational attainment, regardless of students’ perceptions of their school connectedness. These findings are consistent with the research that finds that White teachers tend to hold lower quality relationships and lower


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expectations for low-income students of color (Graves and Howes, 2011; Murray and Murray, 2004; Rimm-Kauffman et al., 2000; Saft and Pianta, 2001). In our study, 64% of the teachers were White (25% were Black and about 11% were Hispanic). The percentage is lower than the national racial distribution of teachers in the United States (i.e., approximately 85% White) and yet we still find that teachers, overall, reported lower perceptions of educational attainment for their low-income students of color. Differences in the backgrounds of teachers and students may give the impression of dissimilar education-related values and can influence teachers’ perceptions of the student negatively (Graves and Howes, 2011; Howes and Shivers, 2006; Hughes, Gleason, and Zhang, 2005; Rimm-Kauffman et al., 2000; Pigott and Cowen, 2000; Saft and Pianta, 2001). These lowered expectations can result in less contingent praise, less classroom support, and fewer learning- and teaching-based interactions for these students (Tucker and Herman, 2002), which, in turn, can influence the students’ perceptions of their school connectedness and future educational goals and attainment. Additionally, the probability that teachers and students had different perceptions of future educational attainment varied by students’ race. Contrary to the established literature, teachers in our study were more likely to report lower perceptions of educational attainment for lowincome Hispanic students compared to low-income Black students. Black students are often considered the most at-risk for decreased teacher expectations (Ewing and Taylor, 2009; Graves and Howes, 2011; McKown and Weinstein, 2002; Pigott and Cowen, 2000), but the research has mostly compared Black students with White students (Maddon et al., 1998; McKown and Weinstein, 2002; Oates, 2009; Saft and Pianta, 2001; Whaley and Noel, 2011). The race findings in our study do align with the higher dropout rates of Hispanic students compared to Black students nationally in the United States. Applying attribution theory, we presume that


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these lower teachers’ perceptions subsequently shape students’ actual performance (Graham, 1991; Weiner, 1985). The results from our study illustrate the importance of investigating teacher-student relationships across minority samples to understand the nuances that inform the pedagogical teacher-student interaction for marginalized students with an effort to reduce the striking disparity in the dropout rates. While we did not reveal a significant main effect for cultural awareness on teachers’ and students’ perception of school connectedness and education attainment, we found an interaction effect between cultural awareness and teacher-student perceptions of school connectedness by students’ race. That is, higher cultural awareness attenuated the negative association between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of school connectedness for students whose teachers perceived them to have low school connectedness. As teachers’ cultural awareness increased, so did the probability that they held higher perceptions of educational attainment for students perceived to have low school connectedness; however, this association was only true for Black students. For Hispanic students, higher teachers’ cultural awareness actually increased the probability that teachers reported lower expectations of educational attainment for students perceived to have low school connectedness. We postulated why these findings could occur for one marginalized group but not the other. When considering the interaction effects between teachers’ cultural awareness and perceptions of students’ school connectedness on the perceptions of low-income Black and Hispanic students’ educational attainment, the findings point to the possibility that teachers with higher cultural awareness reach out to a particular group of students; namely, students who exhibit low school connectedness (Crosnoe, 2004; Eccles, 2004) or are traditionally seen as most at-risk for poor educational outcomes – i.e., Black students. The fact that teachers’ cultural


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awareness functioned positively for their perceptions of low-income Black and negatively for low-income Hispanic students’ educational attainment highlights the ways that potentially US and international teachers, as system forces (Ogby and Simmons, 1998), treat students differently, which contributes to the unequal outcomes evidenced across students of color. However as conceptualizations of minority, diversity, or marginal evolve, cultural awareness must be better understood and practiced in ways that address the demographic shifts of the student and teacher populations globally. Over the past 30 years, the population of White students in K-12 classrooms in the United States has decreased by almost 20%, while there has been a four-fold increase in the population of Hispanic students; the population of Black students has held steady at around 15% (Hughes, Page, and Ford, 2011). Yet, much of our attention in training teachers focuses largely on the dichotomy of minority and majority, often viewed literally as Black and White and less on the many cultures that make up students of color (Fine and Burns, 2003; Whaley and Noel, 2011). As Ogbu (1992) articulates, teachers need to attend to the broad range of ways that minority students interact with and interpret their schooling experiences (e.g., community forces) as part of their training in cultural awareness. Thus, teacher educators need to consider the many demographic and community factors that contribute to teachers’ cultural awareness as these factors may shed light on how we train and develop future teacher candidates’ and in-service educators’ perceptions on the potential students’ of color educational attainment. 6.1. Limitations and Future Directions While this study is the first of its kind to assess these hypotheses in a low-income marginalized population, it is not without limitations. First, the characteristics of the students in the sample, mainly being Black or Hispanic, living 200% below the poverty line, and in specific


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urban neighborhoods, offer a different but homogenous sample with which to assess the hypothesized associations. Therefore, conclusions cannot be drawn for students beyond these income, racial, and geographical characteristics. Second, the dataset limits our ability to parcel out specific cultural and geographical characteristics that may contribute to the results; notably we studied non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic populations. To fully understand the ways in which system and, especially community forces, shape educational perceptions and outcomes in traditionally marginalized populations, future research should investigate the study concepts in ethnically, not only racially, diverse samples as well as with international considerations. We also suggest using observational measures to assess teacher-student interactions in the classroom and the school climate in future research. All measures from the current study draw from teacher and student self-reports; in particular, having school connectedness and cultural awareness measured by trained observers could provide more consistent and unbiased reports as social desirability and other biases envelope in self-reports. Finally, the current study focused only on in-service teachers. Future research should also consider the experiences of preservice teachers in teacher preparation programs to provide a larger picture of how teachers learn about and engage in culturally informed practices. 6.2. Conclusions Our study extends domestic and international research by integrating cultural-ecological and attribution theories as a way to explain the consistent findings that implicate students’ racial and financial status in teachers’ perceptions of educational success (e.g., Garner, Mahatmya, Brown, and Vesely, 2014; Glock and Krolack-Schwerdt, 2014). Our results accentuate the importance of teachers’ cultural awareness on the association between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of educational attainment, with attention to teacher-student perceptions in more


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diverse student bodies. By focusing on a sample of low-income, racial minority students, our analyses revealed that teachers’ perceptions and cultural awareness function differently between low-income Black and low-income Hispanic students: teachers’ cultural awareness positively impacts their perceptions of the former, while negatively impacts their perceptions of the latter. As multicultural classrooms continue to grow in the United States and abroad, our findings highlight the global need for preparation and professional development around culturally responsive teaching. Brown (2004) argues “effective, classroom teachers must be multicultural and possess the skills to provide a classroom environment that adequately addresses student needs, validates diverse cultures, and advocates equitable access to educational opportunity for all” (p. 325). The 2010 Report of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation and Partnerships for Improved Student Learning (NCATE, 2010), charges teacher education to provide teacher candidates with more opportunities to interact with diverse student populations and address culturally relevant pedagogy in their programs (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke, and Curran, 2004). Despite decades of research focused on preparing and professionally developing teachers for working with diverse student bodies (Hollins and Guzman, 2005), inconsistent approaches and constraints on time limit teachers’ engagement in purposeful and ongoing conversations required to really delve into personal biases that may influence teachers’ perceptions on low-income, students of minority. This work recognizes the diverse racial and socioeconomic underpinnings between teacher and student interactions and speaks to the need to address these perceptions in preparation and professional developments globally to ensure reduced biases of education-related values that could potentially hinder the educational attainment of low-income, students of color.


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Table 1. Sample characteristics and descriptive statistics (n=207)

Total % Student Gender Male 44.90 Female 55.10 Student Race Black 47.80 Hispanic 52.20 Mothers’ Education < HS diploma 35.90 >= HS diploma 64.10 Teacher Gender Male 29.50 Female 71.50 Teacher Race White 64.30 Black 25.10 Hispanic 10.60 School Connectedness High Teacher-Student 18.80 High Teacher-Low Student 26.10 Low Teacher-High Student 22.70 Low Teacher-Student 32.40 Note. *** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05.

Teacher-Student Perceptions of Educational Attainment Teacher < Student Teacher = Student Teacher > Student (n=133) (n=31) (n=43) n % n % n %

62 71

46.62 53.38

11 20

35.48 64.52

20 23

46.51 53.49

66 67

49.62 50.38

23 8

25.81 74.19

18 25

41.86 58.14

χ2(df), prob> χ2 1.31

9.02*

0.24 31 102

76.69 23.31

8 23

25.81 74.19

9 34

20.93 79.07

40 93

30.08 69.92

9 22

29.03 70.97

12 31

27.91 72.09

84 35 14

63.16 26.32 10.53

21 7 3

67.75 22.58 9.68

28 10 5

65.11 23.26 11.63

20 26 34 53

15.04 19.55 25.56 39.85

7 9 6 9

22.58 29.03 19.35 29.03

12 19 7 5

27.91 44.19 16.28 11.63

0.08

2.22

20.34**


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Table 1 continued. Sample characteristics and descriptive statistics (n=207)

Student age Student letter-word score Student applied problems score Teacher age (in years) Teacher education level Teacher years of experience Teacher cultural awareness

Total Mean 16.70 96.50 90.20

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

F, prob>F

16.70 94.05 88.93

1.03 19.44 10.90

16.64 102.81 92.61

1.26 25.95 16.99

16.60 99.55 92.63

1.05 16.72 16.07

0.32 3.03 1.89

42.70 3.76 13.80 49.10

43.32 3.74 14.13 48.77

11.91 1.11 11.03 6.98

42.24 3.71 12.52 49.00

12.11 1.01 9.65 5.98

41.07 3.86 13.44 50.16

12.57 1.19 11.14 5.75

0.59 0.22 0.30 0.74


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Table 2. Results of Multinomial Logistic Regressions Predicting Teacher-Student Perceptions for Educational Attainment Teacher-Student Perceptions of Educational Attainment Teacher = Student Teacher > Student Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Student Characteristics Age Gendera Race: Hispanica Mothers’ education: χ2 44.69 81.86** 44.69 81.86** Pseudo-R2 0.12 0.23 0.12 0.23 Note. *** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05. 1) Teachers with lower perceptions for educational attainment than students are the reference group in the multinomial logistic regression equations. 2) Relative risk ratios are presented with standard errors in parentheses. 3) aStudents who are female and black are the reference group for the included student characteristics; bteachers who are male and white are the reference group for the included teacher characteristics; cteachers and students who both report high school connectedness (high teacher-student) represent the omitted reference group for the school connectedness congruence groups.


38

Figure 1.

1 .8 .6 .4 .2 0

0

.2

.4

.6

Pr(Teacher=Student)

.8

1

Predicted Probabilities for Teacher-Student Perceptions of Educational Attainment by Teachers’ Cultural Awareness

-20

-10

0

10

-20

-10

0

10

Cultural Awareness

.8

Cultural Awareness

.6

High Teacher-Student

.4

Legend: Perceptions of School Connectedness

High Teacher-Low Student

.2

Low Teacher-High Student

0

Low Teacher-Student

-20

-10

0

Cultural Awareness

10


39

Figure 2. Predicted Probabilities for Teacher-Student Perceptions of Educational Attainment by Teachers’ Cultural Awareness for Hispanic

.6 .4 .2 0

.2

.4

.6

Pr(Teacher=Student)

.8

.8

1

Students

-20

-10

0

10

-20

-10

0

10

Cultural Awareness

.8

Cultural Awareness

.6

High Teacher-Student

.4

Legend: Perceptions of School Connectedness

High Teacher-Low Student

.2

Low Teacher-High Student

0

Low Teacher-Student

-20

-10

0

Cultural Awareness

10