Gene L. Piche

Effects of dialect‐ethnicity, social class and quality of written compositions on teachers' subjective evaluations of children

In the context of previous work related to linguistic stereotypes and Pygmalion effects, this research describes the relative effect of factors of dialect‐ethnicity, social class, and quality of written compositions on pre‐service elementary teachers’ judgments of childrens scholastic success. Analysis of teachers’ semantic differential ratings indicates some relative salience for social class over dialect‐ethnicity and quality of composition. Analysis of interaction effects reveals a complex relationship between these stimulus attributes and teacher judgments. Results are interpreted as being indicative of the likely complexity of teachers’ social perceptions of children and in some opposition to previous assumptions of the more or less unique salience of linguistically mediated social stereotypes.

Black and White Adolescent and Preadolescent Attitudes toward Black English.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the attitudes of black and white, male and female, middle and lower class adolescents and preadolescents to tape-recorded samples of Standard English (SE) and Black English (BE). To achieve as natural a simulated casual speech sample as possible, the speech sample of a male high school senior was recorded. Because it was evident from the preliminary study that some students regarded outsiders with suspicion, particularly when biographical questions were asked, it was decided that more reliable results would be obtained if the stimulus materials were presented as a regular classroom activity. Thus, the classroom teachers presented the stimulus material in their own classes for the main study. The main effects of sex, social class, race, age, and guise and the interactions thereof were analyzed by a separate analysis of each rating scale. The ANOVA of these separate rating scales revealed that black students regarded BE more favorably than did white students and that black preadolescents regarded BE more favorably than did black adolescents.

Predicting Learning from Text: A Comparison of Two Procedures

Much research focused on learning from text is concerned with the effect of level of information on recall. To determine information levels, hierarchical text analyses are used to parse texts, and a number of these have been shown to correlate with recall. This study compares two such procedures, the Johnson (1970) and Meyer (1975) procedures, to determine their power to predict recall of information from texts. In two experiments, a total of 194 university freshmen read one of two expository passages and wrote a recall protocol. These protocols were then analyzed by independent raters for the presence of information from the passages read. Johnson and Meyer analyses were used to examine recall patterns. The main effect of hierarchical level was significant for both analyses, but the mean percentage of recall increased as a function of hierarchical level as determined by the Johnson analysis and decreased as a function of hierarchical level as determined by the Meyer analysis. Implications derived from the study are discussed.