The effects of African American and European American males' behavior styles on preservice teachers' ratings of acceptability, achievement, and aggression.

Abstract

African American students are overrepresented in the category of Emotional Disturbance under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act across the United States. This study examined how preservice teachers rated African American and European American students on three ratings scales across four culturally mediated behaviors: (a) movement style, (b) self advocacy style, (c) greeting style, and (d) volume of voice. The three dependent variables were an author-created acceptability index and the achievement and aggression scales from the Adjective Checklist (Gough & Heilbrun, 1983). Subjects included 211 preservice teachers enrolled in graduate level education courses. Preservice teachers were divided into groups and shown 4 of 16 videos depicting African American and European American students engaging in typical school behaviors in culturally mediated manners. Factorial analysis of variance was used to analyze the data. Preservice teachers rated European American behavior styles as more favorable than African American styles in 8 of 12 effects studied and African American behavior styles as more favorable in 2 of 12. Fewer significant effects were found strictly on the basis of the race of the students with 3 of 12 effects showing students of African American race as more favorable and 1 of 12 effects showing students of European American race as more favorable.