The effects of speech style and skin color on bilingual teaching candidates' and bilingual teachers' attitudes towards Mexican-American pupils

This study investigated the effect of Mexican American pupils' speech style and skin color on bilingual teaching candidates' and bilingual teachers' attitudes towards them. Previous research has indicated that teachers often judge pupils' potential on the basis of personal rather than academic characteristics. These judgments often become self-fulfilling prophecies which may determine the pupil's future success or failure. In bilingual education programs designed to help linguistic minority children succeed in an academic setting, the identification of these hidden attitudes becomes particularly important, for biases may undermine the success of both the program and the pupils.; These attitudes were assessed by presenting to Spanish-speaking bilingual education teaching candidates and bilingual teachers, profiles (color photographs and Spanish language samples) of eight Mexican American pupils heterogeneous both in skin color and the variety of Spanish they speak. The subjects were asked to rate the pupils along a number of dimensions on a semantic differential instrument.; The findings helped determine to what extent a pupil's personal characteristics influence subjects' assessment of the pupil's potential for success in school and the appropriateness of the pupil's spoken language. The study did identify possible sources of potential self-fulfilling prophecies in the case of Spanish-speaking Mexican American children.; The summary of the major findings indicate that: (1) No overall pattern of statistically significant differences were found between bilingual teaching candidates and bilingual teachers in their evaluation of eight pupil profiles. (2) Both bilingual teaching candidates and bilingual teachers rated pupils more favorably when they employed standard Spanish than when they employed nonstandard Spanish. (3) Light-skinned pupils received higher mean scores than dark-skinned pupils from both bilingual teaching candidates and bilingual teachers.; In addition to the three designated questions of interest, analysis of the data also revealed a fourth major unexpected gender finding. (4) Male pupil profiles were given more favorable ratings than female pupil profiles by both bilingual teaching candidates and bilingual teachers.