The Impact of Teacher Caring on Hispanic Students’ Math Achievement

From the Marshall Memo #448

In this intriguing Teachers College Record article, James Lewis, Robert Ream, Kathleen Bocian, Richard Cardullo, Kimberly Hammond (University of California/Riverside) and Lisa Fast (MiraCosta College) explore the relationship between teacher caring, student self-efficacy, and math test scores. 

Working with 1,456 Hispanic fifth- and sixth-graders, the researchers first measured students’ perceptions of whether their teachers cared about them. Affective variables appear to play an important part in at-risk students’ success in school, say the authors – teacher caring is a form of social capital in the classroom. For cultural reasons, Hispanic students “may implicitly ask to be cared for before they can optimally care about school,” say the authors. Well-intentioned teachers, on the other hand, may expect students to demonstrate that they value schooling before they are deserving of care. This misalignment, say the authors, “can taint classroom relations and impede the education of Hispanic youth.”

To measure students’ perceptions of how much their teachers cared about them, students were asked for their reactions to these questions (teachers were not in the room when students had the questions read aloud to them by a researcher):

• Our math teacher takes a personal interest in students.
• Our math teacher cares about how we feel.
• Our math teacher listens to what I have to say.

Here are some of the questions researchers asked to measure students’ math self-efficacy:

• I’m sure I can learn everything taught in math.
• I’m sure I can do even the hardest work in my math class.
• Even if a new topic in math is hard, I’m sure I can learn it.
• I’m sure I can figure out the answers to problems my teacher gives me in math class.

What did the researchers find? 

• First, students’ perceptions about teacher caring had a direct impact on their belief that they would learn what was taught in math, even the hardest material.

• Second, math self-efficacy led directly to better performance on standardized math tests.

• Third, the link between teacher caring, math self-efficacy, and math achievement was strongest with Hispanic students who had not yet mastered English, as compared with Hispanic English speakers. 

“Thus,” conclude the researchers, “ELs stand the most to gain from teachers who are 

predisposed to and skilled at caring, and the math confidence they engender in Hispanic youth.”

“Con Cariño: Teacher Caring, Math Self-Efficacy, and Math Achievement Among Hispanic English Learners” by James Lewis, Robert Ream, Kathleen Bocian, Richard Cardullo, Kimberly Hammond, and Lisa Fast in Teachers College Record, July 2012 (Vol. 114, #7, p. 37-42)