FINAL PROJECT REPORT

Principal Investigators:
Professor Kenise Murphy Kilbride
Professor June Pollard
School of Early Childhood Education
Ryerson Polytechnic University

Project Manager and Associate Researcher:
Lynn Caruso, Graduate Student
Faculty of Education
York University

Community Partners:
Martha Friendly, Coordinator
Childcare Resource and Research Unit
Julie Dotch, Coordinator
Bias-Free Early Childhood Services

In the Greater Toronto Area, the percentage of so-called "visible minority" immigrants arriving each year increases, as most newcomers or their ancestors come from places other than Europe. Their children are most vulnerable to differences in treatment between those who are "white" and those deemed "visible minorities", so a research report indicating that white pre-schoolers were receiving the preponderance of positive interactions with their teachers even where the majority of children were children of colour merited a speedy re-investigation. This project examined positive interactions between 74 teachers and 980 pre-school boys and girls in non-profit child care centres in the GTA. Findings did not substantiate the earlier report. In fact, the group of children receiving the most disproportionately high percentage of positive teacher-child interactions was those who were visible minority boys. Consistent with a wide body of literature on sex differences in teacher-child interaction, however, was the finding that white girls are apt to receive the least positive teacher-child interaction of all four groups (white girls and boys, visible minority girls and boys) by every standard of measurement (teachers’ own status, length of experience, level of early childhood professional education, level of specific training for anti-racist or multicultural early childhood education). Implications are drawn for Ministries of Education, Faculties of Education, and school boards, as well as for teachers and researchers, from a reflection on these findings in the light of previous studies indicating that school-aged visible minority boys report interactions with teachers that are negative rather than positive, and in the light of other studies indicating that some immigrant girls have traditions that do not value female education, for whom teacher neglect would be all the more problematic.

Project Overview

Studies of teacher interactions in group settings have documented that boys dominate the classroom in both formal and informal discussion groups. Some findings include that boys spoke more than girls at a ratio of 3 to 1, had more turns at talking, and had more interactions with the teacher. Even in informal discussion groups where children were not expected to raise their hands or wait for the teacher to select them to answer a question, teachers inadvertently selected boys through eye contact, praised boys more than girls, gave boys more academic help and were more likely to accept boys’ comments during classroom discussion.

But a recent study suggested that "visible minority" status also serves to disadvantage children thus perceived. In 1997 undergraduates in the School of Early Childhood Education at Ryerson Polytechnic University conducted a study at the preschool level examining differences in teacher interactions based on children’s sex and visible minority status. A series of observations were conducted in four child care centres in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Thirteen teachers were observed as they interacted with preschool children; two-thirds of the children were "visible minority" and the remainder, "white". The observations showed that the white children received a majority of the interactions that were labelled "positive" in spite of being the minority of the group, and that on the whole, white boys received the most attention. These findings warranted investigation for two reasons: first, they are contrary to what is supportive of the academic success of visible minority children whose families comprise the majority of Canadian immigrants and refugees in the 1990's, and second, they support the fears of immigrant families expressed in an earlier study who felt their children in child care centres were not being listened to and respected.

This project is an examination in greater depth, breadth, and complexity of the issues raised in the 1997 study. Using a sample of 74 teachers, trained and paired observers (one a visible minority group member and one white observer) looked at the types of positive interactions of teachers with 980 preschool children based on their sex and status (white or visible minority). As well, the teachers’ education and status were examined to draw implications for professional development and teacher training.

Comparing the positive interactions of child care providers in child care centres with visible minority children relative to those of white children the project attempted to discover: What are the differences experienced by children of visible minority groups in the quantity and quality of positive teacher-child interactions in Toronto child care centres; and what in the teachers’ training or lack thereof is correlated to these differences? "Visible minority children" were defined as those perceived to be of African, South Asian, Asian, Latino, or First Nations ancestry. "White children" were defined as those perceived to be of European descent. "Teachers" are divided between those who meet the criteria of the Day Nurseries Act of Ontario as early childhood educators and those who are qualified as child care assistants. "Positive interactions" were defined as those behaviours by a teacher that typically enhance children’s sense of their belonging, worth, and competence. Specifically, they were:

teacher-initiated contact (any physical touching or verbal communication with a child that the teacher begins);

being selected by teacher to participate in classroom activities (any verbal communication or physical gesture that singles out a child during regular classroom activities and makes a request of that child to be somewhere or do something);

having one-on-one time for 30 seconds or more (any positive contact, physical or verbal, between a child and a teacher who are in close proximity to one another for 30 seconds or more);

receiving thoughtful answers to questions (any answer to a child who asks a question where the child appears satisfied with the answer);

being given verbal praise for competence and achievement (any favourable verbal response from a teacher toward a child after an action in the area of cognitive, social, or motor development has occurred);

given verbal praise - other (any favourable verbal response from a teacher toward a child for physical or non-competence-related attributes or behaviour);

nonverbal behaviours (any favourable unspoken response from a teacher toward a child for any action in any area of development); and

caring for a child in distress ( any physical or verbal action by a teacher which calms an emotionally distraught child).

Current fourth-year students or graduates of the School of Early Childhood Education at Ryerson were sent in pairs into child care centres, where they observed one teacher over a two-hour period. Prior to conducting the observations, the observers received 7 hours of training and were provided with a 40-page manual. During observations, to avoid both bias on the part of the observers and their potential influence on the behaviour of the teachers, the observers were paired so that each team consisted of a white and a visible minority observer. Our sample included a total of 74 teachers in 21 child care centres in the GTA. In the sample there were 23 visible minority teachers (31%) and 54 white teachers (69%). The total number of children present during all 74 observations was 980, 586 of whom were visible minority (328 or 33.4% boys; 258 or 26.3% girls), and 394 were white (196 or 20% boys; 198 or 20.2% girls). The status of the teachers and the children was based on the perception of the observers.

Analyses of findings to date focus on quantitative differences and include differences of positive interactions experienced among the four categories of children by sex and status: visible minority boys, visible minority girls, white boys and white girls. Still to be finished is the analysis examining the types of positive interactions by categories of teachers, which early results indicate will show significance across at least one or two areas. The most striking finding, however, is the non-support for the findings of the previous study regarding differences in positive teacher-child interactions between visible minority and white children, and the enduring contrast in the experience of girls and boys even at this early level of pre-school education:

Other differences included:

overall, while white girls receive the least attention and visible minority boys the most, the other two groups (visible minority girls and white boys) receive the same slightly high level of attention;

when teachers are considered by status (23 were themselves visible minority; 51 were white) while both groups of teachers pay the least attention to white girls and disproportionately higher attention to the other three groups, the disproportionate attention given to visible minority boys was more pronounced among visible minority teachers;

when teachers are considered by length of experience in the field (6 to 12 months; 1 to 3 years; 4 to 10 years; and over 10 years), every group gives the most seriously disproportionate amount of attention to white girls, and that proportion is negative; no patterns emerge in the attention given to the other three groups;

when teachers are considered by their level of formal education in early childhood education (7 with none, 57 with a diploma, 10 with a degree), the one common pattern among them was that each category of teachers paid less attention to white girls than their numbers warranted;

when teachers are considered by specific training in anti-racist or multicultural education (11 with at least one semester, 21 with a workshop or seminar, 42 with none) again, white girls receive the least attention, and specific training in this field is not the source of positive interactions for visible minority boys, as the group with the most training was the one group with a significant deficit in attention to them.

Implications can be drawn at several levels:

the threat of neglect in the education of young girls endures even as we enter a new century; educators must take seriously the persistent tendency of teachers even of the very young to pay more attention to boys, and university Faculties of Education and provincial Ministries of Education need to do more to remedy this than they are currently doing;

in particular, where young girls are immigrants from cultures that traditionally undervalue the education of females, it is clear that Canadian teachers are ill-prepared to meet the challenge of rectifying this, and Faculties of Education bear a heavy responsibility for enlightening and empowering teachers in this regard;

given that, at this early pre-school age, visible minority boys are observed to receive a fair, or even greater than fair, share of positive interactions with their teachers, educators need to examine closely the ways in which this shifts across the school years to reflect the impressions currently found in research on education in Canada, to the effect that the interactions experienced by visible minority males in the schools is negative, not positive;

such research should be carried out jointly by a partnership of academics, ministries, and boards of education to ensure the greatest dissemination of the findings and the greatest participation in designing and implementing strategies to prevent this change in teacher-child interactions from positive to negative;

immigrant girls who are members of visible minorities are less likely to be neglected by their teachers than white girls, but white immigrant girls run the risk of being excluded from positive interaction with their teachers; where there are language challenges that they experience, this will be even more detrimental for them than such neglect of white native-born girls.

Lynn Caruso has presented a paper entitled "Differences in Interactions of Teachers with Children in Preschool Settings" at the Third National Metropolis Conference in Vancouver on early findings from the study. She will present further analysis of the data in a paper currently being prepared for the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities in Sherbrooke in June. Kenise Murphy Kilbride and Lynn Caruso are presenting a paper at the GREET/SRC Annual Ryerson Faculty Conference in May, 1999. Kenise Murphy Kilbride is preparing a paper reviewing existing literature on experiences of visible minority girls and boys in interactions with teachers by level of schooling examined, to ascertain the levels at which significant experience of positive interactions for visible minorities become neutral or negative; this should help to structure further research across the school-age spectrum. On-going Metropolis research in other centres, as referred to in their publication of funded projects, should provide some of the material for this review.

Through the reading assigned to participants in this project, ten undergraduate students received considerable insight into challenges facing children of visible minority groups. At least one of them has chosen this focus for graduate studies in education, and is currently enrolled in a graduate education program at the University of Toronto. These ten also received training in observing differences in teacher-child interactions, and in coding data and analysing it through SPSS. The graduate student hired as project manager received more detailed instruction in the uses of SPSS for data analysis, and gained experience in project management, report writing, and paper presentations at conferences. The community researchers received additional experience in working with academics in a productive partnership that also enabled them to work collegially with undergraduate and graduate students.

While implications from the data are presented above, debriefing of observers resulted in a strong consensus that the most striking impression they received was that of missed opportunities: they came away from each observation with a sense that there was so much more that teachers could be doing to enhance developmental opportunities for all children through personal interaction.

Back to Top

		Updated February 09, 2004