THE INFLUENCE OF FAMILY BACKGROUND ON TEACHERS RATINGS OF CHILDREN STARTING SCHOOL

A survey of teachers' ratings of classroom behaviour was conducted wit h respect to children who had recently commenced school. Three subscal es of learning behaviour: Distractible, Apprehensive and Uncooperative (The Learning Behaviours Scale, LBS; Stott, McDermott, Green, & Franc is, 1988) were employed, together with brief scales of teacher expecta tions of academic success and of their personal reactions to the child ren. Fathers' occupational status (SES) was found to be a significant predictor of learning behaviour on the three LBS scales and of teacher s' expectations of later academic success, although the variance accou nted for was only between 5 and 16% for boys, and was generally neglig ible for girls' learning behaviour. The effects of SES were found to b e mainly evident in children considered ''at risk'' in various learnin g behaviours. For boys, this reflected a striking dichotomy between bl ue collar and white collar backgrounds, with teachers expecting the fo rmer group of boys to be four limes more likely to make poor academic progress than other boys. Teachers' personal reactions to children wer e not found to be influenced by SES, but were linked to the display of inappropriate learning behaviour by boys. Teachers appeared highly se nsitised to boys' behaviour, implying a negative ''set'', whilst being correspondingly unconcerned about such behaviour in girls.