Ethclass, the Achievement Syndrome, and Children’s Cognitive Performance

Abstract

The study examined relations between ethclass group membership, the achievement syndrome of families, and the cognitive performance of 850 11-year-old Australian children from six ethclass groups. A semi- structured interview schedule was constructed to assess parents’ achievement orientations, press for English, press for dependence, educational and occupational aspirations, and individualistic-collectivistic value orientations. Standardized tests were used to measure children’s intelligence and performance in mathematics, word knowledge, and word comprehension. The results support the proposition that if children from different cultural groups are found to be characterized by distinct patterns of cognitive scores, then the groups are characterized by distinct patterns of family learning environments. Also, the findings suggest that some of the achievement syndrome measures may act as threshold variables so that until certain levels of particular environment measures are attained, other family processes may have limited associations with children’s cognitive performance.