Latino and White Students' Perceptions of Teacher Behaviors That Convey Caring: Do Gender and Ethnicity Matter?

Abstract

Knowing how to improve educational experiences for students through the construct of caring, especially those that are often disconnected from access to an equal education, may be one way to improve their success. This paper reports on the findings from a study conducted to measure Latino and White high school students' perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring and the influence of students' gender and ethnicity on those perceptions. Results suggest that gender is an influential variable, and while ethnicity was not statistically significant overall, there was some significance at the item level.