Instructional Style and the Intellectual Performance of Indian and Eskimo Students

Abstract

Three 1970-71 studies concerning the styles of instruction that lead to higher intellectual performance among village American Indian and Eskimo high school students are presented in this final report of observations of teachers and students in several Native boarding schools and/or integrated urban high schools in Alaska. The first study, an ethnography, describes the problems of these students and their teachers, and suggests a typology differentiating effective and ineffective teachers. This ethnography suggests that the teachers degree of personal warmth versus professional distance, and degree of active demandingness versus passive understanding, are fundamental dimensions separating successful from unsuccessful teachers. The second study, empirically j a major hypothesis derived from the ethnography, found that socioemotional climate of the integrated classroom is significantly related to the verbal participation of the village students, who are typically silent and withdrawn. The third study found that teacher warmth, communicated through nonverbal channels, leads to higher intellectual performance among village Indians and Eskimo students. Suggestions are made for implementing the secondary school instruction of Indian and Eskimo students through teacher selection methods and training programs which take into account the importance of personal -4armth and active demandingness in cross-cultural teaching success. A bibliography and copies of the Teacher and student questionnaires used in the studies are included