Relationships between Pupils’ Sociocultural Background, Instruction in School and Writing Achievement

Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 33, No. 4, 1989 269

Relationships between Pupils'Sociocultural Background, Instructionin School and Writing AchievementHORST LÖFGREN & GERT LÖFQVISTDepartment of Educational and Psychological Research, School of Education, LundUniversity, Box 23501, S-200 45 Malmö, Sweden

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to explain differences between pupils' achievements incomposition. A theoretic causal model of factors of importance to pupils' proficiency in writinghas been tested with data collected in the Swedish part of the IEA-study. These data involvethe pupils' sociocultural background, the teachers' experiences and the teaching of writing. Thepupils' marks for an argumentative composition represent the standard of their achievement inwriting. The present analysis includes pupils in grade 9 of the Swedish compulsory comprehen-sive school. The causal model was verified concerning the relationships between pupils'sociocultural background and their writing achievement. However, no relationships could befound between teaching in school and pupils' achievement, a result which is discussedcritically.

INTRODUCTION

The IEA Study of Writing

During the last few decades the school subject of Swedish has more and more comeinto the focus of attention in the pedagogical debate in Sweden. In the 1970s readingwas especially emphasized, whereas in the 1980s the interest has been centred moreon writing. In the light of the results of analyses of pupils' achievements theteaching methods for reading and writing have been widely and intensely discussed(Grundin, 1975; Hansson, 1975; Hultman & Westman, 1977; Grogarn, 1979;Lindell, 1980; Larsson, 1982; Garme, 1988; Strömqvist, 1988).

Reading and writing have been given increasing attention as school subjects allover the world. That is a consequence of the fact that progress within thetechnical-industrial fields requires considerable reading and writing skills amongcitizens, while at the same time investigations have shown the tendency towardspoorer achievements (Gorman et al., 1988). What has been observed and discussedin Sweden thus has its equivalent in other countries.

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement(IEA) decided in 1980 to make an international investigation into writing. Thisassociation, with some 40 member states, has inspired and directed comparative

270 H. Lofgren & G. Lofqvist

evaluations of knowledge since the beginning of the 1960s. In accordance withtradition, investigating writing does not only involve the measurement of pupils'performance. Furthermore questionnaire data have been collected from pupils,teachers and principals to give a comprehensive description of the teaching system,its conditions and aims, realization and evaluation. In addition to these data, theparticipating countries have given information on the background of their teachingsystem, on its organization, on curricula and syllabuses in the mother tongue.

An essential purpose of the IEA study is for each nation to try to identifyfactors related to the pupil, the teacher, the school and the home that could accountfor variations in pupil achievements in writing. The purpose and planning of theIEA project and its written tasks and questionnaires have been fully presented in areport (Lofqvist, 1988).

The IEA investigation refers to three age-groups of pupils:

—Population A includes pupils who have reached or are near the end of the stage atwhich they have a class teacher, i.e. form 6 of the intermediate level of thecompulsory school (approx. age 13).

—Population B includes pupils at or near the end of the period of time at schoolwhen a large proportion leaves school. In Sweden this corresponds to form 9 ofthe compulsory school.

—Population C includes pupils at or near the end of the upper secondary school. OfSwedish pupils this comprises those in the third form of the three- or four-yearprogrammes and those in the second form of the two-year programmes (approx.age 18).

The pupils wrote two or three compositions in different subject areas. Five tasks inthe international project (1A-1E) consisted of different forms of messages of apractical nature: one was a personal account (5), one argumentative (6), onereflective (7) and one both informative and argumentative (9). Tasks 2-4 and 8,which have been left out here, were not compulsory and were not written bySwedish pupils.

TABLE I. Composition tasks and questionnaires in the different investigation groups in three tests

Test Pop. A Pop. B Pop. C

1

2

3

Task 1 (alt. A-D)Questionnaire A

Task 5

Task 6, Questionnaire B

Task 1 (alt. A-C, E)Questionnaire C

Tasks 5, 6, 7

Task 9, Questionnaire D

Tasks IE, 9Questionnaire C

Tasks 6, 7

Questionnaire D

Table I shows which tasks were given to the pupils at different stages andwhich of them were rotated. Rotation means that only a proportion of the pupils in aform completed certain tasks. Rotated tasks are given in italics in the table. Thepupils answered questionnaires in connection with the written assignments.

Factors Affecting Writing Proficiency 271

The writing time was 20 minutes for compositions 1A-E and 9, and 60 minutesfor the others. Each composition on subject 6 was marked by three judges. Thecompositions on all other subjects were marked by two judges. The average value ofthe judges' marks for a composition represents the standard of pupil achievement.

A Theoretical Model

The results of writing, like all other forms of teaching, are influenced by manydifferent conditions. Some have a direct influence on what the pupils achievewhereas others have a more direct influence. At the beginning of the project muchattention was given to the creation of a theoretical model that could describe thefactors influencing pupils' achievements and could be the basis of continued projectwork. Such a model was of special importance for the planning of assignments andquestionnaires (Gorman et al., 1988).

In the international comparisons it stands to reason that one must take intoconsideration the national background which is of importance with respect toquantitative as well as qualitative differences in the pupils' writing. It is to beassumed that what is being taught in different countries depends among other thingson the national linguistic situation and the literary background of the country. Theshaping of the educational system also plays an important part. In a centralizededucational system which attaches great importance to external examinations, therewill be considerable educational similarities among the schools. One can assume thatteachers and pupils largely agree on the contents of what is taught. In a system likethat there is less room for local variations within the style and content of teaching.

The less centralized the educational system of a country, the greater thepossibilities for individual schools to create their own profiles. Each school maydevelop according to its own conditions and purposes. Of great importance to thedevelopment of the individual school, however, are the local socioeconomic andlinguistic conditions. Likewise the attitudes of adults to the individual school's aimsand ambitions are important and their willingness and readiness to fully identifythemselves with the school's activities and take an active part in them.

It is to be assumed that organizational measures within a school influence thepupils' chances of making their best possible performance. Conditions differ inschools with or without streaming, in schools of different sizes and with differentnumbers of pupils. But even in schools where the cultural atmosphere and theorganizational conditions seem to be equivalent, pupils in different classes may havedifferent possibilities of learning to write, for it can be assumed that well-qualifiedteachers are able to give a more stimulating instruction and to give their pupilsbetter knowledge and skills than poorly qualified teachers. An experienced teachercan probably plan his teaching so that it has a distinct structure, he will use differentmethods in order to stimulate his pupils and will make use of praise and criticism byway of motivation.

The influence on the pupils' achievements in writing that can be attributed tothe teacher are determined not only by the teacher's education and experience.Likely important factors are, for example, the time that the teacher devotes to

272 H. Lbfgren & G. Lofqvist

writing instruction, the way the teacher looks upon the purpose of his teaching andthe emphasis he places on writing proficiency, his choice of teaching methods, thefrequency of exercises given and methods of revision and feedback.

It has been confirmed in many studies that the home is important to the pupil'ssuccess at school. Obvious connections have been found, for example, between thefamily's educational background and interest in school activities on the one handand the pupil's achievements on the other. One may assume that such factors alsoaffect the pupil's results in writing. Furthermore both the pupils' and the parents'linguistic background are important. The language or languages spoken at home arethought to be of greater importance to writing than to other school subjects.

Pupils' chances of making outstanding achievements in writing depend on theiropportunities of learning to write. These not only depend on how teaching has beenplanned. To a great extent their motivation for their own education plays a part.Their progress is dependent on much emphasis they place on being good at writing,how important it is to their future, how much they need to practise and make aneffort, how they usually succeed, etc. To what extent they can profit by theireducation is, of course, also dependent on their intellectual capacity and theirinterests outside school in reading and writing.

The interrelationships and causal connections between the variables mentionedabove (fully presented by Lofqvist, 1988, and Gorman et al., 1988) form atheoretical causal model of factors of importance to pupils' proficiency in writing. Asimplified form of this model is seen in Fig. 1 and constitutes the theoretical basis ofthis partial study.

ACHIEVEMENT " W -

FIG. 1. A theoretical causal model of factors of importance to pupils' proficiency in writing.

AIM AND METHOD

Aim of the Study

The main aim of the present study was to try to explain differences between pupils'writing ability and achievement in free writing. Data from the Swedish study wereused to test the theoretical causal model in Fig. 1. Thus, we wanted to test whether


our empirical data were consistent with the causal model concerning the relation-ships between pupils' background, instruction in school and pupils' writing achieve-ment. Achievement differences between classes are also studied.

Sample

As mentioned earlier the IEA project has studied three populations. In the presentstudy we have examined pupils from population B, which means pupils from grade9. The Swedish sample comprises 1701 pupils from 72 randomly chosen classes. Asshown in Table I, these pupils have answered a rather extensive questionnaire. Allpupils have written task number 9, which was an argumentative task in the form ofan advice-giving letter to a friend about how to get high marks on writtencomposition tasks. As some tasks were rotated 556 pupils have written task number6, which was also an argumentative task. The pupils' teachers (72 teachers) haveanswered a similar extensive teacher questionnaire in Swedish.

Measuring Instruments

From the teacher questionnaire information has been collected on how the instruc-tional process is planned, which goals are emphasized, teaching practices (types oftasks, exercises, study material, etc.) and how feedback is given.

From the pupil questionnaire information was collected on the students'background (home situation and language usage), reading interest, media choicesand ideas about the teaching of writing.

The questionnaires were designed to measure certain aspects of the pupils'home background, instruction in school and other factors in the theoretical model.To check the validity of the instruments used, some dimensional analyses weremade. These analyses of constructs were carried out by means of a factor analyticmethod. Then the reliabilities of items, which according to the factor analyses couldbe put together into monodimensional scales, were estimated by means of Cron-bach's alpha, expressing the homogeneity of the scale (Cronbach, 1984). Where analpha-coefficient increased when a particular item was tentatively deleted, a judge-ment was made from a validity point of view whether or not that item should bedeleted. As we have started by making factor analyses the number of doubtful itemsis very small.

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PUPILS' SOCIOCULTURALBACKGROUND, INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOL AND WRITINGACHIEVEMENT

Some Preliminary Analyses

After validity controls of the questionnaires some preliminary analyses were carriedout to reduce the number of factors describing the teaching process. It was alsonecessary to reduce the total number of factors in the final causal analysis. These


preliminary analyses showed many relationships of significant magnitude betweenvarious classroom activities, but no significant relationships between teachingactivities and the quality of the students' writings, a somewhat surprising result. Theway teachers planned, carried out and evaluated their teaching did not predict thestudents' proficiency in writing. Could this negative result be explained?

We believe that there are at least four plausible explanations why no relation-ships could be established between classroom practice and the outcome of thepupils' writing achievements:

(1) The development of writing ability is dependent on many years ofinfluence from both inside and outside school. To ask a teacher to describe his orher actual teaching practices on one and the same occasion is not enough to describethe relationship between teaching practice and pupil progress. If a pupil hasattended the same class for many years and has had the same teacher, such a 'one-shot study' might be useful. The learning process starts, however, very early in lifeand at school. It might be necessary to collect information about the schoolprogramme from pre-school and onwards.

(2) Some of the data are on an aggregated level. We have 1701 pupils but only72 teachers. The sampling technique might have caused some troublesome features.It is always problematic when you use a group sampling technique and then treatthe data as if you have a sample of independent observations (Lofgren, 1973;Larsson, 1977). Membership of a specific group, a school class for instance with acertain teacher, might have some significance. At least we would have believed so ifwe were the teachers. Considering that we have 72 classes it would be possible tocalculate mean values of all the variables and to use them as independent observa-tions.

(3) What teachers answer in a questionnaire might not be a good description ofwhat is going on in classrooms. Even if two teachers mark the same alternatives toquestions concerning teaching practice, the situation may still be quite different tothe pupils. In our experience, discussion among teachers about methods of instruc-tion is more varied in the staffroom than in the classroom. Often pupils and teachersdescribe what is going on in the classroom in different ways (Lofgren & Tellenback,1984a).

(4) In the IEA questionnaires there are no questions about the social climate,the relationship between the teacher and the pupils in classrooms, or questions aboutthe school ethos. If you ask pupils if instructional practices have an impact on theirschool achievement, most pupils unconditionally answer yes. Many pupils are verywell aware of teacher characteristics which affect the outcome of teaching, and ofwhich is the most effective teaching method.

Selection of Manifest Variables for Testing the Causal Model

In order to make possible an international comparative study between participatingcountries we decided at an IEA meeting with representatives from the Finnish,German and Swedish project groups to select a number of variables and run parallelpath-analyses. The intention was to compare results from different countries


concerning the relationships between students' background, instruction in schooland achievement in written composition.

The present analysis gives the result from a random sample of Swedish pupilsin grade 9. The pupils have written task number 6, which is the argumentativecomposition. The dependent variable, which we wanted to predict and explain fromthe independent variables, is the mark received for this task.

Table II shows the selected variables. Cronbach's alpha has been used for anestimation of reliabilities if variables were summarized onto a scale. The abbrevia-tion 'P' stands for 'pupil' and 'T' for 'teacher', which means that the variable wasselected from the pupil questionnaire and the teacher questionnaire, respectively.The contents of the variables are explained by keywords. In the table the directionand range are shown.

Pupils gave information about the occupations and education of their parents.From these data a social classification has been made. Marks consist of five differentjudgements, an overall evaluation, and judgements of content, organization, styleand grammatical correctness.

Partial Least Squares (PLS)—a short presentation

The PLS (partial least squares) approach to path models with latent variablesindirectly observed by multiple indicators, often called soft modelling, is primarilyintended for causal-predictive analysis in research where the problems are complexand the theoretical knowledge is scanty (Wold, 1982). PLS is a statistical method inwhich parameters in a path model of latent variables are estimated by means of atechnique called OLS (ordinary least squares). In a somewhat simplified way, onecan say that the PLS analysis is a combination of factor analysis and regressionanalysis. This method is designed to find the maximum prediction from independentvariables to the dependent variables. The estimation of parameters under the PLScriteria has three prerequisites, which should be taken into consideration wheninterpreting the results:

(1) The manifest variables (MVs) are partitioned into non-overlapping blocks ofMVs.

(2) A block of MVs is related to only one latent variable.(3) The path model is recursive (loop-free, a causal chain).

In the IEA project much descriptive data have been collected. However, one of themain aims was to explain differences in achievement between pupils. Therefore wehave chosen a PLS analysis to obtain information about the causal relationshipsbetween factors of importance to pupils' proficiency in writing.

The analysis commences with the construction of a hypothetical model of howdifferent factors are causally related. The relationships between the constructs,according to the theory (p. 272), are shown as arrows in a path diagram. In ameasurement model the relationships between the manifest (observed) variables andthe latent variables (constructs) are specified (see Table II). The causal relation-ships between the latent variables are called a structure model. Thus the structure

276 H. Lofgren & G. Lofqvist

TABLE II. Variables in the causal analysis, and their realiability coefficients

Latent variable Manifest variables Direction Rel. coeff.

PSEX pupil's sex

PHOMESES mother's occupationfather's occupation

PHOMECLT discuss literature at home+discuss TV at hometell what happened at school+talk about work and schooldiscuss family matters+discuss common mattersnumber of books at home

PWCULT pupil: write as the school wantsadults: learn Swedish as the

boy-girl (1-2)

low-high (1-5)low-high (1-5)

seldom-often (2-10)

seldom-often (2-9)

seldom-often (2-10)none-many (1-5)

important-not important (1-4)

0.59

0.67

0.69

PMOTIV

PMEDIA

TEXPER

TSIZECLS

TPERC

PATT

PSELF

GRADES

school wants

future studies

comics readingTV-watching weekdaysTV-watching weekends

experience as a teacherexperience as a teacher in Swedish

number of pupils in class

evaluation of class in comparisonwith earlier classesevaluation of class in comparisonwith other classes in school

attitudes to schoolattitudes to writingdiary writingpen pals

self evaluation; writing

overall evalutioncontents and organizationstyle and grammatical correctness

important-not important (1-4)

number of years (1-10)

not at all-many hours (0-8)not at all-many hours (0-4)not at all-many hours (0-4)

number of years (1-36)number of years (1-36)

few-many (14-31)

better-worse (1-5)

better-worse (1-4)

bad-good (1-5)negative-positive (1-5)no-yes (1-2)no-yes (1-2)

bad-good (1-4)

low-high (1-5)low-high (2-10)low-high (2-10)

—

0.64

0.97

—

0.88

0.65

—

0.96

model is a path analysis on latent variables. For a more exhaustive description of thePLS program see Lohmoller (1981).

Result of the Causal Analysis

The analysis is based on a matrix from data from the Swedish sample of 556 pupils.Listwise deletion was used when the correlation matrix was computed. We havetherefore got complete data for 365 pupils. A control analysis, applying the pairwise


deletion of data, showed very similar results. This means that the 365 pupils in thestudy are a representative sample of the population.

.63 Smka.

Jenrhrr

Achievement

FIG. 2. Result of the PLS analysis.

The attitude to written composition is strongly related to sex: girls have a morepositive attitude. This holds true not only in school but also in pupils' leisure time.Girls write diaries and enjoy corresponding with friends more often than boys. Thedirect relationship between sex and attitude is 0.63. Attitude influences self-evaluation (0.30) and writing achievement. A separate comparison between meanvalues showed a highly significant difference (/><0.001); the difference was alsovery large (?/2=0.31).

There is a relationship between sex and media habits. Boys read more comicsand spend more time watching TV. There are several indirect relationships betweensex and pupils' writing achievement. Girls get better marks on their compositions. Acomparison between mean values showed a highly significant and a rather largedifference (p<0.001; ?/2=0.12). There is also a highly significant difference withrespect to media choices, but this difference is not that large ( T / 2 = 0 . 0 5 ) .

From information on parents' occupations, a socioeconomic classification wasmade. The social background and the sociocultural home situation of the pupilsshow several significant causal relationships to other factors in the model. Theextent of interaction and fellowship within a family, e.g. that children and theirparents usually discuss both important and less important matters, is partly relatedto sex (0.25). Answers from girls show that they are more likely than boys to take


part in discussions concerning inner family matters like housekeeping and economyas well as topics about morals, religion and politics. They discuss literature and TVprogrammes more often, and also what is going on at school.

The feeling of solidarity and the spirit of understanding which characterize thehome situation are both directly and indirectly related to pupil achievements. Thepupils' home culture partly affects their attitudes to writing (0.18) and their interestin writing in their leisure time. In such homes one identifies oneself with thedemands of the school and there is a general opinion that the pupils should learn towrite in the way the teachers want them to (0.18). However, this is not positivelyrelated to marks, which is probably due to the fact that even weak pupils are told toaccept school norms. It is quite obvious that pupils from school- and education-oriented homes get more support from their parents and that this fact positivelyaffects the pupils' motivation for future studies (0.27). In classes from a morepositive sociocultural background the teachers also judge their pupils more posi-tively (0.14).

There is one direct and some indirect relationships between media consumptionand writing achievements. Bad school achievement might result in certain mediachoices (Roe, 1983; Jonsson, 1985), but in the theoretical model we have chosen theopposite direction. Much time spent on comic-reading and TV-watching affectedthe pupil's writing achievement negatively. We know from both Swedish andinternational studies that girls spend less time watching TV and videos than boys(Brown, 1976; Hojerback, 1986; Sonesson, 1988). This holds true in this study(—0.22). Above all boys and those pupils not interested in future studies arefrequent TV-watchers. Consequently a negative relationship appears between me-dia-consumption and the teachers' perception of class competence (—0.13).

There is a weak relationship between social background and teacher experience.A plausible explanation is that older and more experienced teachers are found inmore positively segregated areas. Teachers apply for and stay in schools located inhigh status areas.

The relationship between family-SES and childrens' TV-watching, as well asbetween parents' educational background and TV-watching has been proved bymany studies. Children from low status families watch TV a lot more than childrenfrom well-educated families. This negative relation between SES and childrens'media consumption is therefore expected (—0.21).

Experienced teachers are more critical of their own classes and their pupils'achievement (—0.24). This evaluation of the class may be due to the fact that theyhave had many other classes for comparison, and perhaps because of an overestima-tion of past time conditions. The positive relationship between class-size and theteachers' evaluation of the class (0.21) is somewhat surprising. A possible explana-tion is that school administrators try to keep the number of pupils as low as possiblein problematic schools and classes. Newcomers will probably more often be placedin well-behaved and able classes.

The pupils' results in written composition, according to this study, seem to bedependent on pupils' sex, attitudes, sociocultural background and media choices.


TABLE III. Direct and summarized indirect relationships from different factorsto the dependent variable 'Marks in written composition'

Factor

PSEXPHOMESESPHOMECLTPWCULTPMOTIVPMEDIATEXPERTSIZECLSTPERCPATTPSELF

Direct relation

0.120.000.16

-0.150.13

-0.200.000.000.140.140.15

Indirect relation

0.230.140.090.030.03

-0.01-0 .03

0.030.000.040.00

Total relation

0.350.140.25

-0.120.16

-0.21-0 .03

0.030.140.180.15

Together these factors in the model can predict 35% of the variance on thedependent variable 'Marks in written composition' (2?2=0.35).

Table III shows the direct and indirect relationships between different factorsin the model and the dependent factor. A correlation matrix of all factors in themodel is shown in Table IV.

DISCUSSION

The analysis of data from a sample of grade 9 pupils has shown several interestingcausal relationships between pupils' background and achievements in written com-position. We could not, however, find any effects of different instructional practicesin classrooms. One plausible explanation was the sampling technique; we sampledschool classes instead of individuals. After calculating mean values for the classesfor every manifest variable a re-analysis was made, this time with the mean valuesas input variables. Still we did not find any significant relationships betweeninstruction in school and pupils' performance.

A PLS analysis based on class mean values showed considerably strongerrelationships between social background (PHOMESES) and writing achievement, ahighly likely result. High status classes achieve much better results than low statusclasses. In this analysis pupils' social background was more strongly related toteachers' evaluation of class competency, which in turn was strongly related to theclass mean of writing achievement.

A comparison between the 72 participating classes shows large differences.About 25% of the variance of marks can be predicted from the class a pupil belongsto.

As large differences were found between classes for several factors in themodel, a comparison was made between classes after adjusting for differences inthese background factors. Such an analysis of covariance still showed large differ-ences between classes. There appears to be something beyond what has been

to00

o

&t-i

fTABLE IV. Factor correlation matrix

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 ^

1 PSEX 1.00

2 PHOMESES -0 .09 1.003 PHOMECLT 0.23 0.17 1.004 PWCULT 0.00 -0 .05 0.18 1.005 PMOTIV 0.10 0.27 0.31 0.12 1.006 PMEDIA -0 .22 -0 .24 -0 .18 0.01 -0 .24 1.007 TEXPER 0.08 0.12 0.01 0.03 -0 .01 0.00 1.008 TSIZECLS -0 .02 0.00 0.03 0.05 0.08 -0 .05 0.02 1.009 TPERC -0 .03 0.14 0.18 0.06 0.15 -0 .19 -0 .22 0.21 1.00

10 PATT 0.67 -0 .02 0.35 0.18 0.20 -0 .19 0.09 -0 .01 0.07 1.0011 PSELF 0.26 0.03 0.23 0.05 0.18 -0 .14 0.06 -0 .02 0.05 0.35 1.0012 GRADES 0.34 0.15 0.34 -0 .07 0.29 -0 .36 0.08 0.09 0.23 0.38 0.31 1.00


observed by the IEA project, and which is of significance to the outcome. In thisarticle we have stressed, among other things, the classroom climate, i.e. therelationship between the teacher and the pupils. The working conditions in schoolare likely to be an important factor for both teachers and pupils (Lofgren &Tellenback, 1984a,b). The classroom climate should have been integrated into theIEA study.

For future studies it is necessary to consider the selection of process variablesand the way these variables are observed. In order to study the effects of teachingson writing skills we are recommending a longitudinal approach.

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Relationships between Pupils’ Sociocultural Background, Instruction in School and Writing Achievement