The medium “speech” is the message: The effects Latino males’ accents have on teachers’ perceptions and reactions

The differences between teachers’ perceptions of accents, which is referred to as varied cultural dialect styles (VCDS) in this study, on Latino American male student’s achievement and teachers’ judgments concerning whether a student needs special education services remains uncharted. Specifically, among White American and Latino American students, these differences have remained overlooked in the educational discourse and has played an integral role in creating culturally responsive pedagogy policies. This suggests a hypothesis that the teachers’ perceptions on Latino American students’ VCDS on achievement may lead to an increase in the referral of Latino American students to special education services. To study the interaction effects between student ethnicity and student VCDS, and teachers’ rankings of student achievement and recommendation for special education, a factorial general linear model with repeated measures (GLM) was employed and follow-up interviews were conducted. To test this, 103 middle school teachers from the central and north regions of Texas completed a survey with voice recordings embedded, based on the Adjective Checklist (ACL; Gough & Heilbrun, 1983) and a four-point Likert Scale (1=very unlikely and 4=very likely) to determine if the participants would recommend the particular student heard on the voice recording to need special education services. With a mixed methods sequential explanatory research design and analysis approach, 7 middle school teachers participated in follow-up interviews to further interpret the quantitative data. Results from the questionnaires and GLM indicated that teachers perceive Latino American students’ VCDS as lower in achievement and more likely to recommend special education services than the White American student with standard language. Additionally, the qualitative results revealed that Latino male’s VCDS had negative impacts on teachers’ perceptions regarding achievement and need for special educations services. Assumptions and implications for this research will be discussed. This study suggests there is a need to expand upon culturally responsive teaching policies and laws.