Ethnicity, school attitudes, intelligence and academic achievement

Regression surface analysis was used to examine relations between school‐related attitudes and measures of academic achievement at different levels of intellectual ability, for children from different Australian ethnic groups. The sample included 660 eleven‐year‐old children from lower social status families, with 250 Anglo Australian children, 170 Greek, 120 Southern Italian, and 120 English children. Regression surfaces were constructed from models that examined possible linear, interaction, and curvilinear relations between the variables. The findings suggest the propositions that: ( a ) at each level of intelligence, increases in the affective component of school attitudes are not associated with changes in academic achievement, ( b ) at each level of the affective component of school attitudes, increments in intelligence test scores are related to increases in academic achievement scores, and ( c ) the relations between academic achievement, intelligence, and the cognitive‐behavioral component of school attitudes vary for children from different ethnic groups. The results suggest that the manipulation of the cognitive‐behavioral aspects of school attitudes may influence the academic performance of low social status children from different ethnic groups but educational programs that focus on the affective components of school attitudes may not be effective in changing children's academic achievement.