A study by Edwards (1979b) of Dublin school children provides some
further evidence here. Lower-class and middle-class children were taperecorded
reading a short passage, and were then evaluated along a large
number of dimensions by teachers-in-training. In this study, the judges were
also asked, for each rating made, to indicate how confident they were about
their assessment. On every scale, the lower-class children were viewed less
favourably than their middle-class counterparts. Factor analysis of all
ratings revealed only one underlying factor of importance; that is, all rating
scales were interrelated. This finding is comparable to those of Williams in
that his "ethnicity" factor is clearly not operative in the Irish context, and it
also rather confirms the notion that teachers' judgements of specific children
along specific traits proceed from some overall elicited stereotype. We
would not wish, of course, to deny that other scales and other situations
might evoke other factors (see Day, 1982; Ryan and Giles, 1982); in the school context, however, and on scales relating mainly to language and
school ability, teachers' ratings may well be rather unidimensional. It is also
of some interest here to note that the teachers-in-training employed as
judges were not equally confident about all their ratings. In general, they
were more confident when asked to evaluate aspects of personality more or
less directly related to the speech sample itself (i.e. scales relating to fluency,
reading ability and pronunciation), and less so when asked to judge how
happy the child seemed, or his family socioeconomic status. This indicates
that some dimensions would appear to have greater face validity than
others, and shows judges to have, quite properly, some reservations about
making assessments involving rather far-flung matters.