Cultural Learning Environment in Science Classrooms: Validity and Application of a Questionnaire

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an instrument to assess students' culturally sensitive environments and to examine the associations between these factors and students' attitudes towards science. A measure of students' environment, namely, the Cultural Learning Environment Questionnaire (CLEQ), was developed. The instrument was influenced by Hofstede's four dimensions of culture (Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism, and Masculinity/Femininity) and contained eight scales. Using a sample of over 3000 secondary science students, the reliability of the CLEQ scales ranged from 0.69 to 0.86 and showed acceptable discrimination between the scales. The mean correlation between scales ranged from 0.04 to 0.23. The reporting of the class or school mean is viewed as somewhat meaningless as this instrument was designed to measure students' personal cultural environment. An examination of the diversity of cultural environments in each classroom was indicated by examining the standard deviations of each scale for different classrooms. Relationships between students' cultural environments and attitudes was examined. Contains 22 references. (Author/PVD)