Is Academic Engagement the Panacea for Achievement in Mathematics across Racial/Ethnic Groups? Assessing the Role of Teacher Culture

Student engagement with school symbolizes efforts toward learning and is one of the strongest predictors of academic success. However, returns to engagement vary across racial and ethnic groups. Scholars have established that human agency is constrained by organizational environments, but they have not adequately assessed whether the advantages associated with engagement and the disadvantages associated with disengagement accrue evenly to groups of students depending on the educational environment. Using ECLS-K data, we examine how one aspect of schools’ organizational culture–Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture–moderates the relationship between engagement and mathematics achievement for students of different racial/ethnic groups in elementary school. Our study suggests that exhibiting the attributes that are valued in American society, i.e., academic engagement or, more abstractly, a strong ethic toward working academically, is not sufficient for the mathematics achievement of many students—especially minority youth. Students must study in environments that nourish and capitalize upon those attributes so that diverse students can enhance their academic trajectories. Teachers are critical for student learning, and when teachers perceive the presence of Collective Pedagogical Teacher Cultures, returns to student engagement are higher.