Factors affecting the learning environments and school-related outcomes of Australian adolescents

In this follow-up study of an earlier investigation (Marjoribanks, 1991), discriminant analysis was used to examine relationships between social categories, defined by ethnicity, gender, and social status, and measures of adolescents' family and school-learning environments and their school-related outcomes. There were 470 16-year-old Australian adolescents and their parents from Anglo-Australian, Greek, and Southern Italian families in the sample. The results of this study and of the earlier investigation suggest that differences in the profiles of students' learning environments and school outcomes are related particularly strongly to ethnicity, but that within ethnic groups there are significant gender and social-status variations in such profiles.