Achieving High Educational Standards for All Conference Summary (2002) / Chapter Skim
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4 Social Dimensions of Learning
4 Social Dimensions of Learning
Pages 52-67
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From page 52... ...
Despite these noble intentions, many (including conference speakers Edmund Gordon, Marta Tienda, and Eugene Garcia) have observed that schools' best efforts often have not been enough.
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From page 53... ...
All of these things are related to segregation in a serious way. Marta Tienda also called attention in her presentation to the concentration of black and Hispanic students in low-performing, high-poverty urban schools (see Lloyd et al., in this volume:Figures 3 and 4~.
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From page 54... ...
It may not be easy to change the number of African American students who come from poor backgrounds in those schools. But it is possible to exercise our civic duty and inquire what can be done to reduce class sizes, sustain reading and mathematics performance beyond the fourth grade, offer more college preparatory and advanced placement courses and provide comprehensive career counseling for these students.
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From page 55... ...
Stereotype Threat In experiments conducted primarily with Stanford University students, Steele found that (Steele, 1997:798~: Whenever African American students perform an explicitly scholastic or intellectual task, they face the threat of confirming or being judged by a negative societal stereotype a suspicion about their group's intellectual ability and competence. This threat is not borne by people not stereotyped in this way.
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From page 56... ...
In addition to his work with college students at Stanford, Steele has conducted similar experiments with Los Angeles high school students and found that academic underperformance due to stereotype threat occurs at the secondary school level as well. He found, however, that the effects of stereotype threat could be produced only among students who "identify with the academic domain" that is, among students who perceive academic achievement to be important to their self-concept.
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From page 57... ...
However, Steele believes that stereotype threat has one thing in common with other factors: collectively, they tend to discourage students from academic pursuits and lead many to disidentify with the academic domain. One of the practical implications of these findings, Steele argued, is that academic performance can be enhanced if instructional strategies are tailored to address the specific issues affecting student performance.
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From page 58... ...
They can help to raise students' aspirations by providing academic as well as nonacademic counseling, providing access to cultural activities, and helping students to gain a more realistic understanding of the range of postsecondary educational and career possibilities and what it takes to access them (Gandara, 1999~. Gordon also called attention to the importance of extrascholastic programs for minority students in this regard.
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From page 59... ...
He also noted that despite the greater risk of academic difficulties they face, numerous studies have found that minority students' self-esteem generally is quite high (Crocker and Major, 1989~. He cites these findings as evidence that many minority students selectively disidentify with the academic domain, allowing other pursuits and interests to assume larger roles in shaping their personal identities and evaluations of self (Steele, 1997:262-263~.
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From page 60... ...
He noted the correspondence between the sudden ascendance of rap in 1988 and the end of a 20-year period of gains in minority academic achievement. He hypothesized that rap music is at least partly responsible for the subsequent period of stagnation in minority student academic Progress that began at that time (Ferguson, 2001:372-373~: en 1 tJ For black and Hispanic youth, more than for whites, hip hop probably transcends the realm of entertainment to become an integral aspect of identity and a lens through which to understand the world.
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From page 61... ...
Highly motivated students can give up hope because they do not have access to the kinds of information and other resources they need. The result is that for too many students, ardently held goals of academic achievement and college degrees are transformed into a distant, seemingly unattainable, mirage.
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From page 62... ...
Nevertheless, there were many more low-income Asian Americans in 2000 than in previous decades. The pattern of immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico, is different from Asian immigration in that a much higher percentage of Hispanic immigrants arrived with little education and in search of jobs.
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From page 63... ...
Tienda noted that because of recent heavy immigration and linguistic differences, the educational significance of these statistics for Hispanics is not immediately clear. Are the poor educational achievement indicators of Hispanics due to the fact that many do not speak English well or have been educated outside the United States?
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From page 64... ...
Zhou argued that the oppositional or adversarial youth culture she observed in the three neighborhoods was an obstacle to school achievement, similar to what Signithia Fordham found in her ethnographic case study of a high school in Washington, D.C. Zhou noted that many of the youth in the three neighborhoods adopted "an attitude that entails the willful refusal of mainstream norms and values," including the value of academic achievement.
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From page 65... ...
Yet Koreans own most of the businesses. A variety of privately sponsored Korean organizations and programs facilitate the involvement of Korean youths in such diverse activities as karate classes, music, dance, Korean language instruction, and after-school tutoring.
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From page 66... ...
SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES AND CHILDREN'S LEARNING In the landmark study, Equality of Educational Opportunity, James Coleman and his colleagues found that the social and demographic characteristics of students and their families exerted far more influence on education outcomes than what happened in school (Coleman et al., 1966~. Tienda's comments suggest that little has changed that would invalidate Coleman's 35-year-old findings.
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From page 67... ...
But, to paraphrase Edmund Gordon, can schooling single-handedly compensate for children's unequal life chances?
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