Factors Influencing
Academic Motivation
of Ethnic Minority
Students: A Review
Ulviye Isik1,2,
Omaima El Tahir1,
Martijn Meeter2,
Martijn W. Heymans3,
Elise P. Jansma3,
Gerda Croiset1,2,
and Rashmi A.
Kusurkar1,2
Several factors were found to have either a positive or a negative influence on
academic motivation, which can be classified
into individual, family-related, school-related, and social factors
A social
neuroscienc
e
perspective
on
adolescent
risk-taking
Risk-taking declines between adolescence and adulthood
because of changes in the brain’s cognitive control system—changes which improve
individuals’
capacity for self-regulation. These changes occur across adolescence and young
adulthood and are
seen in structural and functional changes within the prefrontal cortex and its connections
to other
brain regions.
Laurence
Steinberg
*
Department of
Psychology, Temple
University, Philadelphia,
PA 19122, United States
Most taxpayers would
be surprised—perhaps shocked—to learn that vast expenditures of public
dollars are
invested in health, sex, and driver education programs that either do not work,
such as
D.A.R.E. (
Ennett, Tobler, Ringwalt, & Flewelling, 1994
), abstinence education (
Trenholm
et al., 2007
Received 9 May 2007
Available online 28
January 2008
), or driver training (
National Research Council, 2007
), or are at best of unproven or unstudied effectiveness (
Steinberg, 2007
).
Alas,
the search for direct hormone–behavior linkages proved more difficult and less
fertile than
many scientists had hoped (Buchanan, Eccles, & Becker, 1992), and there are few
effects of
hormones on adolescent behavior that are not conditioned on the environment in
which the behavior occurs; even something as hormonally driven as libido only
affects sexual
behavior in the right context (Smith, Udry, & Morris, 1985).
The development of risk-taking in adolescence, for example, can be approached
from a psychological perspective (focusing on increases in emotional reactivity that
may
underlie risky decision-making), a contextual perspective (focusing on interpersonal
processes
that influence risky behavior), or a biological perspective (focusing on the
endocrinology,
neurobiology, or genetics of sensation-seeking). All of these levels of analysis are
potentially informative, and most scholars of adolescent psychopathology agree that
the
study of psychological disorder has profited from cross-fertilization among these
various
approaches (Cicchetti & Dawson, 2002).
Given the critical role of dopaminergic
activity in affective and motivational regulation, these changes likely shape the
course of
socioemotional development in adolescence, because the processing of social and
emotional
information relies on the networks underlying coding for affective and motivational
processes. Key nodes of these networks comprise the amygdala, nucleus
accumbens,
orbitofrontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and superior temporal sulcus (Nelson,
Leibenluft,
McClure, & Pine, 2005). These regions have been implicated in diverse aspects of
social information processing, including the recognition of socially relevant stimuli
(e.g.
faces, Hoffman & Haxby, 2000; biological motion, Heberlein, Adolphs, Tranel, &
Damasio,
2004), social judgments (appraisal of others, Ochsner, Bunge, Gross, & Gabrieli,
2002;
judging attractiveness, Aharon et al., 2001; evaluating race, Phelps et al., 2000;
assessing
others’ intentions, Baron-Cohen, Tager-Flusberg, & Cohen, 1999; Gallagher, 2000),
social
reasoning (Rilling et al., 2002), and many other aspects of social information
processing
(for a review, see Adolphs, 2003).
As a result of this remodeling,
dopaminergic activity in the prefrontal cortex increases significantly in early
adolescence
and is higher during this period than before or after. Because dopamine plays a
critical role
in the brain’s reward circuitry, the increase, reduction, and redistribution of
dopamine
receptor concentration around puberty, especially in projections from the limbic
system
to the prefrontal area, may have important implications for sensation-seeking
In summary, there is strong evidence that the pubertal transition is associated with
a
substantial increase in sensation-seeking that is likely due to changes in reward
salience
and reward sensitivity resulting from a biologically-driven remodeling of
dopaminergic
pathways in what I have called the socio-emotional brain system.
This neural transformation
is accompanied by a significant increase in oxytocin receptors, also within the
socioemotional
system, which in turn heightens adolescents’ attentiveness to, and memory for,
social information.
Socio emotional brain system - dopaminergic systems
Conceptual
Challenges and
Directions
for Social
Neuroscience
Ralph Adolphs1,*
1California Institute of
Technology,
Pasadena, CA 91125,
USA
*Correspondence:
radolphs@caltech.edu
DOI
10.1016/j.neuron.2010
.03.006
By now everyone is aware
that the neurobiology of social behavior (henceforth, ‘‘social
neuroscience’’) is a burgeoning field: there are numerous conferences,
calls for funding proposals, even new journals and societies
attesting to its popularity (for instance, the new society for
social neuroscience, www.s4sn.org).
Identifying the neural
substrates of intrinsic
motivation
during task
performance
Woogul Lee1 &
Johnmarshall Reeve2
When people imagine
performing intrinsically motivating tasks, they show heightened
anterior insular cortex (AIC) activity.
Using event-related
functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that the neural
systemof intrinsicmotivation involves not only AIC activity,
but also striatum activity and, further, AIC–striatum functional
Oxytocin - creativity
in education
The learning and regulation of emotions features
very prominently in social neuroscience (Olsson and Ochsner,
2008)
Curiostiy inducing
questions - things
that they dont know
Non curiosity
inducin questions things thatthey
alreayd know
Interactions.
Intrinsic motivation is the inherent tendency to seek out
novelty and challenge, to explore and investigate, and to
stretch and extend one’s capacities (Ryan & Deci, 2000,
2017). It is a naturally occurring inclination toward exploration,
spontaneous interest, and environmental mastery that
emerges when the individual anticipates discovering new
information (exploration), learning something new (spontaneous
interest), and developing and extending existing capacities
(environmental mastery). These These subjective feelings (interest and enjoyment)
signal
experiences of intrinsic satisfaction from a job well done
that then function as intrinsic rewards to encourage volitional
present and future engagement in that task, activity,
or environment (Deci, 1992; Krapp, 2005). Thus, intrinsic
motivation is the desire to seek out novelty and explore
(e.g., curiosity) and to seek out and master optimal challenge
(e.g., competence) for no reason other than the
resulting feelings of interest and enjoyment (Abuhamdeh,
Csikszentmihalyi, & Jalal, 2015; Deci & Ryan, 1985;
Loewenstein, 1994; Reeve, 1989).
Similarly,
Murayama, Matsumoto, Izuma, and Matsumoto (2010) examined
the neural bases of intrinsic motivation when participants
engaged in a Bmoderately challenging and inherently
interesting^ stopwatch task. In these studies, striatum activity
was repeatedly observed when participants were intrinsically
motivated during the task performance phase.
These results
suggest the functional importance of reward processing not
only in extrinsic motivation, but also in curiosity-based and
competence-based intrinsic motivation.
Kang and her
colleagues’ (2009) study
and from trivia quiz books
In a parallel program of research, other researchers have
sought to identify the unique neural basis of intrinsic as compared
to extrinsic motivation (Lee & Reeve, 2013; Lee,
Reeve, Xue, & Xiong, 2012). Specifically, these researchers
examined neural activity while participants imagined an intrinsically
motivating activity (e.g., writing an enjoyable paper)
and compared it to neural activity while participants
imagined the same activity but with extrinsic motivation
(e.g., writing an extra-credit paper). The results showed that
the anterior insular cortex (AIC) was uniquely activated during
intrinsically rather than during extrinsically motivating
situations. Considering that AIC activity is associated with
the processing of bodily satisfaction (Goldstein et al., 2009;
Naqvi & Bechara, 2009) and subjective feelings (Craig, 2009;
Damasio, 1999), the positive subjective feelings that arise
spontaneously from activity-generated feelings of satisfaction seem to be an
important source of intrinsic motivation
We Feel, Therefore
We Learn:
The Relevance of
Affective
and Social
Neuroscience to
Education
Mary Helen
Immordino-Yang 1 and
Antonio Damasio2
In particular,
the neurobiological evidence suggests that the aspects of
cognition that we recruit most heavily in schools, namely
learning, attention, memory, decision making, and social functioning,
are both profoundly affected by and subsumed within
the processes of emotion; we call these aspects emotional thought.
In this article, we sketch a biological and
evolutionary account of the relationship between emotion
and rational thought, with the purpose of highlighting new
connections between emotional, cognitive, and social functioning,
and presenting a framework that we hope will inspire
further work on the critical role of emotion in education.
Any competent
teacher recognizes that emotions and feelings affect students
’ performance and learning, as does the state of the body,
such as how well students have slept and eaten or whether
they are feeling sick or well. We contend, however, that the
relationship between learning, emotion and body state runs
much deeper than many educators realize and is interwoven
with the notion of learning itself. It is not that emotions rule
our cognition, nor that rational thought does not exist.
Why does a high school student solve a math
problem, for example? The reasons range from the intrinsic
reward of having found the solution, to getting a good grade,
to avoiding punishment, to helping tutor a friend, to getting
into a good college, to pleasing his/her parents or the teacher.
All of these reasons have a powerful emotional component and
relate both to pleasurable sensations and to survival within
our culture. Although the notion of surviving and fl ourishing
is interpreted in a cultural and social framework at this late
stage in evolution, our brains still bear evidence of their original
purpose: to manage our bodies and minds in the service of
living, and living happily, in the world with other people.
And importantly, it underscores
our fundamentally social nature, making clear that the
very neurobiological systems that support our social interactions
and relationships are recruited for the often covert and
private decision making that underlies much of our thought.
In brief, learning, in the complex sense in which it happens
in schools or the real world, is not a rational or disembodied
process; neither is it a lonely one.
Their reasoning was fl awed
because the emotions and social considerations that underlie
good reasoning were compromised (Damasio, Grabowski,
Frank, Galaburda, & Damasio, 1994; Damasio, Tranel, &
Damasio, 1990, 1991 ).
emotions are not just messy toddlers in a china shop, running
around breaking and obscuring delicate cognitive glassware.
Instead, they are more like the shelves underlying the glassware;
without them cognition has less support.
First, because these
fi ndings underscore the critical role of emotion in bringing
previously acquired knowledge to inform real-world decision
making in social contexts, they suggest the intriguing possibility
that emotional processes are required for the skills and
knowledge acquired in school to transfer to novel situations
and to real life. That is, emotion may play a vital role in helping
children decide when and how to apply what they have
learned in school to the rest of their lives. Second, the close
ties between these patients ’ decision making, emotion, and
social functioning may provide a new take on the relationship
between biology and culture. Specifi cally, it may be via
an emotional route that the social infl uences of culture come
to shape learning, thought, and behavior.
Emotion, then, is a basic form of decision making, a repertoire
of know-how and actions that allows people to respond
appropriately in different situations.
The more advanced
cognition becomes, the more high-level reasoning supports
the customization of these responses, both in thought and
in action. With evolution and development, the specifi cations
of conditions to which people respond, and the modes
of response at their disposal, become increasingly nuanced.
The more people develop and educate themselves, the more
they refi ne their behavioral and cognitive options.
Emotions entail the perception of
an emotionally competent trigger, a situation either real or
imagined that has the power to induce an emotion, as well as
a chain of physiological events that will enable changes in
both the body and mind ( Damasio, 1994 ).
Emotional
thought encompasses processes of learning, memory, and
decision making, in both social and nonsocial contexts. It is
within the domain of emotional thought that creativity plays
out, through increasingly nuanced recognition of complex
dilemmas and situations and through the invention of correspondingly
fl exible and innovative responses. Both the recognition
and response aspects of creativity can be informed by
rational thought and high reason.
That is, the brain areas
associated with interoception (the sensing of body states) are
particularly active as people feel emotions such as happiness,
fear, anger, or sadness ( Damasio et al., 2000 ).
After all, we humans cannot divorce ourselves from our
biology, nor can we ignore the high-level sociocultural and
cognitive forces that make us special within the animal kingdom.
When we educators fail to appreciate the importance
of students ’ emotions, we fail to appreciate a critical force in
students ’ learning. One could argue, in fact, that we fail to
appreciate the very reason that students learn at all.
A SOCIOCULTURAL
APPROACH
TO MOTIVATION: A
LONG TIME
COMING BUT HERE
AT LAST
Richard Walker,
Kimberley PressickKilborn,
Erica Sainsbury and
Judith MacCallum
Central to this change has
been the recognition that learning and thinking need to be thought of as
social in nature rather than individual in nature.
Sivan’s (1986) seminal article provided the first
sociocultural analysis of motivation based on Vygotskian ideas. This article
presented motivation as a socially constructed norm which, like other
classroom norms, formed the basis on which teacher and student
expectations and judgements are made. These expectations include how
motivation is displayed in the classroom in the form of motivated behaviour
demonstrating interest and willingness to engage in learning activities
their motivational relevance.
The interest in a sociocultural perspective on motivation sparked by
Hickey’s (1997) article, however, for the most part led to a consideration of
Sivan, E.
(1986).Motivation in
social constructivist
theory. Educational
Psychologist, 21,
209–233.
the role of context in motivation, rather than a concern with the social nature
and origins of motivation.
This has been especially true of researchers (e.g. Perry et al., 2006) who have
attempted the important task of understanding motivation in authentic
classroom contexts. However, as Walker, Pressick-Kilborn, Arnold and
Sainsbury (2004) have pointed out, the recognition of the contextual nature
of motivation is not new.
social influence theorists consider that
social and contextual factors have an influence on individual motivational
processes and functioning.
Russian psychologist Vygotsky, have changed the way the educators and
psychologists think about learning and thinking. Central to this change has
been the recognition that learning and thinking need to be thought of as
social in nature rather than individual in nature
Learning Behavior and
Motivation of At-Risk
College Students: The
Case of a SelfRegulatory
Learning Class
Jerry Chih-Yuan Sun,
Youn Joo Oh, Helena
Seli, and Matthew
Jung
Self -efficacy
Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the
motivational characteristics and learning behaviors of atrisk
freshmen at a four-year university as well as to identify
the class-level components of an effective self-regulatory
learning course designed for this population in a university
setting.
The researchers proposed a series of
hypotheses about the relationships among (a) self-efficacy,
(b) learning and motivation indicators, and (c) academic
outcomes for this population in general.
How do the
self-efficacy and the learning and study strategies of at-risk
college students influence their academic achievement?
What is the relationship between the self-efficacy
and the learning and study strategies as predictors,
and academic achievement as an outcome,
of at-risk college students?
Is there an increase in students’ self-efficacy as
a result of their participation in a self-regulatory
learning class?
Which particular learning and study strategies
best predict the academic achievement of at-risk
students?
(Thompson & Geren, 2002).
Gray (2013) indicated that universities define the students
who are not able to achieve success in school due to factors
such as socioeconomic status, family status, and academic
failure as at-risk students. In
Bandura (1997) defined
self-efficacy as an individual’s judgment of his or
her capability to execute and perform tasks successfully
in a specific domain. Academic self-efficacy is the general
conceptualization of self-efficacy in an educational setting
that is not limited to a particular academic subject (Majer,
2009). Huang (2014) believed that the most likely psychological
problems that freshmen might encounter occur
when they are forced to undertake compulsory courses
and when acquiring poor test scores caused by lack of basic
Knowledge
Conversely, college students who have
a high level of academic self-efficacy are academically successful
because they implement effective learning strategies
(Caprara et al., 2008; Pajares & Valiante, 2002).
The Learning and Study Strategies
Inventory (LASSI; Weinstein, Palmer, & Schulte, 1987)
was administered to all student groups to determine their
scores on different motivational subscales.
The results of the study showed that at-risk college
students scored lower on the self-reported use of learning
variables (i.e., attention, concentration, and motivation)
compared with students who were not at risk. Weinstein
et al.’s (1987) study supported the hypothesis that learning
strategies are correlated with academic achievement. Thus,
the researchers proposed that at-risk students be identified
by their incoming GPAs as well as their LASSI scale scores.
They found that self-efficacy was the best predictor
of GPA.
The MSLQ was developed by the National Center
for Research on Improving Postsecondary Teaching and
Learning at the University of Michigan in 1986 (Pintrich
et al., 1991), including six subscales: Intrinsic Goal Orientation,
Extrinsic Goal Orientation, Task Value, Control
Beliefs, Self-Efficacy for Learning and Performance, and
Test Anxiety. The subscale self-efficacy for learning and
performance in this instrument was used to measure
college students’ levels of self-efficacy for learning. The
internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s α) in the
current study was .89 for the Self-Efficacy for Learning and
Performance, which met the standard of .70 (Nunnally &
Bernstein, 1994).
Investigating
Motivation in Context:
Developing
Sociocultural
Perspectives
Richard A. Walker1,
Kimberley PressickKilborn2, Lynette S.
Arnold1, and Erica J.
Sainsbury1
1University of Sydney,
Australia, 2University
of Technology,
Sydney, Australia
Using multiple methodologies
that allow focus at the levels of both classroom and individual,
these studies employ the notion of transformative internalization and
subsequent externalization to explain the social origins of individual motivational
Processes
employed a range of qualitative
methods including observation of lessons, the videotaping of lesson
segments, interviews with students, and written student reflections
Both studies contribute to the development of sociocultural
perspectives on motivation through empirical research guided by
such theoretical notions as intersubjectivity, canalization, and coregulation.
The notion of the person-in-context has been
evident (Pintrich&Maehr, 2002) inmotivational research
since at least the time ofKurt Lewin, although not always
evident in the methods used by motivational researchers
(Pintrich&Maehr, 2002; Turner&Meyer, 2000).
As both
Goodenow (1992) and Hickey (1997) note, in sociocultural
theories deriving from Vygotsky, human activities,
events, and actions cannot be separated from the context
in which they occur so that context becomes an important
issue in sociocultural research.
Most notably, the situated
approach to learning and cognition also has origins
in ecological psychology, which provides a specific
theoretical orientation to the understanding of context
and the individual’s interaction with their environment.
Situated motivation
Also important is the “attempt
(PressickKilborn&Walker,
2002).
Nolen, 2003;
Renninger, 2000;
Pressick-Kilborn
&Walker, 2002
Hickey, 1997) and
researchers (e.g.,
PressickKilborn & Walker,
2002))
Pintrich & Maehr,
2002; Volet &
Järvelä,
2001
Pressick-Kilborn,
K., & Walker, R.
(2002). The social
construction
of interest in a
learning
community. In D.
McInerney & S.
Van
Etten (Eds.),
Research on
sociocultural
influences on
motivation
and learning (pp.
to capture the larger meaning of the setting”
(Turner & Meyer, 2000, p. 82); context in this research is
not reducible to the interrelationships amongst the variables
studied.
153–182).
Greenwich, CT:
Information Age
Publishing.
While the emphasis on context in motivational research
has its origins, to some extent, in sociocultural
theories deriving from the work ofVygotsky and followers,
sociocultural approaches to motivation require
more than a concern with context.
Hickey, D.T.
(1997). Motivation
and contemporary
socioconstructivist
instructional
perspectives.
Educational
Psychologist, 32,
175–193.
Central to sociocultural
theories is the understanding that learning and the
higher order cognitive processes are fundamentally social
in nature (e.g., Rogoff, 1998),
As it was deemed more useful to consider the
social nature of motivation in two distinct motivational
domains, that of interest in learning and student academic
regulatory processes,
Firstly, a sociocultural approach must account for
the emergence of motivation from social and cultural
Practices.
Following Vygotsky, Valsiner suggests that social
practices are transformatively internalized by the individual
then subsequently externalized in the same or other
social contexts.
Volet, S., & Järvelä,
S. (Eds.). (2001).
Motivation in
learning contexts:
Theoretical
advances and
methodological
implications.
Oxford:
Elsevier.
Secondly, sociocultural approaches to motivation require
the reconceptualization of motivational variables
since the original conceptualizations were developed
from the understanding of motivation as an individual
Phenomenon.
for instance, the separation of
individual and situational interest is problematic (PressickKilborn&Walker, 2002) as it artificially separates the
individual and the context
In sociocultural theory, individuals
are considered to be both embedded in and constituted
by social and contextual processes
Sociocultural investigations of motivation are best
undertaken in authentic contexts utilizing qualitative or
mixed method research approaches (Pressick-Kilborn,
Sainsbury, & Walker, in press). Academic achievement
motivation should, therefore, be investigated in authentic
classroom environments, which can be considered,
from the perspective of sociocultural theory, as communities
(Walker, 2003; Pressick-Kilborn & Walker, 2002)
engaged in the enculturation of academic practices
naturalistic classroom environments
This study explored the social nature of the emergence,
development, and maintenance of interest with an emphasis
on the dynamic transactions between the classroom
environment and individual students, in particular
the affordances and constraints on interest development
in the classroom (Pressick-Kilborn&Walker, 2002).
participant observation, videotaping
of lessons, semi-structured interviews, student
interest trajectories, written student reflections
Qualitative analysis involved examination of teacherstudent and student-student interactions and the construction
of discourse maps (Hogan, Nastasi,&Pressley,
2000)
Transformative internalization
should not be understood as indicating that
motivational values and standards are internalized
“whole cloth” (Hickey, 2003 p. 410); values and standards
associated with motivated action are selectively
and constructively transformed (Lawrence & Valsiner,
1993) in the internalization process and are subsequently
externalized in differing contexts
Both also make use of multiple
methods (e.g., self-reports, interviews, observations) to
provide a rich and detailed account of student motivation
(e.g., Järvelä, Salonen, & Lepola, 2002; Pressick-Kilborn
& Walker, 2002; Arnold, 2004).
Secondly, sociocultural motivation
researchers need to investigate their reconceptualized
sociocultural motivation conceptions and mechanisms
in a range of naturalistic classrooms using qualitative
and mixed method research designs.
The interest in a sociocultural perspective on motivation sparked by
Hickey’s (1997) article, however, for the most part led to a consideration of
the role of context in motivation, rather than a concern with the social nature
and origins of motivation.
To differentiate
these theorists and researchers from Vygotskian sociocultural researchers,
Walker et al. (2004), have referred to them as social influence theorists,
applying a distinction Rogoff (1998) made in the domain of learning and
thinking to the motivational domain; social influence theorists consider that
social and contextual factors have an influence on individual motivational
processes and functioning. In making the distinction between sociocultural
and social influence approaches, however, it needs to be recognised that
there are some social influence motivational researchers who refer to their
work as ‘sociocultural’.
Pressick-Kilborn and Walker (2002) reported an investigation into the emergence
and
development of interest in a primary school classroom. In the study, interest
was conceptualised as emerging from collaborative activities in a fifth
grade science community of learners. This conceptualisation emphasised
the dynamic and interdependent relationship between the children and
their classroom activities for understanding the development of interest, and
suggested that traditional distinctions between situational and personal
interest were problematic.
Studying interest in a real and complex classroom
setting presented challenges to distinguishing situational and individual
interest along traditional lines. While in some activities, students participated
in ways that indicated an ongoing and more personally meaningful
form of interest in learning, the situational aspect of interest was always
apparent. Similarly, situational features of tasks, such as their hands-on
or collaborative nature, contributed to personal experiences of interest in
learning in the context of a real classroom. The analysis of the development
of interest in the study drew on the integration of several established
sociocultural notions: the idea of a community of learners, the ZPD and its
extensions (Valsiner, 1997a), and Valsiner’s (1997a) notions of canalisation
and self-canalisation.
Canalisation refers to the way that cultural practices
channel the activities of individuals while self-canalisation refers to
way individuals are able to channel and direct their own activities. The
canalisation of opportunities in the social world thus creates the context
in which values and goals are internalised and from which interest may
subsequently emerge. It is important to recognise, however, that individuals
may resist these canalisation processes.
Akane Zusho &
Revathy Kumar (2018)
Introduction to the
Special Issue:
Critical Reflections
and Future Directions
in the Study of Race,
Ethnicity, and
Motivation,
Educational
Psychologist, 53:2, 6163, DOI:
10.1080/00461520.20
18.1432362
Of importance to this special issue
are those that stress the increasing racial and ethnic diversity
in our schools.
motivation—Martin
L.
Maehr
Despite these trends, the number of studies focused primarily
on issues of race and ethnicity in the field of educational
psychology is still quite limited.
Maehr,
1974; Maehr &
Nicolls, 1980)
DeCuirGunby and Schutz (2014) estimated that only about 1% of
articles published in top-tiered educational psychology journals
during the period 2001–2011 explicitly focused on
topics such as race, ethnicity, stereotype threat, and prejudice.
Maehr, M. L.
(1974). Culture and
achievement
motivation.
American
Psychologist, 29,
887–896.
doi:10.1037/h0037
521
Maehr, M. L., &
Nicolls, J. G.
(1980). Culture and
achievement
motivation: A
second look. In N.
Warren (Ed.),
Studies in
As Graham (this issue) notes in her article, we need more
“rigorous programs of research with theory-driven and testable
hypothesis about how ethnic diversity leads to better
outcomes rather than if it does” (p. 65).
Specifically, they frame their analysis
according to the four motivational principles ofmeaningfulness,
competence, autonomy, and relatedness, and they discuss areas
of convergence and divergence across these two related yet distinct
Literatures.
methodology remains an obstacle to the cultural
research on motivation.
Likewise, they
encourage use of implicit association tests for examining
unconscious motivations that inform behavior.
crosscultural
psychology (vol. 3,
pp. 221–267). New
York, NY:
Academic
Press.
The belief that motivation is a
dynamic process of personal investment informed by context
and sociocultural values was a defining aspect of his theoretical
writings and empirical work.
Weaving Cultural
Relevance and
Achievement
Motivation Into
Inclusive Classroom
Cultures
Ultimately our goal is to emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary research and
to
demonstrate how the principles of culturally responsive education are instantiated in
motivationally supportive classrooms where teachers are more culturally sensitive
and create
an environment where cultural differences are appreciated and valued.
Motivational
scholars define achievement motivation as that which
influences the initiation, direction, magnitude, perseverance,
continuation, and quality of goal-directed academic behavior
(Ames, 1992; Maehr & Zusho, 2009; Weiner, 1974).
assume that motivation
can be assessed through students’ reports of their beliefs
and perceptions, as well as through their behaviors, including
choice of activities, level and quality of task engagement,
persistence, and performance (Maehr & Zusho, 2009).
A significant
goal of the research on achievement motivation is to
build empowering and inclusive learning communities that
promote the learning of all students.
Comer & Emmons,
2006 Juvonen,
Yueyan, &
Espinoza, 2010;
Murdock, 1999);
However, recent
reviews show that scholars are becoming increasingly
attentive to how culture and ethnicity impact motivational
processes, but there remains less focus on issues related to
race such as oppression and prejudice (DeCuir-Gunby &
Schutz, 2014; R. King & McInerney, 2014; Kumar &
Maehr, 2010; Zusho & Clayton, 2011)
how the principles of motivation
can be instantiated in classrooms where teachers are more
culturally sensitive and create an environment where cultural
differences are appreciated and valued.
To increase
the practical relevance of our analysis and promote further
integration of motivational frameworks with one another,
we consider the motivational processes of underrepresented,
racially, and ethnically diverse students across the
dominant social-cognitive theories of motivation (e.g.,
expectancy-value theory, achievement goal theory, selfdetermination
theory, self-efficacy theory, and interest
theory).
By bridging
these literatures, it is our intent to demonstrate that culture
is not just “out there” in the macrosystem but an integral
part of the microsystems of all youth.
The difficulty in defining culture
can be attributed to the diversity of perspectives on the
topic, further complicated by the introduction of the term
into the vernacular (see Condon & LaBrack, 2015; Zusho
& Clayton, 2011). Is culture internal, external, or both? Is it
rooted in time and/or place, or does it change? Is it something
that one can own? Is it something that is observable,
and if so, what are indicators of it?
We define culture in this article as the framework for
human life that consists of people collectively using all the
resources in their environment to achieve; is a part of all
human groups; is learned, shared, and regulated by political,
legal, and social systems; is socially transmitted; represents
both external (observable behaviors) and internal
(inferred traits) aspects of an individual; and is an abstraction
of people’s knowledge and beliefs about themselves,
other people, and the world. (Zusho & Clayton, 2011,
p. 240)
Social-cognitive studies of achievement motivation are
commonly described as taking a person-in-context perspective
(see Maehr & Zusho, 2009; Zusho & Clayton, 2011).
Therefore, contemporary motivational theories all recognize
how motivational processes are shaped by contextual
Factors.
Bronfenbrennian (1977) perspective, however,
motivation researchers tend to define context in terms
of microlevel factors such as the nature of instruction, tasks,
and activities that take place in a classroom (Anderman &
Gray, 2017; Linnenbrink-Garcia & Patall, 2016; Urdan &
Turner, 2005), as well as the interpersonal context of the
classroom (see Wentzel, 2017; Wentzel & Muenks, 2016)
Thus, the research on motivation primarily defines culture
in terms of microlevel contextual factors related to the
classroom or school, or in terms of macrolevel factors such
as nation of origin, or even individual-level factors such as
ethnicity (
learning is culturally
Grounded.
Meaningfulness is an important principle of motivation.
This is reflected in the theoretical assumption—across multiple
theories of motivation—that perceptions of competence
are not always enough to spur action; individuals
must also want to complete the task.
For example, expectancy-value
theory suggests that the quality of motivated behavior is
higher when students find the task and/or subject domain
important, interesting, and useful, and when opportunity
costs are minimized (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000).
Achievement goal theory, specifically the work on
classroom goal structures, suggests that promoting relevance
is one of the keys to promoting a mastery-oriented
focus in the classroom (Maehr & Zusho, 2009).
Finally,
self-determination theory argues that intrinsic motivation
flourishes in contexts where the psychological needs of
autonomy, competence, and relatedness are met (R. M.
Ryan & Deci, 2017).
Therefore, the norms, values, and belief systems
emphasized in the various subject curricula, and the
social thoughts and interpretations of reality reflected therein,
exclusively legitimize European American cultural knowledge
and delegitimize the cultural knowledge of minority, disenfranchised
groups (Castenell & Pinar, 1993; S. Nieto, 2000).
Consequently, schooling may not be a meaningful experience
for many students of color
by (a)
acknowledging the legitimacy of the cultural heritages of
different ethnic groups; (b) incorporating culturally relevant
curricular content; (c) relating academic abstractions with
students’ everyday sociocultural realities; (d) recognizing
that students’ dispositions, attitudes, and approaches are
informed by their culture; and (e) adopting instructional
strategies aligned with the discourse styles and behavioral
expectations within students’ home and community (Griner
& Stuart, 2013; Yamauchi & Tharp, 1995).
Similarly, Boykin and
his colleagues (Boykin, 2014; Hurley, Allen, & Boykin,
2009) found that when teachers infused the curriculum and
instruction with culturally valued themes such as communalism,
elementary and middle school low-income African
American students achieved at higher levels in several subjects
including language arts, mathematics, and social science.
As Eccles (2009) stated, “In the past, I
conceptualized attainment value in terms of the needs and personal
values that an activity/behavior or task fulfills. Today I
am conceptualizing it more in terms of personal and collective
identities” (p. 83).
However, empirical testing does not do sufficient justice
to the expectancy-value theoretical model, because many
studies continue to operationalize culture as a categorical
variable, seeing it, for example, in terms of membership to
a cultural group (e.g., Eccles, Wong, & Peck, 2006).
At the
very least, we should develop mixed-method approaches
that include both in-depth qualitative approaches enabling
us to understand the cultural basis of students’ subjective
values and advanced quantitative approaches to test the theoretical
Model.
Consider, by way of example, the curricular areas of
math and science that are sometimes described as neutral
and value free—a position strongly contested by many
math educators (Gutstein, 2016; Martin, 2009; Tate, 2005).
A widely accepted assumption is the racial hierarchical
totem pole regarding math ability, which places Asian and
White students at the top and assigns African American,
Native American, and Latinx students to the lower rungs
(McGrady & Reynolds, 2013; McKown & Weinstein,
2008).
The cultural cost of such a racial hierarchical ordering
is the distancing of mathematical identity from minority
students’ cultural identity, thereby undermining the
meaningfulness of mathematics in these students’ lives
(Martin, 2009).
Based on a series of ethnographic and participant classroom
observation studies, Martin (2009) argued that mathematics
teachers need to develop awareness that teaching
practices and school policies informed by stereotypic
beliefs associating students’ cultural background and their
mathematical abilities often have irrevocable consequences
for students’ mathematical learning and literacy.
Social realities, cultural processes, and cultural
knowledge are important considerations for making learning
meaningful, capturing students’ interest in tasks, or sustaining
their interest in the subject matter. In future
research, interdisciplinary, mixed-methods analysis may be
essential to capturing cultural learning processes.
Motivation research assumes that individuals are motivated
toward competence, that is, to effective interaction with
their environment (Elliot, Dweck & Yaeger, 2017; Usher,
2016; White, 1959).
The overall empirical literature on expectancy-related
constructs generally finds that students who believe themselves
to be more competent academically are also more
likely to put forth greater effort, persist in the face of failure,
use deeper-processing cognitive and metacognitive
strategies, report positive rather than negative emotions,
and endorse mastery goals (Klassen & Usher, 2010; Usher
& Pajares, 2008; B. J. Zimmerman & Cleary, 2006
CRRE scholars argue that for students of color to feel academically
efficacious and experience academic success,
they need to perceive academic success as inherent to their
cultural identity.
Using classroom observations and
group interviews, Brown and Crippen (2017) demonstrated
that students’ interest in science and motivation to learn
increased when middle school science teachers applied the
principles of CRP to build bridges between students’ home
and school, promote thoughtful interactions in class, and
give voice to students’ thoughts and concerns
Another area of focus relates to the inherent difficulty of
interweaving cultural identity and academic competence
when stereotypes associated with the cultural group suggest
that the two are antithetical. For example, Ladson-Billings
(2009) noted that African American students need to
develop a “relevant black personality” that allows them
to “choose academic excellence yet still identify with African
American culture” (p. 20), suggesting a dissonance
between academic competence and cultural identity
These findings suggest that societal stereotypes
regarding the academic abilities of a cultural group can
jeopardize students’ feelings of cultural, and consequently
academic, competence.
On this
issue, CRRE scholars are unequivocal in their assertion that
achieving cultural competency precedes minority students’
academic competence—actual or perceived (Ladson-Billings,
2014; Milner, 2011). They also agree that it is an
essential aspect of teachers’ efficacy for teaching culturally
diverse students
A fundamental assumption of all social-cognitive theories
of motivation is that individuals have an inherent need for
independence, personal agency, responsibility, and control.
This notion is perhaps best illustrated in self-determination
theory, which considers autonomy—the extent to which
individuals perceive that they can accept, endorse, and regulate
their own goals or actions—as a basic human need
and a fundamental motive necessary for intrinsic motivation
(R. M. Ryan & Deci, 2017)
For example, a growing body of
work examines how teachers support students’ autonomy
(Stefanou, Perencevich, DiCintio, & Turner, 2004).
Researchers commonly describe teachers who are rated
high in autonomy support as teachers who not only provide
choice but also listen to students and allow them to manipulate
instructional materials and ideas.
Accordingly, in a culturally responsive and relevant
teaching framework, autonomy is understood both as a
product and a process. As a product, students who achieve
a sense of autonomy feel empowered. As a process, autonomy
is a quality that individuals strive to cultivate by thinking
critically about what they learn. It is a process because
minority students intentionally assert their autonomy when
they encounter racism and discrimination
The theoretical and empirical literature in motivation and
CRRE disciplines reflect a fundamental philosophical difference.
The former views autonomy as an inherent psychological
need that, if satisfied, supports the growth and wellbeing
of the individual; the latter describes autonomy as a
quality to be fostered and developed to benefit both the
individual and society. The empirical work by motivation
researchers therefore focuses on the consequences of satisfying
this inherent need for autonomy, recognizing that
when individuals feel compelled to behave in ways that disregard
personal interests and values they experience a loss
of autonomy (Koestner & Losier, 1996)
Many motivation frameworks assume that individuals have
an inherent desire to relate to others. This may be best illustrated
in self-determination theory, particularly relationships
motivation subtheory, which reasons that humans
have a need to form and maintain close and secure relationships
with others (R. M. Ryan & Deci, 2017)
Such feelings of safety can be heightened when students
feel that their teachers care for and respect them (Wentzel,
2010) and when students are encouraged to work productively
and collaboratively in groups (Roseth, Johnson, &
Johnson, 2008). Interest theory, too, suggests that situational
interest can often be triggered by a caring teacher or
by group work (Renninger & Hidi, 2011).
However,
if schools are to be culturally responsive and relevant
to diverse school populations, peer-related issues are important.
Such issues include students’ self-segregating into
groups defined largely by race and ethnicity (Kim, Park, &
Koo, 2015; Kumar, Seay, & Karabenick, 2011; Villapando,
2003) and their marginalizing out-group peers due to ethnocentrism,
racial harassment (Crozier & Davies, 2008;
Kumar et al., 2015), or differences in academic values and
achievement (O’Connor, Fernandez, & Girard, 2007).
Results indicated that when teachers felt responsible for
engaging in culturally relevant teaching practices, students
from all cultural groups perceived the learning context as
more mastery focused (i.e., valuing improvement, emphasizing
effort and understanding, and recognizing mistakes
as essential to the learning process).
This study also highlights that teachers can
be culturally responsive even as they are teaching a heterogeneous
student body, because culturally responsive teaching
is not teaching to specific groups of students. Rather, as
stated earlier, culturally responsive teachers create an inclusive
classroom environment, fostering positive cross-cultural
relationships among students. Further, culturally
competent teachers perceive the diversity manifested in the
student body as strength to be used in linking curriculum to
instruction and the teaching–learning process.
have won a world
championship and
Set in Singapore, the study
documents the lived experiences of four individuals from the normal technical
Ismail and Tan
(2006)
now I can retire’:
Exploring normal
technical students’
ways of unpacking
academic expectations
in Singapore
Pauline S.K. Ho *
The
course who have
succeeded academically.
It will be argued that these
individuals appear to be active and capable of drawing on valued knowledge and
resources to participate
in the institutionalised academic community. The participants’ experiences also
indicate that theremay
be a mismatch between the participants’ interpretations of what was required of
them and the
institutionalised academic expectations. Their collective narratives challenge the
exclusion of
educationally disadvantaged students and confront traditional narratives of these
youth as high
potential dropouts.
However, it remains the case
that a percentage of students are not performing up to their
academic potential, exacerbating global disparities in achievement
between rich and poor countries (UNESCO, 2009). Even within
wealthy and developed countries, inequalities exist between
regions, communities, schools and classrooms:
illustrates the challenges that lower
track, normal technical students face as they negotiate interlocking
personal, cultural, societal and political pressures in unpacking
academic expectations and requirements throughout their educational
Journeys.
there seems to be a lack of awareness of the relationship between
educationally disadvantaged students’ understandings of specific
academic demands, expectations and requirements. Little is
known about individual educationally disadvantaged students’
educational experiences and their specific strategies to gain access
Ismail, M., Tan,
A.L., 2006. Voices
from the Normal
Technical World:
An Ethnographic
Study of Low-track
Students. Centre
for Research in
Pedagogy and
Practice National
Institute of
Education,
Nanyang
Technological
University,
Singapore.
Cole and Knowles
(2001)
Cole, A.L.,
Knowles, J.G.,
2001. Lives in
Context: The Art of
Life History
Research. Alta
Mira Press, Walnut
Creek, CA.
to membership in academic discourse (Teese and Polesel, 2003).
However, in practice,
pedagogical and instructional practices were found to be largely
teacher-centred and didactic. Ismail and Tan (2006) found that
teachers in normal technical classrooms tended to rely on
‘‘prescriptive’’pedagogy,where learning activitieswere consistently
teacher-directed, highly structured and provided little room for
active construction of knowledge and concepts.
According to
Kellaghan (2001), educational disadvantage is defined in two
ways: (1) discontinuities between the competencies and dispositions
which children bring to school and the competencies and
dispositions valued in schools and (2) factors, conceptualised in
terms of economic, cultural, social resources, which influence
development of the competencies and dispositions.
Scholars who advocate looking at educational risk through
cultural deficit lens tend to associate ‘‘disadvantage’’ with low SES
and membership in particular racial or ethnic minority groups,
linking poor educational outcomes to problems in their homes,
families and cultures
A significant point has
been raised by Moll et al. (1992) and his colleagues who contend
that the factors for educationally disadvantaged students’
successful academic outcomes are often mediated by socially
valued resources that can potentially assist them to perform
important tasks in life. Termed as ‘‘funds of knowledge’’, these
resources are ‘‘historically accumulated and culturally developed
bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or
individual functioning’’ (Moll et al., 1992, p. 133). The availability
of home- and community-based funds of knowledge challenged
the perception that educationally disadvantaged students are
unlikely to share similar educational values to those of schooling
institutions (e.g. Gregory and Williams, 2000; Knight et al., 2004;
Sanchez, 2007).
This
paper is an attempt to highlight social exchange theory by
exploring how normal technical students in Singapore understand
and make sense of what was expected from them in terms of
institutionalised academic expectations, and in doing so, take
control of their educational lives.
A life narrative approach not only provides the means to
understand how the educational context influences and contributes
to the normal technical students’ educational transformation,
it also offers the ‘capacity’ to present a realistic viewpoint that can
challenge institutionalised norms and conventions in the broader
context (Cole and Knowles, 2001).
The interviews lasted between 1.5 and 2.5 h (averaging about
2 h). Cole and Knowles (2001) argue that lives should be studied
through participants’ own voices and accounts and understood
through all dimensions of one’s social realm – political, sociological,
personal and cultural. Thus, the interview allowed opportunities
for the participants to reflect on their challenges of
navigating the normal technical course, and in particular, on the
ways they have attempted to interpret institutionalised academic
expectations. The interview also elicited deeper information on the
experience of being a normal technical student and what
achievement meant to them, why they were doing it, and to what
effect and where it was fitted with a macro and broader set of
views that they were committed to, for example, beliefs, values and
perspectives of family, community, education or institutional
Structures.
across multiple contexts of their family, school and
Community.
Carol recognised the mismatch between her personal learning
expectations and the institutionalised ways of learning, noting
how she was from ‘‘a different path . . . it is not right to compare me
with the other students.’
Carol’s narratives provided understandings of how schools and
pedagogic patterns are based on a one size fits all model that is
oriented towards the valued knowledge of the dominant society
(Freebody et al., 1995; Ga´ndara and Contreras, 2009).
Within these pedagogies, families use valuable funds of knowledge
(Moll et al., 1992) – ‘‘historically accumulated and culturally
developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or
individual functioning’’ (Moll et al.,1992, p. 133) – to support and
shapeyouth’s identities in the academic-social network. Specifically,
Carol talked about how her mother’s counter-narratives about
societal roles and expectations illustrated to her about how she
could actively shape her own educational decision making
processes. Families support educationally disadvantaged students
to negotiate the daily realities of the working-class in urban
neighbourhoods throughtaking themtowork, prayingwiththem, or
working to help pay tuition fees (Lo´ pez, 2001).
It is an individual’s familiarity within the mainstream
culture of the family context, or habitus (Bourdieu, 1994),
they inhabit that forms their value and belief systems which in
turn affects their behaviour, conduct and actions.
This is an important insight for the Singapore’s secondary
mainstream schooling context, given that students are grouped
homogeneously according to their academic abilities into different
classrooms within the same school. It can be seen that Carol’s
positioning as a normal technical student came with the notion that
normal technical students are ‘‘no good’’ in the perception of the
school and public. These perspectives construct discriminatory
notions of normal technical students as ‘different’, ‘deficient’, with
confused academic identities and responsible for their failure to
achieve greater academic goals. It is hoped that the findings of this
study will provide theoretical grounds for further research in
understanding the role of peer students in influencing the
academic aspirations of low-performing students
The findings
have implications for policies and practices and future research
that can be constructed in three ways: (1) a shift from
educationally disadvantaged students as passive learners to
activators of knowledge, (2) a tripartite model in urban schools,
and (3) a focus on learning pedagogies that necessitate a rich
connection between learning and understanding.
Applications of Social
Capital in Educational
Literature: A Critical
Synthesis
Sandra L. Dika and
Kusum Singh
Virginia Tech
The focus of the review is on educational
literature that studies social capital and educational outcomes
social capital is positively linked to educational and psychosocial outcomes.
Finally, they discuss gaps in the conceptualization, measurement, and analysis
of social capital in educational literature
This critical synthesis explores the usage of social capital as an explanatory
variable in educational research, drawing on theoretical literature in sociology and
economics, and empirical literature in education and family/child studies
Next, the review assesses whether there
is theoretical and empirical support for generalized claims that social capital is
(Dyk & Wilson,
1999).
Dyk, P. H., &
Wilson, S. M.
(1999). Familybased social capital
considerations as
predictors of
attainments among
Appalachian youth.
Sociological
Inquiry, 69(3),
positively
linked to educational achievement (grades, test scores), educational attainment
(graduation, college enrollment), and psychosocial factors that affect educational
development (engagement, motivation, self-concept). In the fourth and final section
of the article, methodological issues, including operationalization and measurement,
in the reviewed body of literature are discussed and critiqued
477–503.
The work of
researchers
such as Lareau
(1989), Lareau and
Horvat (1999), and
Bourdieu’s conceptualization is grounded in theories of social reproduction
Stanton-Salazar
and symbolic power. As a result, social capital has been elaborated in two
(1997, 2001)
principal ways: in terms of norms and in terms of access to institutional resources.
holds promise for
This differentiation is apparent in theoretical interpretations and resulting empirical
revealing how
Work.
social capital is
accessed and
He defined social capital as the
utilized by youth
aggregate of actual or potential resources linked to possession of a durable network and
of essentially institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition. families in
This group membership provides members with the backing of the collectively
educational
owned capital. Relations may exist as material or symbolic exchanges. Social
institutions.
capital
is made up of social obligations or connections and it is convertible, in certain
Lareau, A. (2001).
conditions, into economic capital.
Linking Bourdieu’s
concept of capital
Bourdieu (1986) proposes that the volume of social capital possessed by a person
to the broader field:
depends on size of the network of connections that he or she can mobilize and
The case
on the volume of capital—economic, cultural, and symbolic—possessed by each
of family-school
person to whom he or she is connected. Thus, Bourdieu’s social capital is
relationships. In B.
decomposable
J. Biddle (Ed.),
into two elements: first, the social relationship that allows the individual
Social class,
to claim resources possessed by the collectivity, and, second, the quantity and
poverty, and
quality
education:
of those resources (Portes, 1998). Ultimately, Bourdieu sees social capital as the
Policy and practice
investment of the dominant class to maintain and reproduce group solidarity and
(pp. 77–100). New
preserve the group’s dominant position (Lin, 1999a).
York: Routledge
Falmer.
cultural capital, habitus, and field
Cultural
capital can exist in three states: embodied (dispositions of mind and body),
objectified (cultural goods), and institutionalized (educational qualifications). Certain
forms of cultural capital are valued more than others, and each person brings a
different set of dispositions (habitus) to the field of interaction.
Social space is a field
of forces and struggles between agents with different means and ends (Bourdieu,
1998). The field is characterized by the “rules of the game,” which are neither
explicit nor codified. Because the field is dynamic, valued forms of social and
cultural
capital are also dynamic and arbitrary
Coleman proposes that
social capital is intangible and has three forms: (a) level of trust, as evidenced by
obligations and expectations, (b) information channels, and (c) norms and sanctions
that promote the common good over self-interest.
Particularly,
he emphasizes intergenerational closure—parents know the parents of
their children’s friends—as a social structure that facilitates the emergence of
effective norms.
Bourdieu sees social capital as a tool of reproduction for the
dominant class, whereas Coleman sees social capital as (positive) social control,
where trust, information channels, and norms are characteristics of the community.
Thus, Coleman’s work supports the idea that it is the family’s responsibility to
adopt certain norms to advance children’s life chances, whereas Bourdieu’s work
emphasizes structural constraints and unequal access to institutional resources
based on class, gender, and race (Lareau, 2001)
Bourdieu’s theories of cultural reproduction and of cultural
and social capital were developed as alternative explanations of unequal academic
Lareau, A., &
Horvat, E. M.
(1999). Moments of
social inclusion and
exclusion: Race,
class, and cultural
capital in familyschool
relationships.
Sociology of
Education,
72, 37–53.
achievement to skill deficit and human capital theories
literacy and how pedagogic discourse is an instrument of class
reproduction—specifically, “how . . . power and control translate into principles
of communication . . . [that] differentially regulate forms of consciousness with
respect to their reproduction” (Bernstein, 2000, p. 4). Surprisingly, Bernstein’s
theory is not referenced in most current educational literature on cultural and
social capital of linguistic and cultural minorities.
Lareau (2001) is one of
the only authors to explicitly incorporate Bourdieu’s idea of field into educational
research on social and cultural capital. She suggests that the institutional standards
or “rules of the game” to which Bourdieu referred in his notion of “field” have been
generally overlooked by researchers.
The relationship between social capital and educational achievement is examined
in fourteen of the studies reviewed in this article. All nine studies that specifically
link achievement test scores with social capital use the NELS database. Four
achievement tests were completed by NELS respondents: math, science, reading,
and history. Overall, relationships are significant in the expected direction.
Achievement
on these tests is negatively associated with family size, moving, and nontraditional
family structure (Sun, 1998, 1999).
While most of the research indicates that social capital is indeed positively
associated
with educational achievement, the studies by McNeal (1999) and StantonSalazar and Dornbusch (1995) raise questions about the direction and nature of the
relationship between these variables
Five studies find positive
relationships between educational aspirations and social capital, including
parental expectations (Muller & Ellison, 2001), parent-teen discussion about school
(Muller & Ellison; Pribesh & Downey, 1999; Smith-Maddox, 1999), parent-school
involvement (Pribesh & Downey; Smith-Maddox),
Although most of the relationships are significant in the expected directions,
the current body of research does not provide sufficient theoretical or empirical
support for hypotheses about the positive relationship between social capital and
education-related factors. This is due primarily to weaknesses in and
misapplications
of Coleman’s concept, which have been named throughout the article. Nearly all
of these studies focus on the conceptualization of social capital as norms rather
than
access to institutional resources. Methodological gaps in the conceptualization and
measurement of social capital, including the reliance on cross-sectional data,
hamper
the utility of the concept as an explanatory variable in education. These gaps
are discussed in detail in the next section.
Conventional statistical measures of supportive ties (e.g., number of parents,
parent-child discussion) are poor and unreliable indicators of social capital, and they
give little information about relationship dynamics or the quality of the resources
accessed (Stanton-Salazar, 2001). In most of these studies, prior measures of
academic
resources, academic performance, and social capital are not taken into
consideration.
Longitudinal studies are necessary to an understanding of the direction
of the relationship between educational outcomes and social resources.
Sage handbook of
applied research
methods - bickman
and rog
Ethnography is about telling a credible, rigourous and authentic stoy. Ethnogrpahy
gives voice to people in thei own local context, typically relying on verbatim
quotations and a thick description of evemts. The storu is told through the eyes of
local people as they pursue their daily lives in their own communities. The
ethnographer adopts a cultural lens to interpret observed behaviour, ensuing that
the behaviours are placed in a culturally relevant and meaningful context.
Goodwin, pope,
mort, smith , 2003 ethics and
ethnography: an
experimental
account.
Ethnography is thus both a research method and a product, typically a written text.
Controlled, biases can focus and limit the research effort. Uncontrolled they can
undermine the qulaity of ethnogrpahic research.
Culture is the sum of a social group’s observable patterns of behaviour, customs
and way of life (Harris, 1968, p.16; murphy & margolis, 1995; ross, 1980)
Emic perspective - the insider’s or native’s perspective of reality - is at the heart of
most ethnographic research. The insider’s eprception of reality is instrumental to
understanding and accurately describing situations and behaviours. Native
perceptions may not conform to an obejctive reality but they help the fieldworker
understand why members of the social group do what they do. Ethnography
typically takes a phenomenologically oriented research approach.
An etic perspective is an external social scientific perspectve on reality. Most
ethnographers start collecting data from the emic perspective and then try to make
sense of what they have collected in terms of both the native’s view and their own
scientific analysis.
Structure refers to the social structure or configuration of the group such as the
kinship or political structure.
Ethnogrpahes use the concepts of structure and function to guide their inquiry.
Methods of ethnogrpahy - fieldwork
Working with people fr long periods o time in their natural setting. The ethnographer
conducts research in the native enviornment to see people and ther behaviour
given all the real world incentives and constrinats.
This naturalist approach avoids the artificial response typicels of controlleld and lab
conditions.
Qualittative health
research
Most ethnographers mix and mingle with everyone they can at first. As the study
preogresses the ocus narrows to specific portions of the population under study.
Participant observation combines participation in the lives of the people under study
with maintenance of a professional distance that allows adequate observation and
recording of data.
Ethnographic techniques but not ethnography
Interviews - informal, semistructured interviews.
Informal interviews with a specific but implicit research agenda - use informal
approaches to discover the categories of the meaning of culture.
The key actor is another term for informant
Multiple key actors
Analysis of ethnographies
Process information in a meaningful and useful manner
Triangulation is at the heart of ethnographic validity, testing one source of
inofmration against one another to strip away alternative explanaltions and prove a
hypothesis. Compares life information sources to test the quality of information and
the person sharing it. To understnad more completel the part an actor plays in the
social drama
Patterns are ethnographic realibility . ethnographers see patterns of through and
action repat in various situations and among various players. Looking for patterns in
a form of analysis.
Ethnographers crystallizetheir thoughts at various stages thoughtout the ethno
endeavour. The crystallization might bring about a mundane conclusion, a novel
insight, or an earth shattering epiphany. It is the result of a convergence of
similarities that spontaneously strike the ethnographer as a relevant or important to
the study.
One of the most exciting moments in ethnogaphic research is when they discover
something counter intuitive - conception that defies common sense
Ethnographers do not work in a vaccum, they work with people. They often pry into
peoples innermost secrets, sacred rites, achievements and failtures.
This code specifies that the ethnographer does no harm to the people or community
under study
Do not trample on the feealing of the ket actors or praticipants. Respect for the
social integrity.
Non - invasive ethnography is not only good ethics but also good science
Permission
Honestty
Trust
Reciprocity - use a great deal of people’s time, they owe something in return.
Sympathetic ear - teach math and science. Or english.
Guilty knowledge - confidential information of illegal activities
Dirty hands - where ethnograophers cannot emerge innocent of worng doing
Ethical decision making will be handled situarionally bacuse o the complecity of
them problem (goodwin, et al 2003; goode, 1999) this fact of ethnographic life
sharpens the senses and ultimately refines and enhances the quality of the
endeavour.
Linking bourdieu’s
concept of capital to
How the social class background of cheildren influences theri life chances
2 ethnic minority
students - one boy
the broader field - the
case of family school
relationships
and one girl
Experiences in
normal
academic/technical
streams
annette lareau
Comparing that
with
Bourdieu highlights the ay that practics are infused (unequally) with social
legitimaion so that not all cultural practices are vewed as having equal value.
Researchers have looked too much at individuals only and not at the standrads of
the ht einstitutions through which individuals seek to succeed.
Double vision offered by bourdei’us work on biography and social structure through the study of the fields and practices of individuals - is often absent in
empirical work.
Importance of using boirdeiu’s concept of fields and social capital.
Empirical study of family-school relationships
2 white boys attending different schools
Worksing class family x dominant institution
Middle class amily x dominant institution
Bourdieu suggests that one cannot restrcit ones attnetion to the culturl practices per
se. In his mind, inqeuality in schooling cannot be reduced to the practices paretns
engage in within their homes (bourdeiu & passeron, 1977). Instead he points to the
standards of instirutions and their relations to individual actions.
2 ethnic minorit
stuents - middle
class family
Experiences in
express streams
The school and at a
smaller subset the
stream as the field;
the habitus which
are the dispositions
yhat the students
bring into the
classroom and
school - the
interaction of these
- how it infleunces
their life chances or
educational
outcomes
Impact of social
class on
educational
experience
Bourdieu reflects on the existence of dominant standards or rules of the game in the
field.
The individual brings a different set of dispositions (habitus) to the fields of
interactions (different rules of the game) and therby helpds to create different
practices in a particular moment.
Patterns of regularities (Lareau, 2001, p. 84)
Habitus is about social training - haitus is a socialised subejectivitity (Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992, p. 18)
Habitus is a system of lasting and transposable dispositions which integrating past
experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations,
and actions and makes possibel the acheivement of infinitely diversified tasks
(Bourdieu & wacquant, 1992, p. 18)
When the habitus of the person meshes with the habitus of the broader cultrue, it is
often invisible.
On the new critical
East Asian educational
studies
Article in Curriculum
Inquiry · February
2018
it is notable that the work
published here is not by White Western scholars working in specialised “area
studies” (cf. Woo & King, 2013) but by people with familial, educational, linguistic
and generational roots in these places. Taken together, these two generations of
critical work mark a shift in the locus of formation and exchange of knowledge
As Takayama
notes, PISA reading tests are run through item response validation, a technical
process that ensures that any items that generate differentiated results by, for
example, cultural group membership or gender are deleted from item banks. Hence,
conventional item analysis technically precludes cultural bias. But in so doing, it
militates against engaging with culturally variable practices – in this case,
longstanding close reading practices from Japanese schooling. So the frustration of
the Japanese curriculum experts involved in PISA consultations that Takayama
reports is unsurprising.
Leonel Lim & Michael
Tan (2018) Culture,
pedagogy and equity
in a
meritocratic education
system: Teachers’
work and the politics of
culture in Singapore,
Curriculum
Inquiry, 48:2, 184-202,
DOI:
10.1080/03626784.20
18.1435974
In Singapore, however, the state’s
official discourse of meritocracy has for long remained silent on the
role of culture in students’ learning and how it relates to
the systemic underachievement of various social groups. Instead,
the state has consistently appealed to meritocracy’s principle of
non-discrimination (especially in terms of ethnic differences) as
being fundamental to the establishment of a level-playing field in
the education system. Drawing upon qualitative data comprising
lesson observations of and interviews with a group of teachers who
teach in low-progress classrooms, the paper documents the creative
approaches taken by these teachers as they engage their students
in ways attuned to the latter’s family backgrounds, home
conditions, and personal aspirations. The findings suggest that in
actively if sometimes unconsciously foregrounding such a cultural
dimension in their teaching, the five teachers studied are resisting,
even challenging meritocracy’s principle of non-discrimination.
Prominently articulated in the US by Ladson-Billings (1994, 1995a, 2009) in
Gloria LadsonBillings’ (1994,
2009)
her study of the pedagogic practices of exceptional teachers of African-American
students,
one such approach – culturally relevant pedagogy – identifies students’ unique
cultural
backgrounds as strengths and these are nurtured to promote academic
achievement (Brown-Jeffy & Cooper, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 1995a; Morrison,
Robbins, &
Rose, 2008).
Nevertheless, in this self-professed meritocracy,
official state discourses have for long remained silent on the role of culture in
students’
learning and how it relates to the systemic underachievement of various social
groups (see, e.g., Kang, 2005, p. 15).
One of the central insights arising out of the literature on students’ cultural
backgrounds is
that teachers need to understand that in academically low-progress classrooms,
students
frequently bring into the classroom cultural capital that is different from mainstream
norms and worldviews. Yet difference is not a code word for deficience (Howard,
2003;
see also Heng, 2016).
In recent decades, one of the most influential pieces of research in
the field is Gloria Ladson-Billings’ (1994, 2009) three-year ethnographic study of
eight
“exceptional” teachers of African-American students. Ladson-Billings found that
while on
the surface the teachers subscribed to a xxxvariety of instructional strategies and
classroom
routines from structured/unstructured to didactic/dialectic, all of them sought to
harness
the cultural and social capital embedded in students’ home backgrounds and to use
these
as resources to promote a more meaningful and engaged teaching and learning
environment.
Thus, for example, in utilizing students’ culture as a vehicle for learning, one of the
teachers developed students’ appreciation of poetry through their own love of rap
music
Singapore, where the twin national beliefs of meritocracy and
non-discrimination have often been simultaneously invoked to both emphasize the
“fairness”
of the socio-political system and “explain” (away) the subordinate role of the large
population of non-Chinese races who lag behind in areas of life such as politics,
income,
language dominance and education (Barr & Low, 2005; Moore, 2000; Rahim,
1998). In such
a context, as Barr (2006) warns, the state’s “charade of meritocracy” can in fact
evacuate a
concerted focus at a politics of difference, giving the veneer of equality while at the
same
time justifying the belief that various social groups “have not been able to make it in
a
meritocratic society because they have not worked hard enough and thus have only
themselves to blame” (Rahim, 1998, p. 58).
Data from
the 2010 population census indicate that the Chinese are significantly
overrepresented in
local universities, forming 86% of the total enrolment, while constituting 74% of the
overall
population. Malays (5.5%) and Indians (6.8%) are correspondingly
underrepresented in
tertiary institutions (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2011). From 1966 to 2016,
of the
251 winners of Singapore’s most prestigious scholarship, the President’s
Scholarship, only
18 (7.2%) were non-Chinese (see also Barr & Skrbis, 2008).
While official data is not available, our observations as well as those of other
researchers
who have studied these classrooms show that students from the minority Malay and
Indian ethnic groups are over-represented in both Normal tracks (especially in the
Normal
Technical track), as are students from working-class families (Anderson, 2015;
Kang, 2005;
Albright, Heng & Harris, 2006; Wang, Tan, Li, Tan, & Lim, 2016)
What Counts as
Evidence and Equity?
Allan Luke
Queensland University
of Technology
Judith Green
University of
How we name and describe, document and understand educational equality and
inequality, inclusion and exclusion, centrality and marginality, then, is the issue
facing
educational systems in economically hard time
Adjacent volumes of Review of Research in
Education have focused on reviews of critical research and development work on
Bryk & Gomez,
2007
California, Santa
Barbara
Gregory J. Kelly
Pennsylvania State
University
T
race,
difference, and diversity (Parker, 2007), and on “at risk” student and youth
communities
(Gadsden, Artiles, & Davis, 2009).
Social capital in
variablesTo measure social capital, respondents were asked the followingquestion:
‘Can you please tell me if you know anyone in Singaporewho works in the following
kinds of jobs? You do not need to knowthese people really well, but should know
them by name, by sight,and well enough to talk to.’
Singapore: Gender
differences, ethnic
hierarchies,and their
intersectionVincent
Chuaa,∗, Mathew
Mathewsb, Yi Cheng
LohcaNational
Social Class
and the
Hidden
Curriculum
The laudable goal of many of
these policies has been closure of what is now termed the equity gap—the
differential
between general population norms and the performance of identified equity groups:
for example, African Americans, Latinos, migrants, second language speakers, and
students from low socioeconomic backgrounds (see Lucas & Beresford, Chapter 2;
Jordan, Chapter 5).
of Work JEAN
ANYON
Theory and
educational
research : toward
critical social
explanation /
Jean Anyon with
Michael J. Dumas
... [et al.].
Bridiging the theory and data - analytics of exogeny. That is we assume one cannot
understand or explain X by merely describing X. one must exogenousy look at nn x
- particularyl the context and social forces in which the object of study is emdedded.
Class size, curriculum, or student demographics, teacher experience, pedagogy or
skill, leadership, budgers are not all that makes a school what it is. And describing
them does not constitute a satisfying explantation of what occurs there.
Without theory, our data on school experience or social phenomena do not go very
far, and do not tll us very much that is not already obvious. Our data do not leave
the groundd on which they were found, our explanations do not soar, and they may
fail to inspire.
Stephen J ball (2006,p.64). Too often in educational studies, theory becomes no
ore than a mantric reaffirmation of belief rather than a tool for exploration and for
thinking otherwise.
For Writght Mills, the point was to reveal that people’s personal problems are in fact
also matters of social structure, and that neither raw empiricism nor abstract
theorizing can connect the two (mills, 1959, 2000)
As noguera and wind point out, high school is the last opportuniy for young peopl to
acquire the knowledge and skills they need to acheive in life goals (2006). It is the
final destination for all students who make it to the ninth grade and it is the place
where future trajectories to ivy league colleges, to state and community colleges, to
dead end job or to prison are determined.
Annette lareau finds that bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital has the potential to
show how individual biography intersects with social structure, a potental that
theoretical and empirical work must take advantage of. (1989, 179)
The concept of cultural capital is useful for researching families relationships with
schools becasue educators tend to perceive the cultural capital of those who control
the economic, social and political resoices as the natural and preoper sort, thus
they favour students and familieis who posesse the cultural forms of the dominat
groups (harker, 1984)
EDUCATION POLICY
| REVIEW ARTICLE
A systematic review of
factors linked to poor
academic performance
of disadvantaged
students
in science and maths
in schools
Pallavi Amitava
Banerjee1*
The
protocol from preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses
(PRISMA) was followed. Results suggest major factors linking deprivation to
underachievement can be thematically categorised into a lack of positive
environment
and support.
Several factors can however potentially limit a child’s academic achievement.
Contextual indicators continue to be the determining parameters for educational
attainment,
learning trajectories and careers. Adversities in education are faced by ethnic
minorities, refugee/
asylum seekers, immigrants, young people who have spent time in care and poorer
pupils (OECD,
2016; Strand, 2014). Eligibility for free school meals (FSM)/reduced price lunches,
family income below
a certain threshold, residence in a potentially deprived area or low progression
neighbourhoods
identified by indices of multiple deprivation are all indicators of a lower socioeconomic status (SES)
and efforts for widening participation agenda are targeted by government in the
United Kingdom
and elsewhere.
Disadvantaged pupils do not perform as well academically as their elite peers
(Reardon, 2011; Steele,
2010). Evidence comes from a study exploring the effect of poverty on achievement
of urban African-
American students successfully completing high school. Welch (2014) shows
cumulative 10th-grade
GPA was strongly negatively correlated with student poverty level.
This situation certainly needs remediation as (a) it is always desirable to have a
range of people
from different sections of the society studying and working in different fields for
instance, having a
diverse intake for STEM courses will lead to a more innovative and responsive
STEM workforce (RAE,
2012),
Westerlund, Gustafsson, Theorell, Janlert, and Hammarstrom (2013) provides
evidence that
parental involvement is a more definite predictor as opposed to parent’s social class
or availability
of practical academic support (N = 365 women, 352 men).
Children whose mothers have less than a high school education have lower
cognitive skill scores
at three years of age (Ayoub et al., 2009; Hanson et al., 2011). Similarly, teen
mothers and mothers
who are illiterate or unemployed are more likely to raise academically
underachieving children as
compared to those who have a primary or tertiary level of education despite
belonging to the same
SES (N = 3001, national datasets USA).
Using PISA data from more than 40 participating countries, Nonoyama (2005) in a
cross-national
study tried to understand the effect of family background on student achievement.
The study concluded
family SES and background effects had a larger bearing on student achievement
than SES
alone or school effects across countries. Just as parental support and involvement
sometimes the
conditions under which children thrive affects their educational outcomes.
An analysis of 10th-grade sample of US Educational Longitudinal Study shows
student perceptions
of teachers and teacher’s attitudes can predict academic performance and
discipline. Using
SES as a measure of disadvantage the study provides evidence that students’
relationship with teachers,
perception of teacher sensitivity and the reasons for attendance are the strongest
predictors of
scholastic achievements. Students in the lowest SES quartile very often did not
attend school because
of their teacher’s expectation of success and for the fear of humiliation in class
(Whitehead, 2007).
Strambler and Weinstein (2010) using a sample of 111 students from California
showed student’s
higher perception of negative teacher feedback predicts more devaluing of
academics and greater
perceived teacher care at classroom level predicts less devaluing. A lower regard
for academics
consistently predicts poorer maths test scores. Positive teacher expectations,
support and motivation
have progressive effects on students regardless of their risk status and particularly
for lower
income students (Gregory & Huang, 2013; Sorhagen, 2013).
Survey data analysis suggested perceived discrimination is a risk factor for
psychosocial
and academic outcomes.
Similarly, “public
regard”—the extent to which individuals felt that others view their racial/ethnic group
positively or
negatively was significantly associated with school importance. The perception that
one’s group is
valued in society predicts a stronger belief that school is important. Organisational
citizenship behaviours
and measures of student achievement in Biology also showed a significant positive
correlation
(Tindle, 2013).
Kevin Michael Foster
(2004) Coming to
terms: a discussion of
John Ogbu’s
cultural‐ ecological
theory of minority
academic
achievement,
Intercultural
Education, 15:4, 369384,
DOI:
10.1080/14675980420
00313403
To link to this article:
https://doi.org/
cultural-ecological (CE) theory of minority student responses
to schooling. I also offer critical commentary and point out ways in which CE theory
can be sharpened
to facilitate increasingly nuanced and accurate analyses
Ogbu described cultural
ecology as ‘the study of institutionalized patterns of behavior interdependent with
features of the environment’ (Ogbu, 1990a, p. 122).
posits that there are two sets of factors influencing minority school performance:
how society
at large and the school treats minorities (the system) and how minority groups
respond
to those treatments and to schooling (community forces). The theory further posits
that
differences in school performance between immigrant and nonimmigrant minorities
are
partly due to differences in their community forces. (Ogbu, 1999, p. 156)
Voluntary
minorities—those who immigrate to a host country ‘more-or-less by choice’—were
said to have an ‘instrumental’ approach to their host society and its institutions,
while involuntary minorities
Ogbu’s CE theory includes four important layers: (1) the general
idea that students’ academic success is impacted by community forces and system
forces, and that not enough attention has been paid to the ways in which
community
Hermans, 2004;
Kalekin-Fishman,
2004).
forces contribute to involuntary minority student failure; (2) the distinction of
voluntary,
involuntary and autonomous minorities; (3) the recognition of universal,
primary and secondary discontinuities between students and the schools they
attend;
(4) the idea that involuntary minorities have developed survival strategies—some of
which facilitate academic success and others of which hinder it—including
clientship/
Uncle Tomming, collective struggle, hustling, emulation of whites and camouflage.
In addition to such system factors (also referred to as system forces),
Ogbu believed that the culturally determined responses of minorities to their
circumstances
were also critical. He called these either community factors or community
forces (Ogbu,1992a, p. 287; 2003, pp. vii–viii). Ogbu felt that the impact of
community
forces upon minority responses to schooling was consistently understudied
Nor did he assume
that discrimination did not have direct negative effects upon minority academic
outcomes. He did, however, believe that, even within the context of systematic
discrimination, there was room for minority agency.
he saw a need for systematic
study of community forces to complement analyses of system forces.
It was his strong contention
that it is not possible adequately to address issues of minority academic
achievement without distinguishing between kinds of minorities.
According to Ogbu,
each kind of minority has different sets of experiences that inform their relationships
to schools and schooling and, as a result, have developed different approaches to
schooling. Articles where Ogbu’s explanation of this typology appear include Ogbu
(1983a, 1985, 1990b, c, 1991, 1992a–c).
Perhaps the first thing to note about Ogbu’s typology is its apparent usefulness on
a broad conceptual level. Several scholars, who have at different times agreed or
disagreed with aspects of his analysis, have nonetheless found that Ogbu’s
categories
hold in a number of different national contexts, and often provide useful units for
analysis.
In other settings, however, scholars have noted circumstances
where the CE typology of minority students is complicated by local circumstances
and by the varied circumstances and understandings under which minorities
choose to immigrate.
Primary discontinuities are the differences between the cultural norms and
language of students and the culture and language norms of the schools they
attend.
In other words, those African-Americans who
experience academic success would be those who find a way to distance
themselves
from African-American culture. This explanation allowed for the possibility of
African-.
American student success without undermining Ogbu’s longstanding and steadfast
belief in the incompatibility between African-American culture and academic
success.
It shows
the complexity and difficulty of the circumstances marginalized groups often face,
as
well as the complexity of their responses to such conditions. In many respects, this
could be considered the essence of the CE work that Ogbu advocates—a
comprehensive
look at how environment influences patterns of behavior.
(2004, p. 7). To Fischer
Culture is not a variable; culture is relational, it is elsewhere, it is in passage, it is
where
meaning is woven and renewed, often through gaps and silences, and forces
beyond the conscious control of individuals, and yet the space where individual and
institutional social
responsibility and ethical struggle take place. (2004, p. 7)
Moreover, while culture is ‘configured historically’, this is to say that culture is forged
in context and that it is an ongoing and interactive process. Culture (or the culture of
an ideal type group such as the voluntary minority) is not a singular entity that, once
formed, simply always is, as is. Rather, to understand culture and cultural process,
we
must consider what Weber would refer to as the complex interaction of innumerable
different historical factors (1992 [1930], p. 49).
The Theory and
Practice of Culturally
Relevant
Education: A
Synthesis of Research
Across
Content Areas
Brittany Aronson
Miami University
Judson Laughter
University of
Tennessee, Knoxville
Gay (2013) believed that there were four actions essential to implementing
culturally responsive teaching. The first required replacing deficit perspectives of
students and communities. In the second, teachers must also understand the
resistance
to culturally responsive teaching from critics so they are more confident and
competent in implementation; Gay suggested methods, such as having teachers
conduct their own analysis of textbooks, to investigate how different knowledge
forms affect teaching and learning. Third, teachers need to understand how and
why culture and difference are essential ideologies for culturally responsive
teaching given they are essential to humanity. Finally, teachers must make
pedagogical
connections within the context in which they are teaching.
Ladson-Billings (1994) defined culturally relevant pedagogy as one “that empowers
students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically using cultural referents
to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes” (pp. 16–17).
Culturally relevant pedagogues think in terms of long-term academic
achievement and not merely end-of-year tests.
Culturally relevant pedagogues focus on cultural competence, which
“refers to helping students to recognize and honor their own cultural beliefs
and practices while acquiring access to the wider culture, where they are
likely to have a chance of improving their socioeconomic status and making
informed decisions about the lives they wish to lead” (Ladson-Billings,
2006, p. 36). Culturally relevant pedagogues understand that students must
learn to navigate between home and school, and teachers must find ways to
equip students with the knowledge needed to succeed in a school system
that oppresses them (Delpit, 2006; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Urrieta, 2005).
Culturally relevant educators use constructivist methods to develop bridges
connecting students’ cultural references to academic skills and concepts.
Culturally relevant educators build on the knowledges and cultural assets
students bring with them into the classroom; the culturally relevant classroom
is inclusive of all students.
•• Culturally relevant educators engage students in critical reflection about
their own lives and societies. In the classroom, culturally relevant educators
use inclusive curricula and activities to support analysis of all the cultures
Represented
Voluntary and
Involuntary Minorities:
A Cultural-Ecological
Theory of
SchoolPerformance
with Some
Implications for
Education
Author(s): John U.
Ogbu and Herbert D.
Simons
Addressing reciprocity
between
families and schools:
Why these
bridges are
instrumental for
students’ academic
success
Yune Tran
George Fox
University, USA
One instrumental step in promoting overall children’s academic success across the
trajectory of early
childhood, elementary, middle, and secondary grades is purposefully establishing
positive linkages for
families and schools through a shared partnership. By facilitating an ongoing
collaborative approach to
sustain family engagement practices both in and out of the classroom, schools can
help to build parents’
capacity to effectively support their children’s academic development
key factors in promoting student outcomes are successful home and school
partnerships. Extensive
studies have also documented the vital roles that families play in fostering learning
experiences for
their children and their relationships to academic success. Therefore, the
relationship between family
involvement and student achievement must first be examined to understand the
greater benefits
in building positive partnerships between home and school.
Epstein (2002) provided a
model of parental involvement discussed within six types of activities that build
relationships
between the family, school, and community. These six types include: parenting,
communicating,
volunteering, learning at home, decision-making, and collaborating with the
community and serve
as the core for helping teachers and school professionals develop ways to involve
families.
higher levels of family engagement
correlated to cognitive advantages and higher scores on math and language-arts
content areas
with reduced behavior problems and more positive interactions with their peers
(Domina, 2005;
Rimm-Kaufmann, Pianta, Cox, & Bradley, 2003).
Izzo, Wiessberg, Kasprow, and Fendrich
(1999) assessed how certain behaviors of family involvement enhance
children’s academic
achievement and social development. Such behaviors include the frequency
of educator contact
with parents; the quality of those interactions; family participation in school
activities; and family
engagement in home activities or other extracurricular activities.
Marchant, Paulson, and Rothlisberg’s (2001) examination of the correlation of
family
(parenting style and parent involvement) and school contexts on students’
motivation suggested a
positive relationship existed between parental values to student motivation.
The study concluded
that parental values on achievement were important to students’ motivations,
confidence, and competence.
Parent involvement that emphasized achievement rather than a general
parenting style
was strongly related to student motivation. Students who perceived that their
parents value the
importance of effort and academic success generally were achieving
academically and placed a
high priority on grades as compared to students who imagined that their
parents did not value education.
The study indicated the stark contrast
between the ethnic distributions of public school teachers and administrators
as compared to the
diverse racial groups represented by students and their families. Most
teachers come from predominantly
European-American middle-class backgrounds and enter the field without
much exposure
to social and ethnic diversity or the skills to cope with these realities.
Moreover, teachers and
administrators’ attitudes about parent or family engagement are seen through
lens of EuropeanAmerican middle-class values, experiences, and assumptions
Moreover, most teachers do not have the same points of
views or cultural frames of reference as their students (Heath, 1983; Sleeter &
Grant, 1987, 2005)
resulting in educators who adopt similar ideologies or are unprepared to empathize
with students
whose family backgrounds differ from their own.
Social and cultural barriers such as these, along with incompatible expectations and
parents’
negative experiences in schools have hindered home and school partnerships for
ethnically diverse
families. However, these obstacles are diminished through conscientious teacher
practices that
recognize families as crucial members in the educational process of their children.
One effective change is moving from a subtractive model to an
assets-based approach highlighting the diverse experiences that culturally and
linguistically students
bring to the classroom because they are navigating their way between two different
worlds
as they transition from home to school (Colombo, 2006).
The uniqueness of families allows for the promotion of strengths based on
family-centered practices since beliefs and behaviors of school achievement vary
across cultural
and ethnic groups (Muscott, 2002).
Assignments should provide opportunities for children to reinforce conceptual
understandings from grade-level content with
realistic goals that tap into their diverse educational experiences and contexts of
what, when, and
how students learn.