In many countries there exist an achievement gap in academic performance between academically at-risk minorities and white students. New Stanford-research shows that there exist little tactics that can have a huge impact.
From the press release:
In an article published online Feb. 11 by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Cohen, Sherman and seven co-authors write that a simple intervention made with middle school Latino American students reduced the achievement gap significantly. What’s more, the positive effect persisted over time.
The matter comes down to overcoming the negative effects of “stereotype threat,” a phenomenon that researchers have identified and documented over the last two decades. What they have found – in numerous studies – is that the stress and uncertain sense of belonging that can stem from being a member of a negatively stereotyped group undermines academic performance of minority students as compared with white students.
Cohen and his colleagues have been looking for remedies to stereotype threat. In the first study described in the article, the researchers devised well-timed “values-affirmation” classroom assignments given to both Latino and white students as a part of the regular classroom curriculum. In one exercise, middle schoolers were given a list of values, such as “being good at art,” “being religious” and “having a sense of humor.” They were asked to pick the ones that were important to them and write a few sentences describing why. In a second exercise, they reflected in a more open-ended manner on things in their life that were important to them, and in a third they were guided to write a brief essay describing how the things they most consistently valued would be important to them in the coming spring.
Students completed several structured reflection exercises in their class throughout the year. The tasks were given at critical moments: the beginning of the school year; before tests; and near the holiday season, a period of stress for many people.
The control group was guided to write about values that were important to other people, but not themselves, or about other neutral topics.
The results were dramatic: Latino students who completed the affirmation exercises had higher grades than those in the control group. Moreover, the effects of the affirmation intervention persisted for three years. The task had no significant effect on white students.
Abstract of the paper that you can download here:
To the extent that stereotype and identity threat undermine academic performance, social psychological interventions that lessen threat could buffer threatened students and improve performance.
Two studies, each featuring a longitudinal field experiment in a mixed-ethnicity middle school,
examined whether a values affirmation writing exercise could attenuate the achievement gap
between Latino American and European American students. In Study 1, students completed multiple self-affirmation (or control) activities as part of their regular class assignments. Latino American students, the identity threatened group, earned higher grades in the affirmation than control condition, whereas White students were unaffected. The effects persisted 3 years and, for many students, continued into high school by lifting their performance trajectory. Study 2 featured daily diaries to examine how the affirmation affected psychology under identity threat, with the expectation that it would shape students’ narratives of their ongoing academic experience. By conferring a big-picture focus, affirmation was expected to broaden construals, prevent daily adversity from being experienced as identity threat, and insulate academic motivation from identity threat. Indeed, affirmed Latino American students not only earned higher grades than nonaffirmed Latino American students but also construed events at a more abstract than concrete level and were less likely to have their daily feelings of academic fit and motivation undermined by identity threat. Discussion centers on how social-psychological processes propagate themselves over time and how timely interventions targeting these processes can promote well-being and achievement.
Abstract of a related paper that you can download here:
Three double-blind randomized field experiments examined the effects of a strategy to restore trust on minority adolescents’ responses to critical feedback. In Studies 1 and 2, 7th grade students received feedback from a teacher that was critical but that, in a treatment condition designed to assuage mistrust, also emphasized the teacher’s high standards and belief that the student was capable of meeting those standards—a strategy known as “wise feedback.” Wise feedback increased students’ likelihood of submitting a revision of an essay (Study 1) and improved the quality of their final drafts (Study 2). Effects were generally stronger among African American students than among White students, and particularly strong among African Americans who felt most mistrusting of school. Indeed, among this latter group of students, the ongoing decline in trust over two years evident in the control condition was, in the wise feedback condition, halted. Study 3, undertaken in a low-income public high school, used “attributional retraining” to teach students to attribute critical feedback in school as evidence of their teachers’ high standards and belief in their potential. It raised African Americans’ grades, reducing the achievement gap. Discussion centers on the roles of trust and recursive social processes in adolescent development.