Teaching to Close the Achievement Gap for Students of Color

Understanding the Impact of Factors Outside the Classroom

Theodore S. Ransaw, Richard Majors

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000209990
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation multiculturelle

This volume highlights approaches to closing the achievement gap for

students of color across K-12 and post-secondary schooling. It uniquely

examines factors outside the classroom to consider how these influence

student identity and academic performance.

Teaching to Close the Achievement Gap for Students of Color offers

wide-ranging chapters that explore non-curricular issues including

trauma, family background, restorative justice, refugee experiences, and

sport as determinants of student and teacher experiences in the classroom.

Through rigorous empirical and theoretical engagement, chapters

identify culturally responsive strategies for supporting students as they

navigate formal and informal educational opportunities and overcome

intersectional barriers to success. In particular, chapters highlight how

these approaches can be nurtured through teacher education, effective

educational leadership, and engagement across the wider community.

This insightful collection will be of interest to researchers, scholars,

and post-graduate students in the fields of teacher education, sociology

of education, and educational leadership.

Part 1
The Importance of Teacher Education for Diverse Classrooms

1The Related and Unrelated Relationship of Cultural Competency, Self-Identity and Academic Identity

Cultural Competency or Rigor?

Theodore S. Ransaw, Algerian Hart and Dervon D. Francis

Overview

There are few examples from practitioners or researchers that provide clear and tangible examples of teaching that simultaneously demonstrate how culturally competent teaching works hand in hand with rigorous instruction in the classroom. Far too often, educators stress cultural competency as a sole solution when it comes to improving educational outcomes for students of color. It may be that, and rightly so, the field of education naturally assumes that classrooms provide rigorous teaching. However, the authors in this chapter implore educators not to overlook the importance of rigor in the classroom as they work to be culturally inclusive and responsive to students. To that end, this chapter includes an introduction, a theoretical framework and a synthesis of literature related to cultural and instructional classroom support for children of color. Those topics include academic identity, cultural identity, academic self-concept, self-esteem, self-efficacy, social economic status (SES), teacher quality, time on instruction and high expectations. We conclude with a brief section that includes tools as well as resources to promote cultural competency and rigorous instruction. The goal of this chapter is to provide a critical analysis of teaching practices related to culturally relevant pedagogy and to serve as a resource to first- and second-year teachers.

Theoretical Framework

This paper employs the theoretical framework of critical race theory (CRT). CRT emerged from post-civil rights efforts to shift the focus of the direct effects of legal issues that directly impact people of color rather than trying to prove if racism exists. Currently, CRT is also employed by educators as a framework in which to apply issues related to educational legislation both federally and locally that impact children of color. CRT is an analytical framework that focuses on history, economics, equity, constitutional law and, of course, racism (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). Originally conceived by Derrick Bell, CRT challenges the idea that race is not an issue with regard to education and acknowledges that barriers such as school policies are often obstacles to opportunity for people of color. CRT shifts away from perspectives that suggest communities of color are culturally deficient (Yosso, 2005) and operates under the premise that students of color do not need to be rescued but do need to be treated fairly. Since race is a social construct, a theory that encompasses social implications has value for understanding the social dynamics behind issues related to schooling.

Introduction

The authors of this chapter have experienced teaching students of various cultural backgrounds in both K-12 and higher education classrooms who have a strong sense of ethnic identity, but a low sense of academic identity. Additionally, there have been students of color that we have taught who have a strong sense of academic identity without any knowledge of their ethnic identity. These experiences are commensurate with the current trend of teaching practices that advocate teachers being culturally competent. A conscious instructor should have a personal appreciation of the concept of culture and racial identity. The establishment of a non-racist dominant identity is an important component to developing an understanding with students of color. An individual’s worldview, through the lens of racial identity, has implications for how he or she processes information, forms perceptions and understands behavior (Carter, 1995). As teachers of color, the authors strive to be culturally responsive as second nature to our teaching practices. However, we know all too well that for some students of color, no matter how culturally inclusive their curriculum is, attending school can make them dis-identify within the Eurocentric academic spaces they occupy during their education matriculation. In other words, knowledge of self and one’s culture does not necessarily translate in the belief of one’s ability to succeed. Culturally competent teaching is not a guarantee of a strong sense of self-identity or academic success, yet culturally competent teaching can nurture seeds of self-awareness in and out of the classroom.

The aim of this chapter is to assess the relationship between culturally competent teaching practices and academic success for students of color. Cultural competency, described as mastering the ability to teach students from other cultures (Diller, 2005) is in-line with “academic achievement, attainment of learning objectives, acquisition of desired skills and competencies, satisfaction, persistence, and post-college performance” (York, Gibson, & Rankin, 2015, p. 2). Cultural competency in teaching is relevant because culturally competent teachers are thought to know that students who have the “academic and cultural wherewithal to succeed in school without losing their identities are better prepared to be of service to others; in a democracy, this commitment to the public good is paramount” (Ladson-Billings, 2001, p. 2). Additionally, cultural competency is a matter of policy. For example, the National Education Association states there are three levers in which states can operationalize cultural competence: 1) preservice education, 2) ongoing professional development and 3) licensure (NEA, 2008).

The support behind culturally competent teaching is based on the belief that a student’s knowledge of self, and a teacher’s understanding of their student’s history, background and experiences can help inform best teaching practices. Cultural competency is conceived as a way to empower students to feel comfortable with what they already know, with who they are, as well serve as a wakeup call for teachers to understand, accept and appreciate what their students bring to the classroom.

However, cultural competency is hard to measure and it is even more difficult to quantify its relationship with self-identity and academic identity. In fact, research presented in this chapter suggests that academic identity, academic self-concept, self-esteem and self-efficacy have ambiguous relationships to cultural and academic identity (DeCandia, 2014).

To illuminate issued related to ideology and academic achievement, this chapter includes a review of literature on academic identity and cultural factors that play a role in positive educational outcomes such as stereotypes, socioeconomic status (SES) and kinship networks.

We also follow with an overview of non-cultural elements of academic outcomes including curriculum and teacher quality, high expectations, positive thinking mindsets and resilience.

The fluidity between cultural competency, self-identity and academic identity is important to investigate because the relationship between them is nuanced and complex and does not always operate in ways that we think it does. It is for this reason the authors consider cultural competency as important to academic achievement and consider it part of good teaching practices that include supporting a student’s self-identity and academic identity. The perspective that culturally competent teaching is an integral component of good teaching practices is based on literature that suggests that cultural competency can increase familiarity with teachers and thereby increase a student’s ethnic identity, but that ethnic/cultural identity and academic identity are not always related (Ransaw, 2017a). This conclusion is important with respect to expectations of both teachers and students by acknowledging that cultural competency is at best hard to define and worse to measure. Changing perspectives and mindsets to view cultural competency as a form of inclusive good teaching practices has the added benefit of being more productive and supports more meaningful student expectations.

Literature Review

Academic Identity and Cultural Identity

One might think that academic identity and race are interrelated. However, complications arise when discussing SES, race and academic identity. Welch and Hodges (1997) defined academic identity as ‘‘the personal commitment to a standard of excellence, the willingness to persist in the challenge, struggle, excitement and disappointment intrinsic in the learning process” (p. 37). However, academic identity as defined by DeCandia (2014) is viewed as constructs of future orientation, self-efficacy, confidence in academic abilities and grit. College-bound identity, educational identity, student identity and school-affiliated identity are also names that describe constructs of academic identity.

However academic identity is defined, it does not necessarily translate into confidence in one’s academic ability nor does it predict academic achievement for low-income or minority students (DeCandia, 2014). The research that DeCandia’s (2014) conducted that examined K-12 urban low-income adolescents, academic identity and academic achievement is similar to research that examines academic self-concept.

Academic Self-Concept

According to Lent, Brown, and Gore (1997), academic self-concept can be described as specific “attitudes, feelings, and perceptions about one’s intellectual or academic skills, representing a person’s self-beliefs and self-feelings regarding the academic setting” (p. 308). When examining the relationship between self-esteem and schooling (Muijs, 1997), academic achievement seems to be slightly more important than academic self-concept. Additionally, self-esteem enhancement alone does not seem to be a method that decreases academic failure (Muijs, 1997). However, academic achievement does seem to increase self-esteem (Ross & Brown, 2000. On the other hand, Allen and Haniff (1991), Demo and Parker (1987), and Drury (1980) assert that there is little relationship between academic achievement and self-esteem in African American students. Additionally, despite often having lower academic achievement than their White peers, African American students have generally been found to have equal or higher self-esteem than White students (Crocker & Major, 1989).

The problem with the research and findings of academic self-concept, self-esteem and academic achievement is that results vary depending on how researchers define their parameters. Further complicating the argument is the fact that self-efficacy may be more important than self-esteem (van Laar, 2000).

Self-Esteem

For Crocker and Park (2004), self-esteem is linked to behavior and goal validation, “what people do to demonstrate to themselves and to others that they have worth and value, and on the consequences of this pursuit” (p. 394). Intriguingly. Black K-12 students have high levels of self-esteem regardless of how they perform in school (Patterson, 2006). For example, according to Osborne (1995), the relationship between academic achievement and self-esteem among African American students decreases with age. Additionally, Wang and Hughley’s (2012) research asserts that the racial socialization derived from parents was positively associated with all educational outcome variables except for school identification. In addition, preparing Black adolescent students for racial bias does not correlate to GPAs or educational aspirations (Wang & Hughley, 2012).

There is also strong evidence that a sense of self-esteem based on racial identity or racialized identity can result in a student identifying negatively with college curriculum that excludes or degenerates one’s racial identity (Croker & Park, 2004; Van Laar, 2000). Known as the fear of acting White, Fordham and Ogbu (1986), many high SES Black students disassociate themselves with anything that they perceive does not accept Black people or Black culture. Since academic success often does not include people of color, fear of acting White translates into academic achievement becoming associated with Whiteness. In fact, Johnson (1993) asserts that African self-consciousness has a significant negative relationship with academic success. African self-consciousness is defined as, “the awareness and knowledge that African Americans have (possess and practice) of themselves as African people historically, culturally, and philosophically” (Baldwin, 1987, p. 28).

Baldwin states that African American self-conscious students can reject all White norms including academic success. Fordham and Ogbu (1986) argue that fear of acting White, societal and school discrimination including community factors such as perceptions of the lack of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Charts
• About the Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1 The Importance of Teacher Education for Diverse Classrooms
• Part 2 Acknowledging the Impact of Student Life Beyond the Classroom
• Part 3 Using Narrative Approaches to Problematize Student Experience
• Index