(Name-mce) ListServ Racial Achievement Gap Dramatically Altered with Affirmation Exercise

[Howe, William]

Yale University Medical News

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Fax:  203/432-1323

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CONTACT: Karen N. Peart 203-432-1326 or karen.peart at yale.edu
<mailto:karen.peart at yale.edu> 

Embargoed for Release: 2 p.m. ET August 31, 2006

 

Racial Achievement Gap Dramatically Altered with Affirmation Exercise

 

New Haven, Conn.-For minority students, simply completing a writing
assignment designed to affirm a positive identity and sense of "self
integrity" near the beginning of the school year raised their school
performance and reduced the racial achievement gap by 40 percent,
according to a study published in Science September 1.

 

Geoffrey Cohen, one of the two principal investigators who conducted the
research first as an associate professor in Yale's Department of
Psychology <http://www.yale.edu/psychology/> , is now an associate
professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he continues
this research. He said that school settings can be stressful to all
students, but that African American students experience an extra
"threat" due to the negative stereotypes about the intelligence of their
race.

 

"People subjected to widely known negative stereotypes impugning the
intelligence of their group are aware of these negative
characterizations and may worry that performing poorly could confirm the
stereotype of their group," said Julio Garcia, associate research
scientist in the Psychology Department at Yale.

 

The randomized, double-blind study, replicated a year later with the
same results, was conducted at the beginning of the fall academic term
at a suburban middle school in the Northeast. The student body was
divided almost evenly between African Americans and European Americans.
The participants were 119 African American and 124 European American
seventh grade students from middle to lower-middle class families. The
affirmation exercise targeted the same academic subject for both groups.

 

The students did a 15-minute writing exercise for which they were given
a list of values, such as relationships with friends or family or being
good at art. One group of students was randomly assigned to the
treatment condition. They were asked to choose their most important
value and explain its importance, thus affirming their sense of
self-integrity. The control group was asked to write about their least
important value.

 

At the end of the term the students' grades were evaluated and African
American students who had written about values important to them earned
higher grades in the course, closing the race gap between them and their
European American peers by 40 percent. The percentage of African
American students receiving grades of D and F fell from 20 percent in
the control condition to nine percent in the treatment condition. No
effect was seen, up or down, among the European American students.

 

"Unlike other interventions, it benefits the targeted students,
including those most at risk, reducing group-based inequality while not
adversely affecting non-targeted students," Cohen said. "This research
highlights the importance of situational threats linked to group
identity in understanding intellectual achievement in real-world,
chronically evaluative settings."

 

The principal investigators also point out that although their findings
are important, their intervention should not be viewed as the "silver
bullet" that will wipe out the achievement gap. However, it could become
another important factor in boosting minority academic achievement.

 

The other co-authors include the research project director Nancy Apfel
of Yale and research assistant Allison Master, now at Stanford
University.

 

The study was funded with grants from the Nellie Mae Education
Foundation of Quincy, MA and the Institute for Social and Policy Studies
at Yale University.


Science Vol. 313, No. 5791: (September 1, 2006)

 

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Yale News Releases are available via the World Wide Web at
http://www.yale.edu/opa

 

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William A. Howe, Ed.D.
Education Consultant for Multicultural Education & Gender Equity
Connecticut State Department of Education - Bureau of Educational Equity
165 Capitol Ave. Rm 312, Hartford, CT 06106 
Telephone: 860-713-6542 * Fax: 860-713-7496
email: william.howe at ct.gov
website: http://www.state.ct.us/sde

11th Annual Connecticut Conference on Multicultural Education, Marriott
Hotel, Farmington, CT -Oct. 16, 2006,
<http://www.state.ct.us/sde/calendar/index.htm>  

Multicultural Educators to South Africa 2006 <http://www.billhowe.org/> 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

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