Transcript Minority Status and Schooling

Minority Status and Schooling
Edwin D. Bell
Department of Education
Winston-Salem State University
Cultural Characteristics
• the process of identifying and using cultural
characteristics as a basis for differentiated
instruction must be treated with caution. It may be
tempting to construct a laundry list of cultural
traits that "explain" the school behaviors of a
specific minority group, but culture is a complex
and delicate phenomenon and its relationship to
student behavior is seldom simple. (Educational
Research Service, 1991, p. 10)
Background
• The United States has large numbers of
minority groups. Some have developed
reputations for excellent performance in
education, e.g., Chinese Americans, others
have developed reputations for poor
performance in schools, e.g., African
Americans.
Background (Continued)
• John Ogbu (1983) did ethnographic research on
Chinese Americans and African Americans in
Stockton, CA between 1968-70. He found that
although the two groups experienced similar
discrimination and came from similar
socioeconomic backgrounds, Chinese Americans
did well in school and African Americans did not.
He developed a conceptual framework to help him
explain the pattern:
Typology of Minorities
• Autonomous
• Immigrants
• Castelike or Involuntary
Autonomous Minorities
are minorities in a numerical sense; they are not
totally subordinated by the dominant group
politically or economically. They may be victims
of prejudice, but are not subordinated groups in a
rigid caste system. Often such groups have a
cultural frame of reference that encourages and
demonstrates success. In the US, autonomous
minorities are not characterized by
disproportionate and persistent school failure.
Examples of Autonomous
Minorities
• Amish, Jews, Mormons.
Immigrants
are groups of people who have moved more
or less voluntarily to the United States.
They are psychologically outside
established definitions of social status and
relations. Their reference group is the
population "back home" or the peers in their
neighborhood. Immigrant minorities are not
characterized by disproportionate and
persistent school failure.
Examples of Immigrants
• Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans,
Caribbean people
Castelike Minorities
have been permanently and involuntarily
incorporated into their societies. They have
little or no political power and are
economically subordinate. Their
disproportionate representation in menial
jobs is used to argue that low status is
appropriate. Castelike minorities are
characterized by disproportionate and
persistent school failure.
Examples of Castelike Minorities
• African Americans, Mexican Americans,
Native Americans, Puerto Ricans
Conceptual Framework
This conceptual framework can explain
minority group performance in different
cultures. The Buraku people are castelike
minorities in Japan and experience
persistent, disproportionate school failure.
The same Burakus are immigrants in the US
and do as well as other Japanese Americans
in school.
School, Work, and Status
Mobility
Ogbu (1983) argued that school plays an
important role in an economy, School attempts to
fulfill this crucial role in three ways: teaching
children beliefs, values, and attitudes which
support the economic system; teaching them skills
and competencies required to make the system
work; and credentialing them to enter the work
force. During their education children develop
appropriate cognitive maps or shared knowledge
of how the economic and status-mobility systems
work. (p. 173)
Cognitive Maps
• Structured inequality--unequal power
relationship permits the dominant group
to control minority access to education and
jobs.
• An artificial job ceiling which limits the
upward mobility of castelike minorities.
Cognitive Maps (continued)
• These two factors which can change over
time define different realities for the
dominant group, castelike minorities, and
immigrants.
Castelike Cognitive Map
• Castelike minorities may tend to see most of
their problems in terms of systemic
discrimination. Consequently, many
members of castelike minorities do not
believe that effort will achieve objectives or
that objectives achieved will lead to
rewards.
Immigrant Cognitive Map
• Many members of immigrant minorities
believe that if they accommodate to the
majority they will achieve greater rewards
than they could achieve if they were "back
home".
Expectancy Theory
These cognitive maps have major implications for
student and teacher motivation given the
expectancy theory of motivation. This theory rests
on two assumptions, people make decisions about
their behavior based on reasoning and anticipation
of future events, and people subjectively and
intuitively evaluate the expected outcomes of
behavior and then choose how to behave (Hoy &
Miskel, 1991; Schlosser, 1992).
Expectancy Theory Components
• valence--perceived value of outcomes/rewards
• instrumentality--perceived probability that a
given level of performance will produce reward
• expectancy--perceived probability that a certain
degree of effort will produce a specified
performance level
• Flow Chart of Expectancy Theory
Coping/Survival StrategiesSecondary Cultural Differences
• Collective Struggle (civil rights movement and culture of
resistance – see Public Enemy) (This will help you
understand the lyrics of “Fight the Power – What
Happened in Tianamen Square in 1989)
• Clientship--manipulative interactions; go along to get
along; passive resistance
• Alienation--creation of a "Black Culture" which is defined
by its opposition to everything espoused by the dominant
culture
– Norms against "acting White"
– Acceptance of illegal, alternative economy for status mobility.
Internalized racism (See 50 Cent –G Unit Soldiers) (Ricks, 2005)
Coping/Survival Strategies
(Continued)
• Assimilation--trying to internalize the
dominant culture
• Accommodation--maintaining positive
cultural identity; operating in school
according to established rules; rejecting
internalization of artificial job ceiling
Accomodation
• Kao and Tienda (1995) reported that
accommodation without assimilation and
the optimism of immigrant parents have a
statistically significant positive relationship
with the high academic achievement of
children from voluntary immigrant families
Primary Discontinuities
• “Primary Cultural differences result from
cultural developments before members of a
given population come in contact with
American or Western white middle-class
culture”…. (Ogbu, 1982, p. 293)
Secondary Discontinuities
• In contrast to primary cultural
discontinuities, secondary discontinuities
develop after members of two populations
have been in contact or after members of a
given population have begun to participate
in an institution, such as the school system,
controlled by another group. (Ogbu, 1982,
p. 298)
Questions
• What are primary and secondary cultural
discontinuities and how are they different?
• Identify the secondary cultural
discontinuities that you have observed in
your school and community?
• Discuss these two questions in your work
group.
Questions
• What if anything does this work have to do
with closing the achievement gap?
• Send an essay that addresses these questions
to the digital Dropbox in BlackBoard.
References
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Educational Research Service. (1991). Educating a culturally diverse student
population: Teaching methods and the learning process. Arlington, VA: Author.
Ogbu, J. U. (1983). Minority status and schooling in plural societies. Comparative
Education Review, 27 (2), 168-190.
Ogbu, J. U.( 1982, Win). Cultural Discontinuities and Schooling. Anthropology and
Education Quarterly; 13(4), 290-307.
Hoy, W. K. & Miskel, C. G. (1991). Educational Administration: Theory, Research,
and Practice, 4th edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Ricks, K. Language, image and gender: A content analysis of Gangsta Rap lyrics, 19862005. Research paper for SOC 485-02: Culture. Winston-Salem, NC: Wake
Forest University.
Schlosser, L. K. (1992). Teacher distance and student disengagement: School lives on
the margin. Journal of Teacher Education, 43(2), 128-140.
Kao, G. & Tienda, M. (1995, March). Optimism and achievement: The educational
performance of immigrant youth. Social Science Quarterly, 76(1), 1-19.
Flow Chart of Expectancy Theory
(Back)
WORK OUTCOME
Can I achieve the outcome? ---------No--No motivation
Expectancy
Yes
Instrumentality
motivation
Does the outcome lead to Reward?-------No--No
Yes
Valence
Is the reward something I value? ----No-No motivation
Yes
WORK MOTIVATION
Figure 1.
Flowchart of Expectancy theory