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FOUR-YEAR, NATIONWIDE STUDY FINDS SHARP RACE AND GENDER DIFFERENCES IN INCIDENCE OF "ACADEMIC DISIDENTIFICATION"
African American Males More Likely Than Any Other Group
To Lose Motivation to Succeed in School by Twelfth Grade
WASHINGTON -- African American boys, compared with Whites,
Hispanics and African American girls, are "particularly and perhaps
uniquely" vulnerable to "academic disidentification," the
phenomenon in which success or failure in school ceases to matter
to the student. The finding comes from a four-year study of nearly
25,000 high school students across the United States and is
reported in the December issue of the Journal of Educational
Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association
(APA).
The study, by doctoral candidate Jason W. Osborne, MA, of the
State University of New York at Buffalo, supports some (but not
all) of the theories of Stanford University psychologist Claude M.
Steele, Ph.D., who first proposed the concept of academic
disidentification as a form of self-defense against expectations of
poor academic performance.
Data for the study were drawn from the ongoing National
Education Longitudinal Study, which was begun in 1988 and has been
following nearly 25,000 students since the eighth grade. The
students' grades, level of academic achievement and level of
overall self-esteem were measured when they were in the eighth
grade, in the 10th grade and again in the 12th grade. According to
the author, the correlations between self-esteem and achievement
scores and self-esteem and grades provided a measure of the
students' degree of academic identification or disidentification:
self-esteem rising or falling with grades and achievement scores
would indicate stronger academic identification; self-esteem
remaining the same or rising while grades and achievement scores
fell would indicate academic disidentification.
Over the course of the study, there were few substantial
changes in the relationship between self-esteem and achievement
scores, except for African American boys. For this group, these
correlations declined dramatically.
Looking at the correlations between grades and self-esteem,
all groups except for Hispanic girls showed decreasing correlations
between 10th and 12th grades. "However," Osborne says, "only
African American boys' correlations showed a dramatic and
significant decrease over time, dropping from highly significant
(and the equivalent in magnitude to the other groups) at eighth
grade to not significantly different from zero by 12th grade."
While Osborne's findings support Dr. Steele's theories as they
apply to African American males, there was little support for the
idea that African American girls are similarly affected and even
less to support the idea that others from socially disadvantaged
backgrounds -- such as many Hispanics -- would also tend to
disidentify with academics. There was also no evidence that girls
disidentified in traditionally male content areas such as math and
science.
The researcher notes that "Hispanic girls were the only group
that became more identified with academics as they progressed
through their academic careers, a surprising finding in light of
the social disadvantages they face, while African American girls,
who also face social disadvantages, did not. Finding out why this
might be may provide the key to improving identification of
students in general, and African Americans in particular."
Article: "Race and Academic Disidentification" by Jason W.
Osborne, MA, State University of New York at Buffalo, in the
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 89, No. 4.
(Full text available from the APA Public Affairs Office.)
(Jason W. Osborne can be reached at
[email protected] or 716-898-4745)
Please do not reply to this message. Address any replies to
[email protected]. Thank you.
The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington,
DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization
representing psychology in the United States and is the world's
largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes
more than 151,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants
and students. Through its divisions in 50 subfields of psychology
and affiliations with 58 state, territorial and Canadian provincial
associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a
profession and as a means of promoting human welfare.
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