Positive Academic Identities
Students perceive themselves and members of their own identity groups as intellectually capable and able to achieve at very high levels. They connect their own knowledge and sense of purpose with challenging academic skills and concepts. They are able to use tools of inquiry to ask questions, develop informed opinions, and co-construct knowledge with peers and adults, and they communicate knowledge clearly, using multiple forms of communication. Students use these academic skills to develop social justice in their schools and communities.
Evidence shows that students of color, English language learners (including those from poverty backgrounds), and girls can learn to perceive themselves and members of their own socio-cultural background as intellectually capable and able to achieve at very high levels, when teachers hold high expectations of them, build supportive family-like relationships with them, connect the curriculum to what they know outside school, and use active teaching strategies that are personalized to fit the students.
- What this looks like in Pang Xiong's third grade classroom
Evidence shows that students of color can learn to connect their own knowledge and sense of purpose with challenging academic skills and concepts when the curriculum and pedagogy explicitly build on their experiences and cultural frames of references from their lives outside school.
- How elementary school teacher Marisol Moreno does this
Evidence shows that students of color can learn to use tools of inquiry to ask questions, develop informed opinions, co-construct knowledge with others, communicate knowledge clearly using multiple forms of communication, and use academic skills to develop social justice consciousness action in their schools and communities when curriculum and pedagogy are explicitly designed to teach these skills in relationship to what students already know and care about.
Bishop, R., Ladwig, J., & Berryman, M. (2014). The centrality of relationships for pedagogy: The whanaugatanga thesis. American Educational Research Journal, online. Large scale study based on classroom observations that directly links teacher-student relationships with Maori student academic engagement in the classroom.
Brown, K. E. & Medway, F. J. (2007). School climate and teacher beliefs in a school effectively serving poor South Carolina African American student. Teaching and Teacher Education 23, 529-540. Reports a case study of an academically successful elementary school serving low-income African American students; investigates practices that led to students' success.
Cabrera, N. L., Milam, J. F., Jaquette, O., & Marx, R. W. (2014). Missing the (student achievement) forest for all the (political) trees: Empiricism and the Mexican American student controversy in Tucson. American Educational Research Journal 51(6): 1084-1118. Rigorous statistical evaluation of the impact of Mexican American Studies on the academic performance of secondary students. Found that students who participated in MAS courses, by senior year, had significantly higher state achievement test score passing rates and graduation rates than their peers who had not participated, even though the non-participating peers started with slightly higher achievement scores.
Cammarota, J., & Romero, A. (2009). The Social Justice Education Project: A critically compassionate intellectualism for Chicana/o students. In W. Ayers, T. Quinn & D. Stovall (Eds.), Handbook for social justice education (p. 465-476). NY: Routledge. Describes the curriculum, pedagogy, and relationships used in a Mexican American studies program in four high schools, and the positive impact on students.
Copenhaver, J. (2001). Listening to their voices connect literary and cultural understandings: Responses to small group read-alouds of Malcolm X: A Fire. New Advocate 14 (4),343-359. Case study of how a text about Malcolm X enabled African American elementary students to use their knowledge of African American culture to read more deeply than they read texts less relevant to their lives.
Dee, T. & Penner, E. (2017). The causal effects of cultural relevance: Evidence from an ethnic studies curriculum. American Educational Research Journal 54 (1): 127-166. Evaluation study of the impact of San Francisco Unified School District's ninth grade ethnic studies program on student academic outcomes. Found participation in ethnic studies courses to increase ninth-grade student attendance by 21 percentage points, GPA by 1.4 grade points, and credits earned by 23.
Duncan, W. (2012). The effects of Africentric United States history curriculum on Black student achievement. Contemporary Issues in Education Research 5(2), 91-96. Quasi-experimental study of the impact of an Africentric U.S. history curriculum on 217 mostly African American eighth-grade students’ self-efficacy, connection to the curriculum, and academic achievement, using New York State social studies test data. Found a significant positive impact in all three areas.
Franquiz, M. E., & Salazar, M. del C. (2004). The transformative potential of humanizing pedagogy: Addressing the diverse needs of Chicano/Mexicano students. High School Journal, 87(4), 36–54. Five-year qualitative study of a high school examining factors that support Chicano/a students' academic success, highlighting critical elements of a humanizing pedagogy the students identified as key: respeto (respect), confianza (mutual trust), consejos (verbal teachings) and buen ejemplos (exemplary models).
Hanselman, P., Bruch, S. K., Gamoran, A., & Borman, G. D. (2014). Threat in context: Schoolmoderation of the impact of social identity threat on racial/ethnic achievement gaps. Sociology of Education, 87 (2), 106-124. DOI: 10.1177/0038040714525970. This study examines levels of self-affirmation to see if self-affirmation interventions designed to counteractsocial identity threat reduced the racial achievement gap among middle school students The findings conclude that these self-affirmation activities have the potential to help close some of the largest racial/ethnic achievement gaps, though only in specific school contexts.
Howard, T . C. (2001). Telling their side of the story: African-American students' perceptions of culturally relevant teaching. The Urban Review 33 (2), 131-149. Case study of an elementary classroom serving low-income African American students, in which the students describe relationships with their teacher and forms of pedagogy that academically engage them.
Kessels, U., Heyder, A., Latsch, M. & Hannover, B. (2014). How gender differences in academic engagement relate to students’ gender identity, Educational Research, 56(2), 220-229. DOI: 10.1080/00131881.2014.898916. Evidence shows that gendered perceptions of academic learning (e.g., math and science is for boys; school as place for girls) potentially hamper students’ willingness to engage content even if they are capable. Part of developing positive academic identities entails minimizing or negating the role of stereotypes and implicit biases related to gender that comprise student learning for all gender types.
Lee, O., Deaktor, R. R. & Enders, C. C. (2008). Impact of a multiyear professional development intervention on science achievement of culturally and linguistically diverse elementary students. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 45, 726-747. Study of the impact of the 3-year implementation of a professional development intervention on science achievement of culturally and linguistically diverse elementary students in six schools. Found consistent patterns of positive outcomes in achievement gains at all three grade levels while also reducing achievement gaps among demographic subgroups at the fourth grade.
Lipka, J., Hogan, M. P., Webster, J. P., Yanez, E., Adams, B., Clark, S., & Lacy, D. (2005). Math in a Cultural Context: Two case studies of a successful culturally- based math project. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 36 (4), 367-385. Study of the academic impact on Alaskan native students of a math curriculum that is designed and taught in a way that connects with local indigenous culture.
López, F. A. (2017). Altering the trajectory of the self-fulfilling prophecy: Asset-based pedagogy and classroom dynamics. Journal of Teacher Education 68(2), 193-212. Study of 568 Latino students and their teachers in grades 3-5 in six schools, Found that “students with teachers who have high levels of both expectancy and critical awareness perform approximately ½ SD higher in student reading achievement over the course of one academic year” (p. 13).
López, F. A. (2016). Culturally responsive pedagogies in Arizona and Latino students’ achievement. Teachers College Record 118(5), 1-42. Study of 244 Latino students and their teachers, grades 3-5. Found that “Teachers’ reported CRT [culturally responsive teaching] behaviors in terms of language and cultural knowledge (formative assessment) were both significantly and positively related to students’ reading outcomes. For teachers reporting the highest level of each of the aforementioned dimensions, students’ reading scores were associated with approximately 1 SD higher reading outcomes” (p. 2-28).
Redding, C. (2019). A teacher like me: A review of the effect of student-teacher racial/ethnic matching on teacher perceptions of students and student academic and behavioral outcomes. Review of Educational Research 89(4), 499-535. DOI: 10.3102/0034654319853545. This review examines the extent to which Black and Latino/a students have more positive behavioral outcomes when assigned to a teacher of the same race/ethnicity. The review also examines whether higher test scores, and better behavior and academic performance area a result of having a teacher of the same race/ethnicity.
Zuniga-Hill, C. & Yopp, R. H. (1996). Practices of exemplary elementary school teachers of second language learners. Teacher Education Quarterly 23(1), 83-98. Study of the teaching practices of 6 elementary teachers of ELL students identified as exemplary with their students.
Adjapong, E. S., & Endim, C. (2015). Rethinking pedagogy in urban spaces: Implementing hip-hop pedagogy in the urban science classroom. Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research, 11: 66–77. Qualitative investigation of use of co-teaching and call-response (two elements of Hip-Hop pedagogy) in 6th grade science in an urban school. Found that the use of Hip-Hop pedagogy engaged the students. Call-response memorization deepened their science content knowledge, as did co-teaching what they were learning to their peers.
Peterson, D. S. (2014). A culturally responsive alternative to “drill and kill” literacy strategies. Multicultural Perspectives 16(4): 234-239. A high school principal compares the impact of two different literacy programs on low-achieving urban students in her school. While the mainstream-oriented Striving Readers program had no noticeable impact on their achievement, Deep Roots: Civil Rights had a profound impact.Rickford, A. (2001). The effect of cultural congruence and higher order questioning on the reading enjoyment and comprehension of ethnic minority students. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk 6 (4), 357-387. Case study of how African American folktales and contemporary stories enabled low-achieving African American middle school students to become academically engaged and demonstrate high levels of reading comprehension.
Lee, C. D. (2007). Culture, literacy and learning. New York: Teachers College Press. Synthesizes the author's work in high school English classes serving African American students from low-income backgrounds, developing the concept of Cultural Modeling in which students learn to do literary analysis by starting with analysis of literary forms (including films) and language (including African American vernacular) they are already familiar with.
Jarrett, O. & Stenhouse, V. (2011). Transforming curriculum and empowering urban students and teachers. Urban Education, 46(6), 1461—1495. Study of 135 teachers' implementation of problem-solution projects that merge service-learning and critical pedagogy to meet curriculum standards while empowering teachers and students. Students (usually the recipients of service) initiate and decide on projects as their teachers build learning opportunities through the chosen project.
Cammarota, J., & Romero, A. (2009). The Social Justice Education Project: A critically compassionate intellectualism for Chicana/o students. In W. Ayers, T. Quinn & D. Stovall (Eds.), Handbook for social justice education (p. 465-476). New York: Routledge. Describes the curriculum, pedagogy, and relationships used in a Mexican American studies program in four high schools, in which students learned to do research into problems in their own community.
Green-Gibson, A. & Collett, A. (2014). A comparison of African & mainstream culture on African-American students in public elementary schools. Multicultural Education 21(2), 33-37. Reports comparison of two predominantly Black Chicago elementary schools, one using African-centered curriculum and the other using traditional curriculum. Students in the African-centered school performed much higher on standardized reading and math tests than students in the other school.
Jarrett, O. & Stenhouse, V. (2011). Transforming curriculum and empowering urban students and teachers. Urban Education, 46(6), 1461—1495. Study of 135 teachers' implementation of problem-solution projects that merge service-learning and critical pedagogy to meet curriculum standards while empowering teachers and students. Students (usually the recipients of service) initiate and decide on projects as their teachers build learning opportunities through the chosen project.
Nykiel-Herbert, B. (2010). Iraqi refugee students: From a collection of aliens to a community of learners. Multicultural Education, 17(30), 2-14. Case study of the impact of a 10-month long intervention program using culturally-relevant instruction, on the academic performance, specifically literacy acquisition, of English language learners (ELLs) with interrupted education.