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The promise in a research study
By Laura Ofobike
Beacon Journal chief editorial writer
Published on Tuesday, Apr 21, 2009
Once in a while, you read something that makes you sit up, rub your eyes, read it over again and ask: Can it be? Is it really that uncomplicated?
I stumbled across an article on ScienceDaily.com late last week that I thought was simply astounding. The headline said: ''Simple Writing Assignment Improves Minority Student Grades.''
Really? The hook was in.
The article was about a study conducted by a team of researchers led by Geoffrey Cohen, an associate professor of social psychology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The study involved three groups of seventh-graders. One group was made up of white students and another of high-performing African-American. The third consisted of African-American students who were struggling in school.
Each group was split into two, half serving as the control. The students were given in-class writing assignment. In each group, half the students were asked to choose and write about one or two values that matter most to them. The other half, the control group, was assigned neutral topics. The assignments, about 15 minutes long, were repeated three to five times during the school year.
Yes, that was it, the ''self-affirmation'' intervention administered to the middle-school students in 2006 with a follow-up in 2008.
Quoting Professor Cohen, the article said the writing exercise is designed to help a student ''to reaffirm that he or she is a good and competent person. This helps reduce stress by allowing the student to think about all the things that matter to them. . . . It makes the possibility of failure less dire.''
And the findings from the study?
• The grade-point average of the African-American students who participated in the self-affirmation exercise rose 0.24 points in the two years. Low-performing black students made the biggest strides, averaging 0.41 points higher on their GPA than the control group.
• The gains persisted through two years of middle school.
• The rate at which the students were held back or needed remedial work was lower.
• The intervention made no difference on the performance of white students or the black students who were doing well.
It may be that these are not exactly earth-shaking improvements when national statistics show black males in particular lag whole grade levels, not just a grade point or two, behind their white peers in essential skills such as reading and math.
But pardon me, nonetheless, if I think the findings are invigorating for a number of reasons. Educators recognize middle school as a particularly perilous passage, where the academic futures of students on the bubble are made or broken. The researchers offer illumination here. They found that low-performing black students (but not those who participated in the self-affirmation exercises) can get quickly locked into a downward spiral of poor performance.
Failure in the first few weeks of middle school can have ''a disproportionate effect on the negatively stereotyped group,'' a damaging impact on the child's self-concept that persists through the school year, Cohen said.
In short, middle school is where we lose most of our minority students. And if the downward cycle can be interrupted there, as the findings of this study suggest, then that surely is encouraging. Which brings me to another reason I found this study arresting. Closing the academic achievement gap between minority students and their white and Asian counterparts is approaching the quest for the Holy Grail in education. Year after year, the performance gap seems to defy the programs — and millions of dollars in grants — designed to eliminate it.
The intriguing part of this study is the elegant simplicity of the intervention itself — a structured writing assignment that can be accomplished in 15 minutes with a pencil and paper, the students expressing what is most relevant to their lives.
Cohen and other researchers make the point that while school generally is stressful for most students, black students may experience a higher degree of stress from worries that they are regarded as intellectually inferior.
The negative stereotype feeds on itself. The saddest part of this negative self-image is that it is so infectious. Children who are embarrassed by their own poor performance try to cope with it by making a virtue of it. They make an enemy of the challenge they face to raise their performance .
Cohen is careful to caution that the self-affirmation exercise is not a silver bullet, impressive as the impact appears to be. A few writing assignments certainly will not be the cheap substitute for good teachers and adults who care to help children discover values that shore up their fragile self- confidence.
Ofobike is the Beacon Journal chief editorial writer. She can be reached at 330-996-3513 or by e-mail at lofobike@thebeaconjournal.com
Once in a while, you read something that makes you sit up, rub your eyes, read it over again and ask: Can it be? Is it really that uncomplicated?
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Deerfield, Oh
Posted 11:02 AM, 04/22/2009
The real peoblem here is that Ofobike has not got the backbone to admit that the vast majority of these student's problems start at their home. Don't blame this on the teachers.
