Stereotype Threat and School Belonging in Adolescents from Diverse Racial/Ethnic Backgrounds.
Journal of At-Risk Issues(2012)
摘要
In this study, we extend research on stereotype threat to adolescents and to school belonging. Stereotype threat refers to the impact of societal stereotypes on individual performance. Participants included adolescents from marginalized racial/ethnic minority groups including African Americans, American Indians, and Latinos and nonmarginalized racial/ethnic groups including Asian Americans and European Americans. A subtle manipulation that involved altering the sequence of instruments on a survey was employed to make identity salient and to activate stereotype threat. Results indicated that marginalized minority adolescents in the threat condition reported lower school belonging scores than their counterparts in the nonthreat condition, with a small to medium effect size. Making identity salient did not affect school belonging in nonmarginalized participants. Findings have implications for academic performance in minority adolescents. Introduction Considerable disparities in educational outcomes persist across racial/ethnic minority groups (KewalRamani, Gilbertson, Fox, & Provasnik, 2007). In 2005, just over half of Hispanics and two thirds of African Americans had completed high school by adulthood compared to 90% of European Americans (KewalRamani, et al., 2007). These disparities have long-term implications, given the strong relationship between educational attainment and earnings in adulthood (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). A potent explanation for the racial/ethnic patterns in achievement is stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995). A large literature has emerged showing that when college students from stigmatized minority groups are made aware of negative societal stereotypes about their group, a decline in academic performance is observed. For a recent review, see Davis and Simmons (2009). However, very little is known about the stereotype threat phenomenon in adolescents, even though this developmental period may be particularly sensitive to stereotype threat. Adolescence is a period of heightened identity formation (Erikson, 1968). For racial/ethnic minority youth, this process involves the consideration of racial or ethnic group membership, which includes associated stereotypes (Phinney, 1990; Spencer, 1995). Instead of stereotype threat, research on racial/ethnic minority adolescents and academic outcomes has focused on school belonging (Faircloth & Hamm, 2005), with studies consistently showing that school belonging positively predicts academic outcomes in adolescents (Osterman, 2000). Thus, in the current study we sought to bring these literatures together, by extending research on stereotype threat to adolescents and by examining its relationship with school belonging. Stereotype Threat Stereotype threat has a negative impact on the academic performance of individuals in marginalized groups (Steele & Aronson, 1995). As Steele (1997) noted, a decline in performance results when individuals are made aware of their membership in a stigmatized group and are in a situation in which a negative stereotype about their group is present. The majority of extant research includes college students as participants and experimental studies conducted in laboratory settings (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995). Researchers typically activate stereotype threat by (a) creating an evaluative situation such as the completion of a high-stakes test, and (b) making racial/ethnic group membership salient. Using this method, Steele and Aronson (1995) showed that African American college students had lower academic scores than their counterparts not exposed to stereotype threat. Similar results were observed with a verbal test in African American college students (Blascovich, Spencer, Quinn, & Steele, 2001). Several factors have been posited to explain the decrements in academic performance when stereotype threat is activated. These include anxiety (Steele, 1997), a decrease in working memory capacity (Schmader & Johns, 2003), and physiological stress (Schmader, Johns, & Forbes, 2008). For example, Schmader (2010) argued that the process of considering how poor performance on a test may confirm a stereotype taxes cognitive abilities, and, in turn, diminishes performance. In another study, Blascovich et al. (2001) showed that the blood pressure of African Americans increased
更多查看译文
关键词
socioeconomic status
AI 理解论文
溯源树
样例
生成溯源树,研究论文发展脉络