Stereotype Threat

Stereotype Threat 

Steele’s work confirms that traditionally marginalized African American boys internalize this untrue and altogether troubling narrative (Burrell, 2010), i.e., that they are intrinsically unable to excel in STEM and in life due to innate, intrinsic cognitive and or cultural deficiencies. Philip (2011a) argues that because of its seemingly endless promulgation, this lie has reached axiomatic status. This is, obviously, disconcerting on many levels, as is the overall lack of response to the exigency of African American male students’ inequitable educational opportunities and resultant educational outcomes. Make no mistake: poor African American males are in a crisis in this country (Noguera, 2008). However, instead of addressing the structural and institutional inequities that catalyze this problem, our society has committed an egregious non sequitur: rather than working to create educational spaces that will truly reach African American males, which should be the logical response, our Nation has created entire prison industries out of African American male misery (Alexander, 2010). That is to say, instead of working to ameliorate inequitable educational policies and practices that lead to African American male academic underperformance, the response has been to create jails to house young men who were, essentially, pushed out of school as the result of racist, oppressive structural and institutionalized inequity. And, if in spite of all this, African American males are able to stay in school, they must do so in the face of widespread (erroneous) negative stereotypes regarding their inherent intelligence, culture, drive, work ethic, and family life. This, then, results in cyclical psychological violence because students who feel that they are being negatively stereotyped, traditionally, perform poorly on standardized test, which by their very nature bring questions regarding inherent ability to the fore. According to Steele and Aronson (1995), this is especially true of African American students. As far as this, they note that: 

Since the publication of our initial report [on stereotype threat] a decade ago, nearly 100 studies on stereotype threat have been conducted, both by us and by researchers around the world, showing that stereotype threat is a significant factor in the achievement gap […]. These studies shed considerable light on how stereotypes suppress the performance, motivation, and learning of students who have to contend

with     them (http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational Links to an external site.leadership/nov04/vol62/num03/The-Threat-of-Stereotype.aspx Links to an external site.) Links to an external site..

Working to disconfirm pernicious stereotypes, even at the non-conscious level, for far too many bright African American students robs them of their full cognitive ability because they must continually use far too much of their computational power to focus on non-essential tasks like refuting stereotypes (Aronson, J., Fried, C., & Good, C., 2002). According to Aronson (2004):  Research indicates that African Americans are well aware of their group's negative reputation. Indeed, some research suggests a tendency for African Americans to be hyperaware of the negative expectations about their group and to considerably overestimate the extent to which the mainstream sees them as less intelligent and more likely to commit crimes and live off welfare […]. Thus, when black students are in an evaluative situation—being called on in class, for example, or taking a test—they experience an additional degree of risk not experienced by nonstereotyped students. 

(http://www.ascd.org/publications/educationalleadership/nov04/vol62/num03/The-Threat-of-Stereotype.aspx). 

Undoubtedly, much needs to be done around the overall, holistic social welfare of the urban poor; and, this is perhaps especially true in poor, predominately African American enclaves that are besieged by abject rates of unemployment (Alexander, 2010), wanton violence, inequitable access to quality health care and quality education. Access to quality education is a key component for upward mobility for hyper-marginalized people (Wacquant, 2008). According to the Intercultural Development Research Association’s (IDRA) website: 

Education has been and is a way out of poverty, especially for minority students. Students with a college degree have fared far better (even during the last recession) than those who either left school before graduation or earned only a high school diploma.

( Links to an external site.http://www.idra.org/IDRA_Newsletter/January_2013_Fair_Funding/Education_a Links to an external site.s_Pathway_Out_of_Poverty/#sthash.CHg6x1DW.dpuf Links to an external site.) Links to an external site.

Of course, conceptions of quality education differ throughout K through 12 education here in the United States. What is understood, however, is that whatever conceptualization of education ultimately becomes normative or more specifically standardized, STEM education will take center-stage. So it follows that it is within conversations about STEM education where potentially transformative dialogues—regarding shifting extant educational paradigms towards a pedagogical approach that centers critical pedagogy and is impelled by notions of social justice—begin to become more meaningful. As I discuss further, below, the banking model of education (Freire, 1997) that characterizes our current educational milieu in test-centric, underresourced urban schools has proven to make the (so called) achievement gap even more protracted for hyper-marginalized African American male students. So, consequently, it behooves equity-minded educators, especially those interested in the plight of African American males, to begin participating in conversations around STEM education, like Bob Moses (Moses & Cobb, 2001) in his work in the Algebra Project, as an issue of social justice.

Circling back to one of the primary tenets of critical pedagogical STEM instruction, which was to afford students a space to be who they are without sacrificing their academic identities, we must be impelled by a curricular focus that was aligned with course content that encouraged *** students to do STEM just as they were by connecting STEM to issues that were in some cases specific and in others simply important to them as urban African American males (Ladson-Billings, 1995). One of the goals of this approach was to help *** students develop and strengthen their own academic identities. Nasir’s (2011) research on the vicissitudes of African American students’ vis-à-vis math education has underscored the importance of positive academic identity development (Burke & Stets, 2009) as a constitutive part of academic success for traditionally marginalized African American students. Studies find that there is a positive reciprocal correlation between positive academic and cultural identity development and increased math performance (Nasir, 2011; Gutstein, 2006). 

Because of this ***’s curricular and pedagogical approaches sought to equip, encourage, and empower middle school African Americans boys to disrupt the negative stereotypes that have been sutured to them so that they can forge new available identities as critical, socially just scientists, technologists, engineers, and/or mathematicians. In order to accomplish this lofty goal, the *** STEM focused curricular approach centered and was framed by critical pedagogy.

Steele and Aronson, Stereotype Threat

Steele and Aronson:

• In this essay the authors discuss the ill effects of stereotype cues and stereotype threat both psychologically, and to a lesser degree, psychosomatically. Do you believe that stereotype threat has the propensity to physically affect, when activated, negatively stereotyped students?
• The authors write: "From hundreds of interviews that I've conducted with black college students, it's clear that many believe that the stereotype places them in situations freighted with unnerving expectations. Some report feeling a sense of unfairness, that there will be less patience for their mistakes than for white students' mistakes, and that their failure will be seen as evidence of an unalterable limitation rather than as the result of a bad day." How has this thinking been engender/proliferated, and by whom? Please explain.