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CAT Tracks for May 9, 2012
NOT-SO-GREAT EXPECTATIONS |
While waiting for my "Multiplication Is For White People" book to arrive from Amazon.com...
...I stumbled across this silly study...
...filled to the brim with "may" and "maybe" conjecture.
Wonder if the researchers did any research into whether the teachers set-up to fail had had sensitivity and diversity training...had had the self-esteem mantra drummed into their hard little heads...had gotten the memo that that was no longer in fashion...unless, of course, that's what the media wants to write about today.
So much BS...
...so little time!
From eSchool News...
Positive Bias? Black, Latino Students Get Less Critical Feedback From Teachers, Study Suggests
By: Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 05/05/2012 06:28 PM EDT on LiveScience
Black and Latino students may be getting less critical, but helpful, feedback from teachers than their white counterparts, a new educational study indicates.
"The social implications of these results are important; many minority students might not be getting input from instructors that stimulates intellectual growth and fosters achievement," study researcher Kent Harber, a Rutgers-Newark psychology professor, said in a press release.
This positive bias in feedback to minority students may be contributing to the achievement gap between white and minority students, a stubborn national problem, Harber said.
The study "tested" 113 white middle-school and high-school teachers in two public school districts, one middle class and white, and the other working class and racially mixed. Both are located in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut tri-state area.
Harber and colleagues developed a poorly written essay that they gave to the teachers to grade, under the pretense that it was the work of a student. In some cases, the teachers believed the student was white, in others black and in others Latino.
The teachers believed their feedback would go directly to the student.
The researchers found that, indeed, the teachers were prone to give more praise and less criticism if they believed a minority student had written the paper, as opposed to a white student.
The researchers also considered the support the teacher received from colleagues and administration. This turned out to be an important factor if the teachers believed the student was black, with only teachers who lacked support showing the bias. However, when teachers thought the student was Latino, they showed the bias toward positive feedback regardless.
"These results indicate that the positive feedback bias may contribute to the insufficient challenge that undermines minority students' academic achievement," the researchers conclude.
The study appeared online April 30 in the Journal of Educational Psychology.
You can follow LiveScience writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.
CAT Tracks Editor's Note:
Why?
Why doesn't anybody do a damn study on the effects of 200 years of slavery and a 100 years or so of Jim Crow...
...that created the inequality, the real "achievement gap" in the first place?
The teachers didn't do all that...any of that.
It was the Presidents, Governors, federal and state senators and representatives who did all that...and now want teachers to fix it...and pay for it with their jobs when they cannot work effing miracles!!!
Yeah, I'm still pissy...
When I'm in my religious mode, I call it righteous indignation!
POSTSCRIPT:
And another damn thing...
Why did they "test" 113 WHITE teachers?
What about black teachers? Hispanic teachers?? Mixed-race teachers???
Is the assumption, the presumption that only WHITE people can be biased...that other races are incapable of prejudice and bigotry? Now there's a hypothesis worth some study...
