Finding Library Articles

Note: This assignment replaces the “Group Progress Report” listed in your syllabus.

To join a group, click on the “People” tab on the left side of the page. Scroll down until you find a research question that interests you. Click “Join” and you’re in!

Your final project is to gain a better understanding of how race/ethnicity may affect academic achievement in high school. In this case, we are using Oakland Technical High School as the site for a hypothetical case study.

Your basic research question asks:

How (variable of your choice) relating to race/ethnicity (with the option of including gender or class) facilitates or impedes academic achievement in high school.

There are 15 sample research questions listed below. If one of these questions is of interest to you, join a group to address this question. (You may also pose your own research question, but send your question to me via email so that I can create a group heading.)

Find two scholarly articles relating to your particular research question and submit a brief summary as per instructions below. Try not to submit a summary of an article already submitted by one of the other group members, (i.e., check to make sure your submissions are unique).

Your entry should include the following information:

1. Bibiliographic information:

Author (or authors)

Date of publication

Article title

Journal name, volume (and number)

Page numbers

1. Summary of the article’s most significant content in your own words (one paragraph of 100 words is sufficient–although you may add more detail if you wish).

1. Explain why this article is relevant to your research question. (How does the argument or information it presents relate to your topic?)

Sample Research Questions

1) Do teachers show different expectations of students depending on the student’s race/ethnicity?

2) Do teachers react differently to boys of a certain race/ethnicity compared to girls of the same race/ethnicity?

3) Based on your chosen comparison group, do teacher interactions with students differ according to the subject of the class, (e.g., are student/teacher interactions different in classes like math or science compared to subjects like history or English)?

4) Does race “trump” gender in school performance, (e.g., in a school like Oakland Tech, do white females get better treatment in math/science classes compared to males of color?)

5) Does the race of the teacher affect teacher-student interactions? (see Claude Steele’s work on “stereotype threat”)

6) Does race/ethnicity play a role in the tracking of students (in Oakland Tech, the “academy” of the student is evidence of tracking)? What are the lived consequences of tracking in terms of students’ attitudes about school or their potential as students?

7) What factors contribute to the social construction of “good” or “bad” students? Do patterns of discipline vary by the race/ethnicity of the student?

8) Does the curriculum of the school match the cultural capital of the students? Do teachers try to bridge gaps in cultural capital?

9) Do afterschool enrichment programs help students perform better?

10) Do athletic programs help students perform better?

11) What special issues might Asian American students face, given their association with the “model minority” stereotype?

12) What special issues might the children of immigrants face?

13) Do high achieving students of color face challenges not shared by high achieving white students?

14) How might the degree of student belonging or integration into the school affect academic performance? Does being part of a majority or minority population affect school performance?

15) What puts students “at risk” of dropping out? (Remember, because the school is the research site, you can’t study “drop outs” because by definition, they are not at school. You can, however, look at students who show some of the signs associated with future withdrawal from school.)

16) If you are interested in how social class might modify any of the phenomena mentioned above, send me your question via email and I will create a new group option based on your question