Monitor on Psychology - September 2011 - (Page 38)

gap has narrowed only slightly in the past decade. But recently, a group of social and cognitive psychologists have come at the problem in a different way. These psychologists’ approach is based on the idea that at least some of these academic disparities aren’t the result of faulty teaching or broken school systems, but instead spring from toxic stereotypes that cause ethnic-minority and other students to question whether they belong in school and whether they can do well there. While such a major problem might seem to require widespread social change to fix, the psychologists are finding evidence that short, simple interventions can make a surprisingly large difference. Quick classroom exercises that bolster students’ resistance to stereotypes and change the way they think about learning can have dramatically out-of-scale effects, these researchers say. PhD, in the mid-1990s. He showed that when people who are about to take a test are reminded of negative stereotypes about their racial, ethnic or other group, the subconscious worry that they might confirm those stereotypes undermines their performance by sapping cognitive resources that they could be using to do better on the exam. Psychologist Geoffrey Cohen, PhD, now at Stanford University, wondered if there might be a way to inoculate students against the effects of stereotype threat by buffering their sense of self-worth and positive identity. He and his colleagues Julio Garcia, PhD, and Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, PhD, tested their theory at a suburban, low-to-middle-income middle school in Connecticut that was about half black and half white. At the beginning of the school year, about 400 seventhgraders spent 15 minutes doing a classroom writing exercise. “I was skeptical … But now that I think about it, we all know that it’s possible to damage a student in 15 minutes .… So if that’s possible, then maybe it’s also possible to improve it.” And indeed, they’ve gotten dramatic results. In one of the best-known studies, low-performing black middle school students who completed several 15-minute classroom writing exercises raised their GPAs by nearly half a point over two years, compared with a control group. Such astonishing results have struck some observers — particularly nonpsychologists — as nearly magical, and possibly unbelievable. But a growing body of evidence is showing that the interventions can work, not only among black middle school students, but also for women, minority college students and other populations. “When this was first described to me, I was skeptical,” says physics professor Michael Dubson, PhD, of the University of Colorado–Boulder, who worked with psychologists there on a study with women physics students. “But now that I think about it, we all know that it’s possible to damage a student in 15 minutes. It’s easy to wreck someone’s self-esteem. So if that’s possible, then maybe it’s also possible to improve it.” Stereotype threat Many of the new interventions are based on the concept of “stereotype threat,” first identified by psychologist Claude Steele, 38 Michael Dubson university of Colorado–Boulder Half of the students were asked to pick a personal value, such as athletic ability or relationships with friends and family, and then write about why that value mattered to them. A control group wrote about why a value that didn’t matter to them might be important to someone else. The students did the exercise one or two times at the beginning of the school year. In a study published in Science in 2006 (Vol. 313, No. 5791), the researchers found that the short exercise reduced the achievement gap between the black and white students in the class by up to 40 percent over one school term, and that it was particularly effective for low-achieving black students, halving the percentage of black students who got a D or below in the class. Three years later, Cohen and his colleagues published a follow-up paper in Science (Vol. 324, No. 5925) in which they tracked the original group of students through the eighth grade. Amazingly, the effect lasted — the low-achieving black students who had completed the values-affirmation exercises raised their GPAs by four-tenths of a point (on a four-point scale) compared with the control group, and were less likely to need to repeat a grade. The intervention didn’t have any effect on white or high-achieving black students. Monitor on psychology • septeMber 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Monitor on Psychology - September 2011

Monitor on Psychology - September 2011
Letters
President’s Column
Contents
From the CEO
Supreme Court hears psychologists on prison and video game cases
Antipsychotics are overprescribed in nursing homes
New MCAT likely to recognize the mind-body connection
A $2 million boost for military and families
In Brief
GOVERNMENT RELATIONS UPDATE
On Your Behalf
Judicial Notebook
Random Sample
TIME CAPSULE
QUESTIONNAIRE
Speaking of Education
SCIENCE WATCH
An uncertain future for American workers
Advocating for psychotherapy
PRACTICE PROFILE
ETHICALLY SPEAKING
Seared in our memories
Helping kids cope in an uncertain world
APA and Nickelodeon team up
Muslims in America, post 9/11
Bin Laden’s death
‘They expect us to be there’
Answering the call of public policy
Candidates answer final questions
APA News
Division Spotlight
New leaders
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATION
Disaster relief training
Honoring teaching excellence
Personalities

Monitor on Psychology - September 2011