A Qualitative Study of the Experiences of Urban African American Adolescents in Jesuit High Schools

• In Event: 63.084 - Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: 63.084-7 - Catholic Educational Efforts to Ensure Academic Success for Urban Students of Color Placed at Risk

Abstract

Objectives

In responding to the call to focus on specific populations of students in Catholic schools, Fenzel (2009) in Nativity Schools and Kearney (2008) in a Cristo Rey High School provided a contemporary understanding of Catholic schools that serve significant populations of African American and Latino students. Building on their work, this paper examines the experiences of African American males who attended Jesuit high schools.

Perspective
Urban African American male students have long been viewed with some dissonance and trepidation by society (Spencer, 2001). This negative view has had a major impact on their academic behaviors and performances. Subsequently, their quality of life is majorly impacted by their overrepresentation in the prison system, high rates of illiteracy, and low graduation rates (Anderson & Simmons, 2010).

While these data hold true for many African American males, Catholic schools seem to create a learning environment whereby graduation rates and matriculation to college is higher (Neal, 1997; Polite, 1992). To date little research has examined the African American experience at Jesuit high schools in the US. The Jesuits developed a secondary education model that emphasized the importance of the formation of character and a desire to integrate both the humanistic need to serve others with the scholastic need to excel academically (O’Malley, 1989). Jesuit schools have educated numerous successful African American alumni (Wirth, 2007).


Methods
This qualitative study uses a phenomenological mode of inquiry to explore how these students in the same school experience a Jesuit high school. This framework allows for an extensive understanding of the “experience-rich participants of this study” (Gorki, 1998, p. 59).

Data sources
Data were collected through interviews and focus groups with 40 African American males attending three Jesuit high schools. Each interview lasted approximately 60 minutes, and the focus group lasted no longer than 90 minutes. All of the interactions with the participants were recorded and later transcribed prior to analysis.

Results
Findings from this study indicate that the participants believe attending this school was their ticket out of their neighborhoods or to college. However, they were challenged to navigate the racial dynamics in interactions with teachers and students. Participants felt that the teachers were fair and helpful, but that some were unaware of how their lives differed from White students. As such, assignments requiring computer access were challenging because 10 participants did not have computers at home and did not live close to a library. Related to the White students, their experiences with blatant racism were nuanced in various ways.

Significance
The voices and stories of the African American males in this study serve to undermine a prevailing ideology that embraces dominant groups’ belief in their shared experiences serving as the norm for the rest of society—or in this case Jesuit high schools (Dixson & Rousseau, 2006). This research responds to York’s (1996) call for research on smaller, more discrete populations of students and has the potential to disrupt, and potentially enhance, our understanding of the experiences of some African American students from urban communities.

Author

• Robert Weldon Simmons, Reading Partners