Impact of a Multidimensional Design Framework on Racial Identity and Academic Competence

• In Event: Complexities and Opportunities of Conceptualizing Race as Multidimensional

Abstract

We frame learning as multi-dimensional, including cognitive, epistemological, phenomenological, social and emotional dimensions that operate as a dynamic system at the level of individual functioning (Fischer & Bidell, 1998; Lee, 2010); and hypothesize that such individual functioning is an outgrowth of people’s participation in cultural practices within and across settings (Rogoff, 2003 ; Super & Harkness, 1986). This paper presents findings from a literacy intervention designed to address these multiple dimensions, both in terms of classroom instruction but also in terms of school wide organizational supports. Specifically, the design framework focused pedagogical practices that drew on students’ prior knowledge (Lee, 2007), made explicit cognitive and epistemological problem solving strategies (Collins, Brown, & Holum, 1991) – with the aim of helping students experience competence and relevance (Eccles, O'Neil, & Wigfield, 2005; Maslow, 1943) – and organizational practices adapted to address the multiple challenges students faced beyond the literature classroom.
We hypothesized that adolescence is a period of identity wrestling , where schools represent a significant site of such wrestling (Eccles et al., 1993). We target a population of low-income African-American adolescents who must wrestle with what are sometimes competing challenges of developing specific disciplinary academic competencies, conceptions of their abilities to develop such competencies, negotiating meaningful social relationships with peers, interpreting the goals and intentions and their relationships with caregivers inside and outside of school, and imagining their future roles as adults and the pathways for achieving such roles (Boykin, 1986; Spencer et al., 2006). Macro-level issues around positioning with regard to race and poverty complicate these normative developmental challenges of adolescence.
We offer results from a 4-year longitudinal intervention at a low-income African-American urban high school aimed at supporting identity development and resilience through a combination of explicit scaffolds for literary reasoning in classrooms (Mar, Peskin, & Fong, 2011) and systemic supports for relationship building at the school as an organization. The Cultural Modeling Framework (Lee, 2007) informed pedagogical scaffolds for building skill and confidence in literary reasoning.

Data include results from surveys of students’ perceptions and experiences of risk, of racial identity orientations, of epistemological orientation to literature, the TRIPOD survey of students’ perceptions of instruction and school climate, assessments of literary reasoning, as well as video cases of instruction.
Findings demonstrate significant correlations between positive racial identity orientations and literature assessments, PSAE scores and grades; between CM pedagogical practices, epistemological orientations toward literature and positive racial identity. Video cases illustrate how CM scaffolds are taken up to support argumentation around identity dilemmas in the literary texts and their uptake in students’ lives, including the uptake of African-American rhetorical and interactional repertoires as indices of engagement.
Significance:
Findings contribute to our understanding of how issues of African-American racial identity during adolescence play out in navigations of academic competencies and how a multi-dimensional design framework aimed simultaneously at identity wrestling and disciplinary skills, situated at both the classroom and school level resources, can support positive outcomes for youth placed at risk.

Author

• Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University