Exposing the Context: Student Perceptions of Racial Microaggressions in the Classroom

• In Event: 75.041 - MTCC Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: 75.041-4 - Intersectionalities of Lived Experience: Social Context as Evidence to Democratize Educational Research

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine the relative social-emotional weight of racial bias on the academic learning outcomes of Black students. Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the current Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the underachievement of Black students is a well-documented nationwide phenomenon. However, students’ schooling experiences are less well-documented. By directly consulting the students themselves, this study documents specific education mechanisms, contexts, and practices that suggest racial microaggressions play a part in our inability to close the achievement gap.
Critical Race Theory places institutionalized racism at the forefront of discussions about race-based inequality and the injustices that people of color experience in the United States across many institutions such as healthcare, the judicial system, housing and education (Bell, 1992; Ladson-Billings 2009). Critical race theorists centralize the argument that racism is ever present, silenced and invisible. In this study, I use theoretical tools including racial microaggressions, implicit bias and racial battle fatigue to disrupt the dominant narrative that the disproportionate academic failure of Black students, as measured by standardized tests, is a result of their coming from single parent households, being poor and/ or lack of motivation.
Utilizing a sequential explanatory mixed methods design, this study presents the impact of racial microaggressions and implicit biases on the classroom learning experiences of Black students, an impact that is potentially more significant than the economic status, education or zip code of the families of Black students. This research study also examines how Black students report their teacher interactions and classroom learning experiences in comparison to their other raced peers.
In the first phase of this mixed methods study I conducted a survey among 200 students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds 6th through 12th grade students. In the second phase of the study, Black students who participated in the survey were invited to take part in a focus group discussion to provide additional qualitative insights into their classroom learning experiences and their academic success. Racial microaggressions were used as the tool to measure the degree to which Black students perceived classroom interactions with their teacher(s) negatively impacted their learning experiences.
In a “post-truth” era, education researchers must diligently and routinely disrupt damage-centered narratives that blame students and parents for lack of success. Instead, when discussing the underachievement of Black students, racism and its far-reaching impact must be a central part of the education discourse, reforms and policies.

Author

• Nadine O'Garro, Boston Public Schools