Daily classroom experiences and math engagement among African American high school students.

• In Event: The Social Context of STEM Processes and Outcomes among Underrepresented High School Students

Abstract

African American students lag behind their White and Asian peers on many indicators of math achievement. For example, only 5.7% of African American students earned high school credit in calculus and, on average, 12th grade students scored an average of 130 out of a possible 300 points on the NAEP mathematics assessment (Dalton, et al., 2016; NCES, 2018). Thus, understanding African American students’ experiences in their math courses is crucial for developing policies and programs aimed at enhancing their math skills and achievement. In this study, we focused on math engagement because it is positively associated with a variety of outcomes including math grades. Specifically, we used a daily diary approach to examine whether day-to-day variations in 9th and 10th grade students’ experiences of competence, autonomy, and relatedness in their math course were linked to day-to-day variations in behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement in math. We also tested whether youth sex and racial/gender private regard moderated these linkages.

Participants were 117 African American adolescents (66 girls; 50 boys) who participated in a 15-school day, daily diary study. After school, each day youth responded to a text message sent to them about their math class. Questions focused on experiences of relatedness to their teachers (“My teacher was friendly towards me”) and peers (“I felt close to the other students”), competence (“I understood what was going on”) and autonomy (“My teacher encouraged me to ask questions”). Youth also reported on their behavioral (“I participated”), cognitive (“I connected things that I learned to things that I learned before”), and emotional (“I enjoyed learning)” engagement in math class. Finally, they rated their personal evaluation of being a Black girl/Black boy (i.e., private regard; “Today I felt proud to be a Black girl/boy”). Rc, a measure of reliability, ranged from .66 to .82 suggesting that within subject changes were measured reliably for constructs with multiple items.
ICCs indicated significant between and within person variation in cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement (range .49-.52). Results from multilevel models (Table 1) showed that, controlling for cross-day means on the classroom experience measures, on days when the classroom environment provided students with a sense of competence and relatedness to both teachers and peers, they reported more emotional engagement than usual (i.e., relative to their own cross-day mean). A significant cross-level interaction with youth’s sex showed that on days when girls experienced more autonomy than usual, they were more emotionally engaged than usual. Further, on days when youth experienced more competence, autonomy, and relatedness to their teachers (though not peers), they reported more behavioral engagement than usual. A significant private regard × teacher relatedness interaction also showed that behavioral engagement was higher on days when both teacher relatedness and private regard were higher than usual. Finally, daily variations in competence and autonomy (but not relatedness to peers or teachers) were associated with variations in cognitive engagement.

Author

• Olivenne Doreen Skinner, Wayne State University
  Presenting Author