Effects of Messages From the Nonschool Environment: A Cycle of Promise or Perpetuation of Poverty?

• In Event: 16.060 - Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: 16.060-4 - Educating Marginalized Youth in the Current Social Context

Abstract

Achieving the promise of equal educational opportunities across societies are persistent concerns in America. An exploration of the messages urban Black males receive from their non-school spaces provide opportunities for a more nuanced understanding of the value they place on school. Drawing upon Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological frame (2005) and Bush and Bush (2013) African-American Male theory as analytical tools, while employing qualitative interpretive methods this study documented experiences of nine socially and economically disadvantaged urban high school age Black adolescent males’. I examined the implicit and explicit messages communicated in their respective milieu’s by various individuals to understand how these messages influenced their thought processes, behaviors, interactions, the way they navigated their community to survive their realities and pursuit of school.

Author

• Victoria M. Ruffin, University of Southern California (Rossier)