Publication Four Social Factors

Race, ethnicity, culture, and socioeconomic status play an integral role in the academic well-being of all students. These four social factors determine how well students are viewed and treated in schools. The meritocratic nature of schools favors “the prevailing values of mainstream society, values that privilege certain forms of cultural expression while oppressing others”. In other words, from preschool to high school, students are forced to become conscious of racial and ethnic expectations that mark their appearances, attire, language, and methods of interacting with one another as being either normal or marginalized.

Those whose racial and ethnic identity closely lies with the dominant culture are reaffirmed while those with nonconforming racial and ethnic identities are marginalized.

This leads into the question: How do racial and ethnic identities influence educational outcomes? As research shows, there is a significant achievement gap between racial and ethnic minority students —particularly Blacks and Latinos—and White students as indicated by grades, standardized test scores, course selection, dropout rates, and college completion rates (Ansell, 2011).

Academic disparities are often attributed to socioeconomic status because low-income families have less access to educational resources, higher-performing schools, and more effective, experienced teachers. However, aside from socioeconomic status and opportunity gaps, there is a more subtle factor to contribute to the academic gap: stereotype threat caused by deficit thinking. Results from many research studies have shown that students from a disenfranchised or minority group perform at a lower rate when exposed to negative stereotypes about their group, according to Ansell (2011).

With all of these factors working against minority students, how can educators expect them to react or overcome this? Unfortunately, these students –in under constant pressure to preserve their sense of identity against a dominant school culture that sees them as lesser– become learning resistant, passively or actively resisting formal school education.

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Forms of learning resistance include tardiness, truancy, classroom disruption, withholding of effort in school work, defiance of authority, and destruction of school property. Marginalized students understandably react in such a manner; however, they are often misunderstood by educators or school administration as “not caring about education” or “because they are lazy,” untrue accusations. There are widely-accepted theories that attempt to explain this resistance but fail to take into account the multifaceted factors of marginalization and student resistance. This paper will examine how through deficit thinking, the lack of multicultural representation in the school curriculum, and disapprotionate discipline, schools marginalize students, leading them to resist.