[On-line Class, 4/11] Boy Club Study - Data

I'm sure that most of you have been briefed on Nickie's and my research focus. If not, here it is:

Asian and White students often outperform Blacks and Latinos academically. Contributing factors include lack of resources, the school’s curriculum and the pervasive stereotype threat.Blacks and Latinos from urban areas often lack the resources available to affluent white students and, as a result, experience fewer learning opportunities. They often reside in poverty stricken neighborhoods and attend schools plagued by overcrowded classrooms, poor administration, and inexperienced teachers. This, in conjunction with lack of administrative support and the teacher training necessary to meet the special needs of this population, further widens the gap and reproduces a culture of missed opportunities.

Nickie does some work with academically talented fifth grade boys at the Boys Club. Nickie's population is African American/Latino and Asian/White. We're interested in finding out if whether or not their own perception of performance plays a role in their performance in school. Also, we're interested in both population's societal and parental pressures. Our method for data collection is the survey. At first we thought about administering a multiple choice type survey, possibly a likert scale. After much consideration (and consulting with Dr. Turner during consultation), we concluded that open-ended questions would provide a better, more accurate snapshot of our population's lives and beliefs. We narrowed it down to five:

1. How do you feel about school? Is school important to you? Do you find school enjoyable? Please explain.

2. In your opinion, what grades or scores show success?

3. How much time do you spend on homework?

4. What kind of grades make your parents happy? Why?

5. Please describe a time when you felt pressure in school.

We're sending these out to fifty students via e-mail and they will complete the survey at home. We hope to get participants in both populations and draw some conclusions based on race. My own biases and experience working with a large population of Chinese and Korean students predicts that their idea of academic excellence will be different when compared to the Black and Latino population. Speaking from my personal experience, and as a Puerto Rican individual, as a child, I would have responded that a B grade shows success (question #2). Nevertheless, my Korean and Chinese students deem B as not good enough and only aim for earning straight A's and A+'s. In fact, an A- is frowned upon among this population. They, typically, attribute this attitude to their parents' expectations. Generally, Chinese and Korean culture places great emphasis on academic performance and academic success. Academics trumps all in these households. Traditional Chinese and Korean parents emphasize discipline and the importance of academic progress.

As aforementioned, my personal beliefs and experience with these populations shape my assumptions in regards to what I think our data will look like. We might get something totally different. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. :-)

Rereading your sources with fresh eyes: Hooray for Triangulation!

Just to give some context, Rebecca and I have chosen to study perceptions of achievement for boys of color who attend the Independent Schools Program at the Boys’ Club of New York. We decided to split up our research among articles on the influences of teacher, parent, student perceptions, and also existing literature on the differences and reasons for these differences in achievement among Asians and black American boys.

I read an article that explores how cultural and social structural factors influence the achievement of White and Chinese American students as they move periodically from elementary, middle and high schools through to higher education and eventually professional careers. The study attempts to use quantitative measures to explain the, “influence of cultural and structural factors on achievement among White and Chinese Americans at specific educational transition points and identify those factors that mediate the adverse affects of transitions” (Pearce, 2006, p. 76).

The researcher uses the cultural capital theory and social structural theory to create his theoretical perspective. So it is clear that theoretical triangulation (Mathison, 1998) has been addressed. With respect to data triangulation, the researcher relies on data collected from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) from 2000 in his analysis. These data allowed the researcher to study responses from students as they transitioned from elementary school to high school and into college and/or professional careers. The researcher reports the numbers used in the NELS sample and acknowledges that the study utilized a weighted sample. However, I wonder if the fact that the researcher did not collect his own data presents itself as data triangulation gap.

In my opinion, methodology emerged as main strength of this research. The researcher explicitly operationalized all the variables used. But now that I’m thinking about it, I question if the researcher used multiple methods. He made a purposeful decision to depart from qualitative research, but were there other avenues to collect and analyze more quantitative data? Perhaps data triangulation is an issue here. Additionally it appears that investigator triangulation may also present itself as a validation gap. The researcher does not mention cross-checking with colleagues to analyze the same data. Can one simply assume that a researcher has done this if he or she fails to mention this?

This assignment, although challenging for me personally because I tend to take articles at face value, gave me the opportunity to read research with a fresh eye with particular regard to validation. As I reread the “Discussion” portion, I think about how Mathison (1998) describes triangulation as a tool to understand what is found with “plausible explanations…” (p. 79). The researcher confronts inconsistency in the data at several points and provides logical reasons to account for them.

I wasn't sure but I figured I should include the reference for the article. My apologies for the weird formatting!

Pearce, R, R. (2006). Effects of Cultural and Social Structural Factors on the Achievement of White and

Chinese American Students at School Transition Points. American Educational Research Journal,

43(1) 75-101.

Truthfulness and Research

For my literature review on strategies and reflections on engaging boys in literacy activities, I read a few articles by Debby Zambo. One of the articles I used was entitled, "Using Picture Books and Literacy Activities to Help Young Boys Develop Literacy Skills and Positive Traits". This article was helpful when I was crafting my literature review, but I did notice a few issues regarding truthfulness and credibility.

First and foremost, the writer was also the teacher in this article. She even states that based on her experience as a teacher of young boys she believes that boys flourish when reading books with positive male protagonists and use her three- step process. It's possible that because Zambo is using her methods and students there could be issues of bias and researcher influence.

Second, the premise of the study is that Zambo will select books with positive male role models, then read and delve into the character's traits through conversation and then finally transfer the traits by using literacy activities that encourage the boys to model the traits from the aforementioned book.

The article ends by including examples of what literacy activities the various boys practiced and how the character trait was modeled. For example, one student learned about responsibility and participated in Reader's Theater for which he was responsible for the script. Other students practiced traits such as honesty by not cheating during a vocabulary game and positive self-esteem by working with a reading buddy. However, one can argue that because there was no specific code for these behaviors and no other researchers involved who could participate in intercoder reliability or blind coding there is a lack of validity in this study. Also, it is not mentioned whether Zambo did a member check with the participants in the study.

Overall, although I did like the theory and structure presented in the article, this study definitely could be strengthen by studying a different teacher practice the methods, adding a level of coding and establishing intercoder reliability and by doing a member check or even an external audit (if the participant is young) to find out whether the traits are truly embodied by the participant through Zambo's three step process.