Adaptation to minority status and impact on school success

The perspective of this article is that of a comparative researcher rather than a practitioner. However, what I have to say has implications for practice. Three factors have shaped my perspective since I began to study minority education more than 2 decades ago. One is my lack of background in the discipline of education; I have never taken an education course. Therefore I have generally approached my anthropological research on education as I do when I study economic transition, kinship, or religion. Second, my educational research began in a multi-ethnic community, Stockton, California, including African Americans, Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans, Mexican Americans, and “White Americans.” The minorities lived together in some neighborhoods and attended the same schools. Using the ethnographic method, I studied their educational experiences and perspectives at school as well as in the community (Ogbu, 1974). My subsequent research was also comparative. One finding in the Stockton study was that in the same classrooms and in the same schools, some minorities did well while other minorities did not. In the second comparative study, I focused on the less successful minorities, both in the United States and elsewhere in Britain, India, Israel, Japan, and New Zealand (Ogbu, 1978). The third factor is the cross-cultural research of my colleagues and students.

[1]  S. Fordham,et al.  Black students' school success: Coping with the “burden of ‘acting white’” , 1986 .

[2]  A. Jensen,et al.  How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement , 1969 .

[3]  M. A. Gibson,et al.  Minority Status and Schooling: A Comparative Study of Immigrant and Involuntary Minorities , 1991 .

[4]  Luis C. Moll,et al.  Change as the Goal of Educational Research , 1987 .

[5]  The challenge of incompetence and poverty;: Papers on the role of early education , 1969 .

[6]  J. Ogbu,et al.  The next generation;: An ethnography of education in an urban neighborhood , 1974 .

[7]  J. Ogbu.  Cultural Discontinuities and Schooling , 1982 .

[8]  Ladislav Holy,et al.  The Structure of folk models , 1982 .

[9]  Courtney B. Cazden,et al.  Functions of Language in the Classroom , 1985 .

[10]  Janet Ward Schofield,et al.  Black and White in School: Trust, Tension, or Tolerance? , 1989 .

[11]  Benjamin S. Bloom,et al.  Compensatory education for cultural deprivation , 1965 .

[12]  J. Ogbu.  Minority Status and Schooling in Plural Societies , 1983, Comparative Education Review.

[13]  A. Jensen.  Again, how much can we boost IQ? , 1983 .

[14]  J. Ogbu.  Minority Education and Caste: The American System in Cross-Cultural Perspective. , 1978 .

[15]  J. Ogbu,et al.  Understanding Cultural Diversity and Learning , 1992 .

[16]  N. Lemann.  The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America , 1991 .

[17]  R. Mickelson,et al.  Brown and black in white: The social adjustment and academic performance of Chicano and black students in a predominately white university , 1985 .

[18]  J. Ogbu,et al.  Variability in Minority School Performance: A Problem in Search of an Explanation , 1987 .

[19]  La Belle,et al.  An Anthropological Framework for Studying Education. , 1972 .

[20]  J. Ogbu,et al.  Research Currents: Cultural-Ecological Influences on Minority School Learning. , 1985 .

[21]  Rodolfo F. Acuña.  Occupied America: The Chicano's Struggle Toward Liberation , 1973 .

[22]  W. Wilson.  Cycles of Deprivation and the Underclass Debate , 1985, Social Service Review.

[23]  P. Willis.  Learning to Labor: How Working-Class Kids Get Working-Class Jobs , 1976 .

[24]  M. Suárez-Orozco.  “Becoming Somebody”: Central American Immigrants in U.S. Inner‐City Schools , 1987 .

[25]  M. Suárez-Orozco.  Central American Refugees and U.S. High Schools: A Psychosocial Study of Motivation and Achievement , 1989 .

[26]  K. Au,et al.  Participation Structures in a Reading Lesson with Hawaiian Children: Analysis of a Culturally Appropriate Instructional Event , 1980 .

[27]  Maria Eugenia Matute-Bianchi.  Ethnic Identities and Patterns of School Success and Failure among Mexican-Descent and Japanese-American Students in a California High School: An Ethnographic Analysis , 1986, American Journal of Education.

[28]  Kati Haycock,et al.  Unfinished Business: Fulfilling Our Children's Promise. A Report from the Achievement Council. , 1988 .

[29]  A. Jensen,et al.  Bias in Mental Testing , 1981 .

[30]  L. Weis,et al.  Between Two Worlds: Black Students in an Urban Community College , 1985 .

[31]  S. Philips,et al.  The Invisible Culture: Communication in Classroom and Community on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation , 1983 .

[32]  J. M. Hunt.  The Psychological Basis For Using Preschool Enrichment as an Antidote for Cultural Deprivation , 1966 .