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Jeffrey Lewis

December 2004

Some believe that African American children develop oppositional culture against schooling. But there is now a growing research literature documenting urban students' positive orientation toward achievement.

Better knowledge of elementary age students' perceptions and beliefs has implications for improving the effectiveness of their teachers. Research by UW-Madison education professor Jeffrey Lewis shows that African American children possess qualities and insights that can serve as a solid foundation for their learning. Anti-school attitudes do exist among some African American students, Lewis says, as they do for many middle-class White students, yet they tend to be exaggerated.

Children from low-income, urban environments are often said to be "at risk." But most children in presumably high-risk situations do not exhibit significant problems or antisocial behaviors, and many are reasonably successful within the limited opportunity structures afforded them. Lewis studies the resilience that enables some students to survive and even thrive under adverse conditions.

As part of a research program called Learning Through Teaching in an After-School Laboratory (L-TAPL), Lewis and colleagues observed two academically low-performing, urban K-5 schools in Oakland and Los Angeles. The cultures in both schools exhibited low expectations: Adults tended to view children in terms of deficits. Their associated teaching and disciplinary practices were historically constituted, broadly shared, and reproduced through patterns of practices and interactions.

L-TAPL addresses the underachievement of African American students and the preparation of teachers to work successfully with these students. Lewis and colleagues Michele Foster and Laura Onafowora interviewed students attending the local public elementary schools and participating in an after-school enrichment program called Learning Through Teaching. Offered 3 days a week at two sites, the 2-hour after-school program provided language arts, math, and science activities. The master teachers at each site were responsible for the content and the pedagogical strategies employed in the after-school program. Lewis interviewed 72 students at the two after-school sites over 2 years.

Lewis studied two aspects of students' perspectives and experiences: 1. Their perceptions of and beliefs about schooling, including their beliefs about what roles teachers and students should play, what constitutes good teaching, and what it means to be a good student; and 2. Their perceptions of their academic ability and the domains of experience in which they felt capable--in and out of school.

The importance of children's perspectives

After-school program teachers who proved effective in working with children were those who paid serious attention to what children thought and said. They consulted with children and built their success on students' knowledge and perspectives.

Students' feelings about school and about their teachers were more complex than Lewis had expected. They often reflected a cluster of concerns, including teachers' treatment of children, teachers' teaching competency, and teachers' character.

Elementary and middle grade students said they wanted teachers who were caring, who helped them to learn, and who focused in a serious manner on the task of teaching. A number of students were concerned with the kind of person the teacher was, including the teacher's fairness, integrity, and effort. In fact, some children responded to the question about what makes a "good teacher" by identifying only personal character traits.

Historical patterns

Lewis sees schools as local cultures in which children develop dispositions toward learning. Schools maintain historical patterns of shared perceptions and values, behavioral expectations, and patterns of meaning. These patterns and perceptions are communicated through school structure and bureaucracy, pedagogical and disciplinary practices, and affective and hierarchical relationships. As developmental niches, schools shape children's individual and social identities as learners, as well as their attitudes toward and behaviors at school.

The problem of underachievement, particularly for children in the elementary grades, does not primarily lie in the children's attitudes or in their peer group norms, Lewis says. The problem lies in the structure and culture of the schools where students develop their academic identities, attitudes, and dispositions toward learning. Lewis sees the enthusiasm, positive attitudes, and insights of the elementary age African American children in his study as products of the students' social and cultural experiences outside school.

Culture of low expectations

In the schools he studied, Lewis found the general orientation toward students was punitive, despite positive school slogans and themes. Children received the message that little was expected of them.

Teachers attempted to control children's behavior with threats and other forms of coercion, both in disciplinary practices and in teacher discourse about students. But given the opportunity to work with an effective master teacher who operated under a different set of assumptions, strategies, and values, these teachers began to see, and to articulate, the negative way in which children were being defined and treated.

The culture of low expectations was also evident when teachers allowed mediocre student work to pass as exceptional. For example, teachers praised one child for his writing ability, largely because the story that he had written was lengthy. A master teacher intervened and pointed out to the child (and indirectly to the teachers) that the story, although long, lacked quality and that the child was capable of producing better work. She asked the child to rewrite the story. After resisting, the student complied and produced a better story. In survey responses, children consistently expressed a desire to really learn, not just pass.

Conclusions

Lewis found that the underachievement of children in his study was the result not of adversarial attitudes, but of something that went wrong for the children in the classroom. The children had ideas about what the problems were and how their schools might be improved. They suggested that the problems lay in the quality of teacher-student relationships, the quality of teaching, and the character of their teachers. These problems appeared either to result from, or to be amplified by, accountability pressures associated with standardized testing.

Low-income urban children do want to learn, regardless of their actual demonstrated achievement, and they are resilient in this respect. Lacking an adequate comparison sample, Lewis does not say whether his data are an effect of the after-school program, but he can say that children's academic and social behaviors changed markedly over the course of the program. If the general school population shares the behaviors observed in Lewis's study, the data speak volumes about what Black children really want and value--even against overwhelming odds. Moreover, to the degree that the data do reflect the program's impact, they show that a minimal intervention (6 hours a week for 20 weeks) can produce positive and productive attitudes and beliefs, even when these are not supported by the children's general school experience.

In addition, Lewis and colleagues recently found that children participating in L-TAPL in a Trenton, New Jersey site scored significantly better on district administered standardized tests of reading and math than a district matched sample. Lewis says this is the first clear empirical evidence that L-TAPL has positive effects on student achievement. His project is now gathering comparable data from Oakland and Los Angeles.

For more information, see Lewis's page at www.wcer.wisc.edu/people/pi.asp?sid=947.