Both articles investigate the correlation between teacher-student relationship and African American students’ academic achievement. The first article “From Opposition to Engagement: Lessons from High Achievement African American Students” questioned why there was an “achievement gap” between white students and black students. Thus the study was conducted in order to explore the experiences of African American students and to explain the progress of they believe is necessary to improve achievement across the nation. The findings indicated that there are three main contributors to their high school success: 1) teacher practices, engaging pedagogy; 2) participation in extracurricular activities and; 3) the state scholarship as performance incentive. As for the first contributor, it was found that caring, engaging, interactive teachers in and outside of classroom have positive influence on students’ academic achievement. Interactive teachers increased student’s involvement and critical thinking skill. Author proposed that it was important to make the curriculum culturally relevant, and in order to do so, financial reform is necessary for federal government to play a more central role in distributing school resources.
The second article “Othermothering as a Framework for Understanding African American Students’ Definitions of Student-Centered Faculty” also investigated how white / black faculty should interact with African American students in order to increase their academic achievement and the feeling o relatedness. The research findings suggested that teachers who are willing to go above and beyond are perceived as truly student-centered by African American students. Most of the teachers perceived as student-centered are African American. Student-centered faculty provided for students a web of support that went well beyond being culturally sensitive, understanding, or sympathetic to their needs. This type of relationship is also referred as “othermothering”, which not only support student academic development but also their social and psychological development. Teachers have genuine belief in the potential of every African American student to succeed academically. This belief reminds me of what Carl Rogers said in his writing, maintaining that teachers should have a profound trust in the human organism and its potentialities that they all wish to learn and want to grow. It showed that it is essential for teachers to believe that students are all, equally capable of learning and mastery.
I have read some articles investigating the relation between teaching method and student’s academic achievement (Participants are mostly white teachers and white students), and the result indicated that caring, supportive teaching method enhanced the students’ academic achievement and intrinsic motivation. Thus, regardless of race, caring/ supportive teaching is the essential source of motivation encouraging students to learn further.
Although African American teachers are more supportive and caring for African American students, I have question on the effect of “raising the bar”, imposing higher standard and expectations on African American students. How would other white students feel when African American teachers actually imposed higher standard and expectations on African American students? Doesn’t it deteriorate the discriminatory situation? Treating African American students differently show that they are different, they are not equal, to white people. I assume that what African American people have been pursuing for is equality, not being treated differently…