Development of Logical Reasoning and the School Performance of African American Adolescents in Relation to Socioeconomic Status, Ethnic Identity, and Self-Esteem

Abstract

This study explored the deductive reasoning and school performance of 330 African American adolescents and the relation of reasoning and school performance to socioeconomic status (SES), ethnic identity, and self-esteem. As expected, there was a systematic increase in selection task reasoning performance across adolescence, and high SES students outscored low SES students in reasoning performance and school grades. Ogbu’s cultural-ecological theory, which predicts an inverse relationship between cognitive performance and ethnic idfentity strength, was not supported because better reasoning performance was associated instead with stronger ethnic identity. Steele’s stereotype-threat theory, which predicts that there will be an association between global self-esteem and school grades in early adolescent African Americans that subsequently decreases across adolescence, was partially supported. Self-esteem and grades were strongly related in 6th graders, not significantly related in 10th and 12th graders, yet strongly related in college students.

The case for a dual-process theory of transitive reasoning

“…These above findings mirror findings with more formal tasks of deduction given to children of similar ages, such as the Wason selection task and other conditional tasks (Amsel et al, 2008;Chapell & Overton, 2002;Markovits & Thompson, 2008). For example, Markovits et al (1996) investigated conditional reasoning in 7 to 12 year-olds.…”

“…If and only if we use the non-training paradigm, we see a different side to transitivity, a capacity which both links to wider work on deductive reasoning in children and also to skills children acquire and improve during their schooling (Chapell & Overton, 2002;Rabinowitz & Howe, 1994;Wright, 2006b). …”

How Do Higher-Education Students Use Their Initial Understanding to Deal with Contextual Logic-Based Problems in Discrete Mathematics?

“…Serna & A. Serna, 2015). By the time the students propose to university, they would already have much experience to deal with logic (Chapell & Overton, 2002), even though many earlier assignments at elementary and secondary level do not assign them as logic. In Indonesian educational system, students formally start learning about logics when they are at senior-high school (Depdiknas, 2006).…”

“…At the same time, Guerrier et al (2012, p. 369) pointed out that university and college faculty commonly complain that many tertiary students lack the logical competences to learn advanced mathematics, especially proofs and other mathematical activities that require deductive reasoning. This means that although the students have experienced to deal with logical problems; however, it does not guarantee that they understand the essence of logics (Chapell & Overton, 2002;OECD, 2016, p. 5) and logics is still doubtly difficult to study amongst learners (Guha, 2014).…”

Evaluating FOCUS‐2's Effectiveness in Enhancing First‐Year College Students’ Social Cognitive Career Development

“…In their study of 85 male and female African American 1 lth-and 12'~-grade high school students, the authors found that ethnic identity achievement was related to greater career decisionmaking self-efficacy. This finding is not surprising given the literature on ethnic identity and its importance in the development of self-esteem and psychological adjustment in ethnic minority adolescents and young adults (Chapell & Overton, 2002;Phinney & Alipuria, 1990;Smith & Brookins, 1997).…”