Overcoming Inequality in Schooling: A Call to Action for Community Psychology

Abstract

Community psychology, indeed psychology as a discipline, has been largely absent from the table of school reform. Schools are critical socializing forces in society and serve as the one institution through which the full diversity of our child population passes. At the start of the 21st century, despite successive waves of legislation, the goals of the civil rights struggle for equality in educational opportunity have yet to be achieved. Negative self-fulfilling prophecies, reflected at individual, interpersonal, institutional, and societal levels, play a critical role in creating and perpetuating unequal opportunities to learn. Such effects as well as pathways for preventive intervention are best understood through ecological lenses. Our field must commit a greater share of resources to collaborative and systemic change for a broader learning so that all children, regardless of their differences, have continuing and nonstigmatized opportunities to develop into competent adults.

Crianças expostas à violência conjugal: avaliação do desempenho acadêmico

“…Paralelamente, há toda uma literatura (Weinstein, 2002) que argumenta sobre o risco da profecia auto-realizadora por parte de professores e o quanto é nocivo a tal profissional a adoção de baixas expectativas a respeito de seus alunos, pois as expectativas negativas criam e perpetuam oportunidades desiguais para aprender.…”

Social-Emotional Factors Affecting Achievement Outcomes Among Disadvantaged Students: Closing the Achievement Gap

“…Although the current "get tough" policies of the standards-reform movement claim to give disadvantaged students equal educational opportunities, they may actually further the stigmatization of disadvantaged students. For example, higher numbers of disadvantaged students experience academic failure and subsequent sanctions, causing many of these students to disengage and eventually drop out of school (Thomas, 2000;Weinstein, 2002). Consequently, reform efforts must not only be aimed at reducing negative achievement outcomes, but also toward promoting achievement success and competence (Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000).…”

“…Moreover, disadvantaged students are more likely to experience lowered future expectations, inequitable exposure to learning opportunities, and negative messages about their own academic capacities. Thus, differential risk and protective factors operating at the middle school level (e.g., school climate, teacher support, peer values) profoundly influence these students' achievement motivation and performance (Elmore, 1992;Elmore, Perterson, & McCarthy, 1996;Weinstein, 2002). The effects of discrimination and expectancy effects on disadvantaged students' school experiences and subsequent achievement performance should therefore be considered through an ecological lens (Weinstein, in press).…”

“…Moreover, studies indicate that Black students (especially boys) in particular are more likely than other students to be the target of lowered teacher expectations (Goodenow, 1993;Murdock, 1996Murdock, , 1999. Thus, lowered teacher expectations and negative student appraisals are often linked to social factors unrelated to students' academic capability or even success (McKown & Weinstein, in press;Weinstein, 2002).…”

“…Consequently, implementing higher standards without focusing comparable attention on improving teacher sensitivity is not only unwise but also unjust (Weinstein, 2002). Teachers must receive professional development experience, which prepares them to educate and understand students whose values, cultures, and life experiences may be different from their own (see Weiner, 2000).…”