ANN ARBOR—Minority youths get better grades in school if they connect their racial identity with academics, University of Michigan studies show. In three studies analyzing racial and cultural identity, Daphna Oyserman, an associate professor in the School of Social Work and Department of Psychology, and her colleagues interviewed middle school and high school students about how racial identities affected their grades, school attendance or persistence on a math task. The researchers studied African-American, Hispanic, Native Americans and Israeli adolescents. Some forms of identity, Oyserman said, can reduce the risk of a student feeling disengaged from everyone else. But the risk increases when someone doesn’t have a racial identity or has one that only focuses on their group and not its place in society. Oyserman’s study showed that an African-American student who felt good about being Black and American did well in school. However, an African-American student who felt good about doing well in school because it reflected positively on the Black community excelled, even if he viewed society as somewhat racist and against him. In one study, 94 Detroit-area eighth grade African-American, Hispanic and Native American youths were asked open-ended questions about racial-ethnic identity. Youths identifying with peers of the same race and entire society had better grades than students who either didn’t develop their own racial identity or identified only with the same race as others.
The second study involved 65 Native-Americans in the state of Washington who were interviewed about their ethnicity before and after working on a math task. Academic persistence was greater among students who identified both with the peers of similar ethnicity and society compared with students who only identified with their peers or those who did not incorporate race or ethnicity into their self-concepts. A third study included interviews of 524 Israeli high school students of Palestinian or Arab ethnic origin. They were asked to complete a math task and to describe their racial identity. Students who did not take race into their self-concept or believed they were part of a group only reduced their efforts, while students who felt as if they belonged in a group and larger society did not. Oyserman’s research is the basis for an intervention called School-to-Jobs, which helps youth make connections between hard work in school and racial identity. The goal is for students to realize that difficulty in school assignments does not mean they can’t complete the work, she said. “The students learn that they shouldn’t use failure as a reason to stop trying,” Oyserman said. Students also became more comfortable about their racial identity through six weeks of intervention, which involves in-school or after-school small group sessions. After the sessions, the researchers invite parents and youths to attend two sessions about communication and interacting with adults in the community, the latter focuses on a skill they call informational interviewing. “The most important finding from the research is that even in the most high risk areas, youths can succeed more readily if they remain focused on school, undeterred by failure or by concerns that maybe school is not for them,” she said. Those involved in the Detroit-based School-to-Jobs program had fewer unexcused absences per semester and better grades, as well as spent more time on homework and were less disruptive in class.
Oyserman presented her findings at the recent American Psychological Society annual convention in Atlanta. The research will be published this winter in Social Psychology Quarterly, and the intervention is described in an article published this year in the journal Adolescence. Related links:

For Oyserman’s profile, visit http://sitemaker.umich.edu/daphna.oyserman
The American Psychological Society’s web link is http://www.psychologicalscience.org/