Problematizing the Discourse: A Quantitative Analysis of African American High School Students’ Academic Aspirations and Motivation to Excel

Abstract

The influence of environmental and contextual factors on human development and behaviors among adolescents is well documented in the literature. The discourse surrounding urban African American high school students has largely failed to take into consideration how these factors relate to the postsecondary academic aspirations and motivations, performance, and success of these students. Stewart, Stewart, and Simons (2007) assessed the extent to which the neighborhood context predicts the college-going aspirations of African American youth and found that living in a disadvantaged neighborhood context lowers, albeit slightly, the college aspirations of this group. However, these authors fail to place these findings in a broader analysis of the relationship between aspirations and the contextual factors that impact on and manifest in the neighborhood context, particularly in low-income urban communities. Using an ecological perspective of development in this study, the authors carefully interrogate the relationship between urban African American high school students' academic aspirations and motivations regarding college and the various environmental and contextual factors that impact the communities, families, and peer networks of which they are a part. The work is situated within Bronfenbrenner's (1977 1994, 1999; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006) model of human ecology, process-person-context-time (or PPCT). This ecological model centralizes the processes particular persons undergo within certain contexts and provides a framework for exploring how contexts ultimately facilitate or inhibit development over time.To date, ecological perspectives have been used extensively in studies on college students: academic success of first-generation ethnic minority students (Dennis, Phinney, & Chuateco, 2005); campus ecology (Dey & Hurtado, 1995); and, peer counseling and financial aid (Tierney & Venegas, 2006) to name a few. Additionally, studies on child development and social and emotional learning (Durlak et al., 2011), bullying and victimization (Cook et al., 2010), mentoring in the workplace (Chandler, Kram, & Yip, 2011), and classroom ecology and misbehavior (Supaporn, Dodds, & Griffin, 2003) have employed an ecological lens.The authors incorporate this theoretical lens in their work to interrogate the relationship between neoliberalism, school reform policies and practices, familial and social networks and the academic aspirations and motivations of urban African American high school students in California. The discussion of human ecology starts at the macrosystems level (e.g., neoliberalism) and at the exosystems level (e.g., current education reform policies and practices) to frame the context of urban communities in California. The quantitative analysis is limited to the microsystems level (e.g., family, peer and co-curricular determinants) where the authors assess the predictive relationship between these contextual factors and students' postsecondary academic aspirations and motivations.The aim of this study is to explore the extent to which family and social determinants, as well as co-curricular engagement, predict urban African American adolescents' personal determinants of academic success. For the purposes of this study, the authors conceptualize family determinants as the expectations a student's family has for him or her regarding secondary and postsecondary educational attainment, experiences with housing displacement, and low educational attainment among siblings. Furthermore, peer relationships, peer expectations and peer support in the schooling process is identified as positive peer support and more broadly, as a measure of social determinants. The outcome variable, personal determinants of academic success, is defined as a student's academic motivation, future aspirations, and personal expectations of academic success. The following questions guide this research:* What is the relationship between family determinants, co-curricular engagement, social determinants and urban African American students' personal determinants of academic success? …