Standing Outside on the Inside: Black Adolescents and the Construction of Academic Identity

Abstract

Standing Outside on the Inside: Black Adolescents and the Construction of Academic Identity, by Olga M. Welch and Carolyn R. Hodges. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. 144 pages. $14.95, paper. Standing Outside on the Inside sheds light on the experiences of a group of disadvantaged African American adolescents who participated in a university-sponsored enrichment program called Project EXCEL (Encouraging Excellence in Children Extends Learning). Authors Welch and Hodges first launched Project EXCEL as a pilot project to provide enrichment in reading, writing, and foreign languages to college-bound, African American juniors from a local inner-city high school. After two years, the program was expanded to include sophomores as well as European American students from a second inner-city high school. This book details the authors' action research documenting how students' experiences in Project EXCEL helped them develop an academic identity or, to use a term coined by the authors, a ethos. Whether participation in the program and the development of this ethos improved students' academic achievement, as measured by their grade point averages and standardized test scores, was the focus of this study. Welch and Hodges, both African American women who teach at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, used their own educational backgrounds and personal experiences to develop the hypotheses and research questions examined in the study. Welch (a professor of Rehabilitation, Deafness, and Human Services) and Hodges (a professor of German and Slavic languages, and chair of the University's comparative literature programs) come from very different social backgrounds. Despite this, the two note that they both developed academic identities grounded in traditional African American values pertaining to education, family, and community: We came to understand that education was to be seen as a possession which, driven by a personal sense of pride in achievement, could never be taken away. Furthermore, this education could be passed on to others directly through teaching and advising, and indirectly through serving as role models. Because this commitment to excellence and to the life of the mind was recognized as a permanent possession, it was internalized as a way of being free and as a key to freeing others. (p. 6) The introduction to Standing Outside on the Inside outlines the study's conceptual framework and research methodology. Chapter one provides an extensive review of related literature and an in-depth exploration of the key themes explored in this work. In it, Welch and Hodges focus on the failed promise of reforms designed to promote equal educational opportunity for African American students. They suggest that inherent in these reforms is a presumption of African American students' deficiency that marginalizes these students and casts them as outsiders in the educational process. They further suggest that the development of a positive academic identity or scholar ethos is vital if African American students are to achieve academic success despite the culture of oppression prevalent in urban educational settings. Chapters two, three, and four are the most informative, for they offer specific details about Project EXCEL and case examples of students' and instructors' experiences in the program. The vignettes Welch and Hodges present throughout these chapters illuminating these experiences are the strength of the book, and should provide most readers with a deep understanding of the concepts presented. For instance, in chapter two, the authors argue one of Project EXCEL's primary tenets: that a positive academic identity is a component of global self-concept and is central to high performance and achievement motivation. To make this point, they contrast the experiences of two students: one an African American male whom they believed had a great deal of potential but who was aloof and unwilling to contribute beyond the minimal requirements, and the other an African American female who lacked confidence in her abilities and who was described by her high school teachers as a diligent, but not gifted, student. …