Reinforcing Positive Behaviors in School Term Paper

The researchers gathered data through face-to-face interviews with sixteen African-American boys over the course of a three-month period during the childrens'2002-2003 academic school year. This was a very limited sampling, albiet with a very specific focus group. All of students were regular education students between the ages of eight and thireen years old. (Wilson-Jones & Caston, 2004, p.1)

The study asked what influenced this group of student's success and commitment to school? The interviewers concluded that the collective societal influence of school and home was key in fostering the children's desire to learn. While other factors were also influential, such as the relative literacy level of the primary caretakers of the child, overall peer and parental attitude to learning, and the willingness to foster such learning in social as well as individual classroom environments played a key factor in student success. The study was said to reinforce findings of the book Black Children: Their Roots, Culture and Learning Styles (Hale-Benson 1982) that indicated that students of color have unique cognitive and learning styles from those of other cultures.However, culture may not explain the findings alone. African-American males, even as young as the children of the study, may find themselves forced to chose beteween social validation by their peers and academic validation by society. Collective learning makes use of the cognitive stage of development for elementary school children where peer approval is all-important, and deploys it in such a fashion to reinforce the learning process. The limited study provokes challenging questions of how race affects childhood development, and while not conclusive, is a powerful suggestion as to how to deal with students experiencing a conflict between socialization and making a commitment to academics.

Work Cited

Hale Benson. (1982) Black Children: Their Roots, Culture and Learning Styles.Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.

Wilson-Jones, Linda and Marie Cain Caston. (Dec 2004) "Cooperative Learning and its Effect on African-American Males." The Journal of Instructional….....