Asking the how questions: quantifying group processes behaviors.

The authors analyzed the group work behaviors of 132 grade school students to assess behavioral manifestations of group processes. The authors coded videotapes of students working together on a math-learning task to quantify the incidence of microbehaviors associated with process loss and process gain (I. D. Steiner, 1972). Factor analysis of 11 categories of coded behaviors revealed 3 factors that accounted for 67% of the explained variance. The factors were interpretable as process gain (PGV), process loss behavior directed outside the group (PLV-out), and process loss behavior directed into the group (PLV-In). The authors discuss correlations among variables derived from the factors and with other measures. Results support this method of quantifying group processes. The authors considered implications for the broader study of group processes.

Cultural expression and black students' attitudes toward high achievers.

The authors of the present study have extended research by D. Marryshow that investigated African American students' attitudes toward 4 high achievers who differed in their approach to high achievement. D. Marryshow (1992) assessed students' social attitudes and perceptions of 4 high achievers with culturally distinct achievement orientations. In the present research, the authors assessed students' academic attitudes and perceptions of the same 4 high achievers. In addition, the present study includes Black children's predictions of their parents' and peers' attitudes toward these high achieving students. The results generally supported the authors' hypothesis that African American children would report a preference for students who achieve via attitudes and behaviors congruent with African American cultural values. The children also predicted that their parents and their Black peers would prefer these same African American culturally oriented high achievers. The findings suggest that Black children who prefer African American cultural modes of achievement may find themselves at odds with classroom demands geared toward learning in the mainstream cultural mode and thus may be at increased risk of academic failure.

Impact of learning orientation on African American children's attitudes toward high-achieving peers.

This study examined Ogbu's widely accepted thesis that African American students reject high academic achievement because they perceive its limited utility in a world where their upward mobility is constrained by racial discrimination. Boykin's psychosocial integrity model contends that Black students value high achievement but that discrepancies between their formative cultural experiences and those imposed in school lead them to reject the modes of achievement available in classrooms. Ninety Black children completed a measure of attitudes toward students who achieve via mainstream or African American cultural values. Participants rejected the mainstream achievers and embraced the African American cultural achievers. Moreover, they expected their teachers to embrace the mainstream achievers and reject those who achieved through high-verve behavior. Results suggest that Boykin's thesis is a needed refinement to Ogbu's ideas. They indicate that Black children may reject not high achievement but some of the mainstream cultural values and behaviors on which success in mainstream classrooms is made contingent.

Communal versus individual learning of a math-estimation task: African American children and the culture of learning contexts.

The authors compared the performance of 78 African American 5th-grade students who studied a math-estimation task in one of two learning contexts. Learning contexts differed in the degree to which they afforded the expression of communalism. ANCOVA confirmed that posttest performance was best for students who studied in the high communal-learning context. The findings support A. W. Boykin's (1994) contention that the cultural context of learning can be a critical mediator of children's performance.