5. Schooling & Education (15 cards)

Factors affecting student academic performance

Family/SES; teacher quality and teaching style; school structure and resources; peer culture; cultural attitudes toward effort vs. ability; language/bilingual factors.

Stigler & Stevenson — teaching style findings

Japanese/Chinese math instruction: single complex problems per lesson, whole-class participation, deliberate use of student errors, deep collaborative lesson planning. US classrooms: breadth over depth, individual seatwork. Structure of instruction — not just student effort — drives achievement differences.

Effort vs. ability attribution (cross-cultural)

East Asian cultures tend to attribute success to effort (incremental view); US cultures tend to attribute it to innate ability (fixed view). Effort attribution promotes persistence and resilience after failure.

Pygmalion effect (Rosenthal & Jacobson)

Teacher expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies. Students whose teachers expected more showed greater IQ gains — demonstrates how systemic bias in expectations affects real outcomes.

Stereotype threat (Steele)

Awareness of a negative stereotype about one's group impairs performance on tasks related to that stereotype. A key mechanism behind achievement gaps for students of color.

Tracking / ability grouping

Practice of placing students in groups by perceived ability. Disproportionately places minority students in lower tracks; limits access to rigorous curriculum and perpetuates inequality.

Clark, Chein & Cook — Effects of Segregation (Brown v. Board)

Kenneth & Mamie Clark's doll studies: Black children preferred white dolls and attributed positive traits to them — evidence of internalized inferiority caused by segregation. Cited in the Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision (1954) to show separate-but-equal is psychologically harmful.

What did Brown v. Board establish?

1954 Supreme Court ruling that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. Social-science research by Clark, Chein & Cook was cited as evidence that segregation caused psychological harm to Black children.

Systemic bias in education

Includes differential discipline, underrepresentation of teachers of color, culturally non-representative curriculum, biased standardized testing, and unequal school resource allocation.

Cummins' interdependence hypothesis

Strong native language (L1) literacy supports acquisition of a second language (L2). Common underlying proficiency means skills transfer across languages. Supports maintenance bilingual education over subtractive models.

Subtractive bilingualism

Loss of first language when second language instruction dominates without L1 support. Contrasts with additive bilingualism where both languages develop fully.

Bilingual education models

Transitional: use L1 temporarily until English proficiency established. Maintenance/two-way immersion: develop both languages fully. Research supports maintenance models for long-term academic outcomes.

Cognitive advantages of bilingualism

Associated with enhanced executive function, particularly inhibitory control — ability to suppress one language while using the other generalizes to non-linguistic tasks.

Schooling and abstract thinking (Cole & Scribner)

Cross-cultural research shows schooling develops decontextualized/abstract thinking beyond just content knowledge. Formal operational reasoning depends on schooling experience, not biology alone.

School readiness

Multidimensional: cognitive (literacy/numeracy foundations), social-emotional (self-regulation, following directions), physical (fine motor skills). SES gaps in readiness appear before kindergarten.