Peer Group
Influence and Academic Aspirations Across Cultural/Ethnic Groups of High
School Students
Executive Summary: Project 3.5
Principal Investigator: Patricia Gándara, UC Davis
Project Period: July 1997 to June 2001
This study examines how adolescents from different ethnic groups form their expectations about schooling and their post-secondary aspirations during the four years of high school, with a focus on how peers and families help to shape these attitudes and aspirations. It looks at students from both urban and rural contexts, and it uses ethnographic, survey, and interview/focus group data to provide a textured picture of the development of post-secondary aspirations of African American, Southeast Asian, Latino, and European American youth over time. We look at the differences among groups by age, gender, and urbancity, and we find that there are important and interesting differences among these groups about which education policy makers should be acutely aware if they hope to create interventions that may help these students to be more successful in school.
Research Design (page 1). This study follows the class of 2001 from the time the students began high school in 1997 until the class graduated in 2001 in two large schools --an urban school located in Sacramento, California, and a rural school located in Dixon, California. While these schools are only about one half hour in driving distance apart, they quite literally exist in two separate worlds. The study began in 1997 with 473 African American, Latino, Southeast Asian, and European American students in the two schools. By senior year, there were 297 students from these same groups. There were more Latino and European American students than others (reflecting the demography of California). An intensive sample of students, representing the larger group, consisted of 120 students.
Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected, including ethnography, observation, annual surveys administered to the class of 2001, three to four focus groups each year, constructed to help make sense of the findings from the survey data, telephone surveys of parents, and surveys of teachers' expectations and homework policies. Data were also collected on grades for the intensive sample.
Unique Features (page 4). This study had a few unique features that are worth mentioning. The research team consisted of a very diverse group of faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and high school students. This provided exceptional entrée into the high school students' social world, helped to organize the study, but perhaps most importantly, resulted in a number of underrepresented students going on to graduate school and teaching credential programs, and provided encouragement for many underrepresented high school students who had not seriously considered college. The high school students in the intensive sample were also brought to the university campus to further motivate them and provide them with a picture of college lifestyle. Additionally, several very successful workshops were held for parents and staff at the high schools. These were well-attended and very engaging. They provided the added benefit of securing feedback from teachers and parents about our tentative findings.
Findings and Implications (page 5) An enormous amount of descriptive information was collected about the different ways in which students' aspirations developed by ethnicity, gender, urbanicity, and age which argues strongly for the importance of disaggregating data in order to understand the experiences of diverse adolescents. However, six findings were especially relevant to policy, and even somewhat surprising given the current state of the literature (page 10).
- A substantial literature concludes that authoritative parenting, good communication, and "family connectedness" ( Resnick, et al., 1997; Steinberg, 1996; Baumrind, 1989) is a good predictor of decreased risk for engaging in risky behaviors by adolescents. Our data suggest that this probably differs markedly by group, and that Latinos and African American males, in particular, may maintain strong family connectedness while also engaging in risky behavior. Our data suggest that family and neighborhood resources may also be required as part of the equation.
- A substantial research has concluded that peer influence peaks around age 14 and then subsides in strength thereafter. Our data suggest that the influence of close friends in cliques, and "crowds" (the larger friendship group that comprises the broader social circle of a student) may well diminish over time, and the intense pressure to engage in risky behavior may be reduced, but that peer pressure may continue at a high level, albeit in a different form --that of the broader reference group of peers --those individuals with whom a student may never even interact, but who represent a kind of person they aspire to be, or think they are. The reference group may continue to exert a great deal of influence on students, which is the reason that creating a culture of high expectations in schools continues to be an important goal even for 12th graders.
- There is an emerging literature (cite) that suggests that the fear of appearing to "act white" may be overstated and that African American students, indeed, have high aspirations for school achievement and do not actively resist the idea of being a good student. Our data suggest that African American students, in particular, are disingenuous in their responses to these kinds of attitude surveys and that theory should not be built on these data. Ethnographic and interview data are far better sources of iinformation on African American students than survey data.
- Overall, students' educational aspirations increase each year that they are in school, and their school achievement declines each year they are in school. This is a poor match. But, there are variations in these patterns, and Latinos, in particular, depart from these linear trends in interesting ways. Our data suggest that data must be disaggregated by ethnicity to understand the aspirations and achievement of students in diverse schools.
- Our data showed that in some cases urbanicity --whether students attended rural or urban schools (and lived in these communities)-- was more salient than ethnicity in describing aspirations and development. For example, Latino students in rural schools reported different types of pressures than those in urban schools, and rural students overall were less likely to aspire to post-secondary education that urban students, even controlling for ethnicity. Violence is a risk factor in urban environments, ignorance of opportunity is a risk factor in rural environments. Schools need to address these particular risks in their communities.
- Peer group influences, parenting practices, and parental resources all interact to create supportive or non-supportive environments for adolescents. It is not sufficient to teach parents "parenting skills" if these are not also supported by resources that allow them to exercise appropriate options to combat negative peer influences and support more positive peer influences.
