Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Educational Psychology in a New Paradigm 901
Joe: The discipline of educational psychology and the educational leaders it informs have had difficulty
understanding that the poor and nonwhite students are not stupid. Often children from
working class and lower-socioeconomic-class homes do not ascribe the same importance to the
mental functions required by intelligence/achievement tests and academic work that middleand
upper-middle-class students do. In this context the difference between cultural disposition
and intellectual ability is lost upon the field of educational psychology. Working class and poor
students often see academic work as unreal, as a series of short-term tasks rather than something
with a long-term justification. Thus, these students many times display little interest in school.
This lack of motivation is often interpreted by teachers, of course, as inability or lack of intelligence.
Poor performance on standardized tests scientifically confirms the “inferiority of the poor
students.”
Rochelle: Case in point. The stigma of being black according to Claude Steele (1992) is the endemic
devaluation many face in American society and schools. The connection of stigma to school
achievement among black Americans has been vastly underappreciated, asserts Steele. He further
states that, “if blacks are made racially valuable in school, they can overcome even substantial
obstacles” (p. 86). At the root of the black achievement problem is the failure of American
schooling to meet this simple condition for black students. Doing well in school requires a
belief that school achievement can be a promising basis of self-esteem, and that belief needs
constant reaffirmation even for advantaged students. Education psychology is not informed by
these racial understandings. Because it decontextualizes the lived realities of individual students
and the impact of their racial, class, and gender groups, educational psychologist is blinded to the
subjective nature of its own discipline. This single mindedness blocks educational psychology
from realizing (and deeming that realization worthy) the social constructions of the lived reality
of students.
Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, in Black Students and School Failure: Policies, Practices, and Prescriptions,
posits that black students are subject to school failure because of their race, social
class, and culture. According to Irvine, race is a “salient factor that contributes to unequal school
treatment, participation, and distribution of rewards for all black students.” She goes on to say,
“black students regardless of social class and education, do not share with whites equal opportunities
for jobs, housing, and political and economic power” (p. xxii). Her observations force me
to ask how would the experiences of students be different if they lived in a society that constantly
attempted to place them at the bottom?
Joe: Research on the educational status of low-status groups in other countries provides important
insight into the psychological assessment and educational performance of marginalized students
in American schools. In Sweden, Finnish people are viewed as inferior—the failure rate for
Finnish children in Swedish schools is very high. When Finnish children immigrate to Australia,
however, they do well—as well as Swedish immigrants. The same can be said for Korean children
in Japanese schools versus Korean children in American schools. The results are numerous and
generally follow the same pattern: racial, ethnic, and class groups who are viewed negatively or
as inferiors in a nations dominant culture tend to perform poorly in that nation’s schools. Such
research helps dispose of the arguments that schools failure results from the cultural inferiority of
the poor or the marginalized. It teaches us that power relations between groups (class, race, ethnic,
gender, etc.) must be considered when various children’s performance is studied. Without the
benefits derived from such understandings brilliant and creative young people from marginalized
backgrounds will continue to be relegated to the vast army of the inferior and untalented. Such an
injustice is intolerable in America. There is something wrong with a discipline that cannot discern
the impact of the social on the psychological, that claims neutrality and objectivity but fails to
appreciate its own sociocultural embeddedness, and that consistently rewards the privileged for
their privilege and punishes the marginalized for their marginalization.
Rochelle: Yes, so what we need is a system that understands the difference and therefore develops curriculum
that helps students to appreciate the social, political, historical, and economic forces that
shape their lives. Program designs that do not take note of the differences, and develop approaches