The impacts of a brief middle-school self-affirmation intervention help propel African American and Latino students through high school.

Abstract

Stereotype threat has been shown to have deleterious impacts on the short-and long-term academic performance and psychological well-being of racial and ethnic minority students. Psychological variables related to this identity threat represent significant sources of achievement and attainment gaps relative to nonstereotyped Asian and white students who do not tend to be subject to performance declines related to such threats. In the current study, we investigate long-term effects of a brief self-affirmation intervention implemented at-scale to mitigate stereotype threat for seventh-grade African American and Latino students. Relative to their control-group counterparts, our findings indicate that a self-affirming intervention to buffer racial and ethnic minority students from identity threats reduced the growing achievement gap by 50% per year between seventh and 12th grade (N ϭ 802). As a result, the achievement gap between white/Asian and African American/Latino students decreased by 42% at the end of 12th grade. Finally, the intervention increased on-time graduation rates for treated minority students by 10 percentage points (N ϭ 952). Implications for theory, policy, and future research are discussed. Educational Impact and Implications StatementStudents of color routinely confront bias and negative stereotypes about their ability to succeed academically in secondary schools. Such "threats in the air" have been shown to cause a variety of negative responses among African American and Latino students, including decreased psychological well-being, anxiety, and decreased working memory, all of which can negatively impact the students' academic outcomes. In fact, these "threat responses" may account for as much as one third of the achievement gaps separating African American and Latino students from their white counterparts. With a brief, but precisely timed, series of four written exercises, seventh graders were offered the opportunity to reflect on other valued aspects of their personal identities beyond school. These so-called "self-affirmations" can help deflect some of the harm of bias and discrimination and help students of color to perform to their true potentials. Throughout an entire school district, we administered these exercises to seventh-grade students and tracked their academic progress through 12th grade. Our results suggest that the self-affirmations cut the growing achievement gaps in half and increased on-time graduation rates for students of color by 10 percentage points. Our article discusses how and under what circumstances such a brief intervention can have such strong and enduring effects.

A Replicable Identity-Based Intervention Reduces the Black-White Suspension Gap at Scale

“…Further, our replication across two independent cohorts of seventh-grade students provides greater confidence than a single study that the intervention can be fielded with consistent and policy-relevant benefits. This within-study replication is particularly important in this case because a field trial within the same Madison schools that are the focus of the study reported here revealed strong and enduring impacts on GPA outcomes within one cohort (Borman et al, 2018; Borman et al, 2021), but no such evidence in a second independent cohort (Hanselman et al, 2017). Thus, providing evidence of replicated self-affirmation impacts on disciplinary outcomes across the two independent Madison-based cohorts reported here would be of particular consequence.…”

“…The main outcome of interest is the total number of suspensions students received over the last 2 years of middle school, which come from school administrative suspension records. We consider data on students’ suspensions for both seventh and eighth grades because previous studies of self-affirmation show lasting effects after the intervention (Borman et al, 2021; Cohen et al, 2009; Goyer et al, 2019). These data allow us to investigate whether any disciplinary benefits of self-affirmation persist for the remainder of middle school, both within and across Grades 7 and 8.…”

“…A seminal field trial for seventh-grade students in a traditional sixth- to eighth-grade middle school setting revealed that self-affirmation reduced the Black-White grade point average (GPA) gap by 40% through middle school (Cohen et al, 2009). More recent longitudinal studies have shown that these promising initial impacts of self-affirmation can endure beyond middle school on Black students’ GPA trajectories through high school (Borman et al, 2018; Borman et al, 2021), on-time high school graduation rates (Borman et al, 2021), and probability of attending college (Goyer et al, 2017).…”

Self‐affirmation theory in educational contexts

“…Such interventions have been shown to have profound, long-term beneficial effects, are brief and cheap to administer, appear to benefit only (or at least primarily) those students who are suffering from threat (thus reducing achievement gaps), and can have effects that are stronger than lengthier, more traditional, and expensive educational interventions (Walton, 2014;Yeager & Walton, 2011). Indeed, there is increasing interest in value affirmation interventions from educational policy makers and practitioners and several largescale trials have tested (or are testing) the potential of self-affirmation interventions to be scaled up (e.g., Borman, Choi et al, 2020;Borman, Grigg et al, 2018).…”

It’s Not That You Said It, It’s How You Said It: Exploring the Linguistic Mechanisms Underlying Values Affirmation Interventions at Scale

“…The VA intervention has been shown to have a beneficial impact on closing achievement gaps in STEM for threatened groups, such as African American and Hispanic middle and high school students (Borman et al, 2020; Cohen et al, 2009; Sherman et al, 2013), undergraduate minority students (Brady et al, 2016; Jordt et al, 2017), first-generation (FG) college students (Harackiewicz et al, 2014), and women (Miyake et al, 2010; Walton et al, 2015). For instance, Brady et al (2016) explored the long-term effects of a VA intervention.…”