Exploring cultural ways of being and school achievement

This investigation used a cultural capital framework developed by Stanton-Salazar to address the role school culture plays in explaining school achievement in an urban high poverty school, Garvey Elementary School (pseud), serving African American families. That framework outlines six forms of social support available at schools that help minority and working class youths overcome barriers to accumulating social capital. The main Research Question was: Are cultural factors that contribute to elementary school achievement ("cultural ways of being") able to account for achievement among African American students in a high poverty, elementary school?; Sub-questions are: (1) Do relatively high achieving children demonstrate less "institutionalized distrust and detachment" and more help seeking behavior than their lower achieving counterparts? (2) Do teachers demonstrate the forms of institutional support in Stanton-Salazar's (1997) framework? (3) Does school leadership play a major or minor role in everyday interactions that teach forms of institutional discourse among teachers, counselors, and students? (4) Do teachers, and students perceive "parent involvement" in divergent or convergent ways?; The investigation identified sociocultural phenomena as themes derived from coding categories of observations, interviews, and document analysis. Observations showed that high achievers demonstrated trust and asked questions more frequently. Teachers showed all six forms of support and both principals played major roles in modeling institutional forms of discourse embedded in a Garvey "way of being."; Neighborhood and school-based adults shared a consensus on desired socialization outcomes, though they perceived parent involvement in divergent ways. This exploration of the school's culture tentatively offers an alternative explanatory model that counters Ogbu's cultural ecological explanations for minority underachievement. Many students at Garvey remain optimistic, in contrast to Ogbu's assertion of deficits in "effort optimism" that diminish motivation to achieve. The cultural model employs four constructs: flexible control, attunement, trust, and continuity. These variables are theorized to reduce stress, disruptive behaviors, absenteeism (teacher and student), and performance anxiety while increasing students' time on task and emotional competence. Future research should focus on attending to local cultures as a means to improve professional development and implement planned changes.