role of task variability and home contextual factors in the academic performance and task motivation of African American elementary school children, The

Journal of Negro Education, The, Winter 2001 by Bailey, Caryn T, Boykin, A Wade

The Role of Task Variability and Home Contextual Factors in the Academic Performance and Task Motivation of African American Elementary School Children*

This study aimed to increase the generalizability of findings from previous research (Boykin, 1978, 1982; Tuck & Boykin, 1989) on the theoretical concept verve (receptiveness to variability) to academic settings by examining the effects of task variability on academic task performance and task motivation. Seventy-two low-income African American third and fourth grade students completed four types of academic tasks (i.e., spelling, vocabulary, mathematics, and picture-sequencing) in both a low and a high variability context. The students were also assessed for task motivation in the two variability contexts. Results revealed that academic task performance and task motivation were superior when tasks were presented with greater variability. Home contextual factors that may inform students' preferences, motivation, and achievement outcomes were also examined.

Our nation is still plagued by the persistent low achievement of too many of its public school children, particularly minority children from low-income urban school districts. African American children, in particular, are not yet reaching their full academic potential and tend to perform at significantly lower levels than their European American counterparts (Donahue, Voelkl, Campbell, & Mazzeo, 1999; National Center for Education Statistics, 1995). To address this persistent concern, a growing number of researchers have focused on specific cultural and contextual factors that may facilitate children's cognitive performance (Boykin & Allen, 2000; Gallimore & Tharp, 1999; Gordon, 1997; Hale, 2001; Hilliard, 1992; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995; Lee, 2001; Rogoff, 1990). It has been argued that African American children may be educationally placed at risk because, currently, little consideration is given to the integrity of their cultural capital and adaptive assets in traditional educational contexts.

Building on children's cultural integrity to enhance educational outcomes is central to the promotion of a Talent Development approach to schooling (Boykin, 2000; Madhere & MacIver, 1996). This approach seeks to supplant the traditionally dominant approach to schooling that is exemplified instead by a talent sorting function. Rather than sorting or weeding children out, often because of cultural inclinations that are deemed to be at odds with mainstream cultural schooling practices, the Talent Development approach seeks to engender enabling schooling contexts so that pervasive numbers of children from diverse backgrounds can succeed by meeting high academic standards.

Research that seeks to build on child cultural assets has sought to identify cultural practices, funds of knowledge, artifacts, or themes that can be blended into formal schooling practices to enhance academic outcomes (Boykin & Bailey, 2000a; Gonzalez, Andrade, Civil, & Moll, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 2001; Lee, 2001; Tharp, Estrada, Stoll-Dalton, & Yamuchi, 2000).

The logic of the argument is that practice, knowledge, and experience in proximal out-of-school contexts can be vehicles for successful performance in academically relevant settings. In this regard, some have sought to identify candidates for cultural themes that have an enduring and pervasive presence in African American communities. Toward this end, systematic empirical efforts have documented the cultural significance of African American children's responsiveness to relatively high levels of physical stimulation and the influence of such responsiveness on these children's learning preference and cognitive outcomes (Boykin, 1982; Franklin, 1992; Hale-Benson, 1986; Morgan, 1980). It is postulated that physical stimulation is characterized by the elements of variability, density, and intensity. The households of many African Americans have variously been described as high-energy, fast-paced, socially oriented, and otherwise affording high physical stimulation levels (Boykin, 1982). Boykin and Bailey (2000b), examining African American children's home socialization experiences, found that African American children characterized their home environments as involving routine family participation in lively and high stimulation physical activities, frequent alternation among or engagement in a variety of such physical activities, engagement in multiple activities simultaneously, and/or that these are occurring around them at the same time. It has been suggested that these kinds of daily practices, engagements, and background activities collectively produce high levels of home physical stimulation and thus, may result in a premium placed by participating family members on the cultivation of a particular receptiveness, responsiveness, or preference for heightened levels of physical stimulation, namely heightened "psychological verve" (Boykin, 1982).

It is our contention that an affinity for these heightened qualities of physical stimulation is acquired or appropriated through regular participation in home (or other proximal) environments where this vervistic theme is prevalent. Consequently, because this theme is typically associated with specific, regularly occurring routines within the context of the home, it has cultural status since it becomes salient, valued, deemed appropriate, and is centrally manifested in the life experiences of many African American children (Boykin & Ellison, 1995). Moreover, children raised within these vervistic cultural contexts are likely to be receptive to heightened verve levels when present in other contexts where such stimulation sources are present. One presumed result is that because of African American children's participation in high variability proximal environments, they would find tasks presented in a relatively variable format more preferable than tasks presented in a relatively low varied, monotonous, or repetitious fashion. Consequently, increased variation should also have a significant positive effect on task performance for these children.