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African American Adolescents’ Academic Persistence: A Strengths-Based Approach

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Abstract

African American adolescents are faced with the challenge to be successful academically, even though they may experience racial discrimination within school settings. Unfortunately, relatively little scholarship explores how African American adolescents draw on personal and cultural assets to persist and thrive in the face of discriminatory experiences. Additionally, little research has explored the buffering role of assets (e.g., racial pride, self-efficacy, and self-acceptance) on the relationship between school-based racial discriminatory experiences and the academic persistence of African American adolescents. Participants in the current study included 220 (58 % girls) socioeconomically diverse African American adolescents. Latent class analysis was utilized to identify clusters based on participants’ racial pride, self-efficacy, and self-acceptance. Three cluster groups were identified. The majority of the students belonged to the average group in which adolescents reported average levels of the three study assets. Adolescents in the higher group reported higher assets relative to their peers in the study and those in the lower group reported lower strength-based assets relative to their peers. Results indicated that school-based racial discrimination was associated with lower levels of academic persistence. Additionally, adolescents in the higher assets group reported higher academic persistence in comparison to the average and low group. Our model reflected a promotive but not protective influence of adolescents’ assets on their academic persistence.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. 0820309. We thank the adolescents for participating in this study and the schools for their support. We also thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript.

Author Contributions

SBB conceived of the study, participated in the research design, drafted the manuscript, and performed the statistical analyses and interpretation of the data. TC is the principal investigator of the research study and helped to draft the manuscript. NH and FV helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1196, St. Louis, MO, 63130, USA

    Sheretta T. Butler-Barnes

  2. Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan, 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Tabbye M. Chavous

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, 102 Gilmer Hall, PO Box 400400, Charlottesville, VA, 22904, USA

    Noelle Hurd

  4. Department of Psychology, Fordham University, Dealy Hall, 441 E. Fordham Road, Bronx, NY, 10458, USA

    Fatima Varner

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  1. Sheretta T. Butler-Barnes
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Correspondence to Sheretta T. Butler-Barnes.

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Butler-Barnes, S.T., Chavous, T.M., Hurd, N. et al. African American Adolescents’ Academic Persistence: A Strengths-Based Approach. J Youth Adolescence 42, 1443–1458 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-013-9962-0

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