Ethnicity, Class, Cognitive, and Motivational Styles: Research and Teaching Implications

The low academic achievement of some ethnic minority youths, such as Afro-Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Rican Americans, is a major national problem that warrants urgent action at the local, state, and national levels. The problem is complex and difficult to diagnose because there is substantial disagreement among educational researchers, practitioners, and the lay community about what causes the wide discrepancies in the academic achievement of groups such as Blacks and mainstream White youths, and between Mexican American and Japanese American students. The writer has reviewed and discussed elsewhere the conflicting explanations and paradigms that have emerged since the civil rights movement of the 1960s to explain the low academic achievement of ethnic youths.'