EARLY ACADEMIC SELF CONCEPTS AND THE RACIAL ACHIEVEMENT GAP

In this article the racial achievement gap in American education through the lens of Erik Erikson’s fourth stage of psychosocial development: industry vs. inferiority (Erikson, 1950) is examined. It is argued that the well-documented academic underperformance of certain minority groups may stem from the unfavorable resolution of a key developmental crisis in constituent members’ early scholastic experience. It is suggested that individual educators can play an important role in eliminating the achievement gap by changing the way they teach in their own classrooms. In part, they may do so by adopting a “transcultural” pedagogy or teaching style, according to which both teachers and their minority students develop (at minimum) transcultural proficiencies and (at maximum) transcultural identities, as a promising way to achieve two important ends. First, the fostering of an academically-industrious self-concept in members of historically underachieving minority groups and hence, second, the closing of the achievement gap “from the bottom up”- one classroom at a time