

The racial performance gap explained - duopixel
http://method.ac/blog/education/on_the_racial_educational_gap.html

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winestock
Essentially, the performance gap disappeared when the students formed study
groups ("learning groups" in this article). The students were not selected
from the general population, but from UC Berkeley undergraduates. Let's see if
anyone can replicate these results on a large scale in average American public
high schools.

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tokenadult
Treisman's publication in College Mathematics Journal (linked in the submitted
article):

[http://avid.panam.edu/Documents/Research/Studying_Students_S...](http://avid.panam.edu/Documents/Research/Studying_Students_Studying_Calculus_A_Look_at_the_lives_of_minority_mathematics_students_in_college.pdf)

The money quote in the article is "We were advised by some graduate
researchers in the social sciences to step back and question our hypotheses;
this was really useful." It wasn't until the author and his colleagues
reexamined their initial assumptions that their study began making
interesting, actionable findings.

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patio11
I sincerely wished a magic bullet existed, but I note that Berkeley has not
been front page news every day for the last fifteen years, so it makes me
skeptical that this is it.

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duopixel
In any human endeavor there's an execution component that scientists tend to
overlook. You can't just form study groups and expect everyone to excel. The
details add up and you end up with a successful program.

The original article states that Treisman's grant ran out, but all of Berkeley
was eager to get a part of the program, it changed hands and then went
downhill from there, so I guess the guys who inherited the program overlooked
the finer details that made it successful in the first place.

~~~
billswift
Probably mostly the Hawthorne effect; making "any" change tends to lead to
temporary improvements.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect>

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fuzzylizard
Interesting article; however, I would suggest that the Universities themselves
are to blame. There were very few courses that I took where the professor
encouraged us to talk to one another about problems and assignments. Usually
it was the reverse. We were told in no uncertain terms that we were not to
talk to anyone else, nor were we to work with other students in the class. Any
collaboration was considered cheating and plagiarism.

Obviously, this did not apply to things like study groups, but once you have
had it drilled in to your head that collaboration was bad, it is very
difficult to then create the network necessary for a study group.

Universities need to change the way they teach and mark such that
collaboration is not only suggested, but required. In addition, I think
universities, if they really care about these differences, need to create some
form of mentoring program for incoming students.

~~~
ktsmith
I would guess that this is handled differently between universities and even
between departments at the same university. My math and science profs went out
of their way to encourage collaboration. The courses were typically weighted
so that test results were the majority of your grade. If you were cheating on
the homework by copying everything from your study group you'd be found out on
the test. The CS department was a mixed bag. Lots of group projects, lots of
collaboration encouragement, but some of the intro courses like algorithms
took the collaborating is cheating approach.

Where I encountered the most resistance to collaboration was in the
humanities. Any course that had lots of writing or research pretty much had a
work by yourself mandate. I blew through those courses without much effort and
wouldn't have worked in groups anyway, but I always found it odd how often
plagiarism was brought up and threats about academic suspension were made.

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AndrewDucker
So the basic difference is that the Chinese students worked longer, and in
cohesive teams?

I wonder what it was about the culture they came from that encouraged that.

~~~
Duff
Or cheated.

I went to a mid-tier public college. Certain cliques of asian students with no
ability to communicate verbally in English were somehow able to produce
amazing criticisms of 19th century english poetry.

It's difficult not to draw a parallel between people like that and the
fraternity people (who were incapable of communicating in English for other
reasons) who achieved similar feats.

~~~
msie
I've seen people who were better at written communication in English than
verbal communication. It was easier to both understand them and have them
understand me.

I think everyone would be at the same disadvantage, regardless of English
competency, when it comes to 19th century English poetry. ;-)

~~~
thesz
As a self-taught English reader (recently listener and rarely speaker) I
should note that understanding sound and rhythm of English poetry taught me so
much.

I was able to semi-decently communicate technical things before I come to
Shakespeare's "To be or not to be". It completely changed my view on English
language. Before that I was reading English prose as a deformed version of
Deutsch (language I learned at school). What worked for technical prose
stopped working for verses. I had to dig deeper.

From my experience I think that someone who barely speaks foreign language
cannot have an adequate opinion on that language verses.

And I think that GP is right about cheating.

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spydum
Great point made in the paper, and I couldn't agree more: "Now, freshman
courses need to inspire students and invite them into the major". Absolutely!
I think the first year should be just exploration and finding what subjects
excite the student. So many folks just trudge through their years in a major
that is completely boring. Even more just decide "college isn't for them" and
drop out.

~~~
Shenglong
Agreed. There's nothing like university to show you what you don't want to do.

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temp765
I think there might be two things happening. When students work in groups they
not only share ideas (which help solidify concepts), but you also share
answers. In my experience (in physics), most students worked together and when
you get stuck on a problem you go and ask someone else how to do it. Obviously
you end up doing better on the homework (because you complete all of it), and
you also understand how to do the problems a little better, so the end result
is you get a better grade in the class.

The better solution is to do it all yourself. But often that's not possible
(because you simply don't know how to do some problems) or you simply don't
have to time. So in a per-hour-spent sense, working together and copying
solutions probably makes you learn faster, and it definitely gets you better
grades on the homework (and consequently in the class).

Also, it's much easier to work 14 hours with some friends, then 8 hours in
solitude.

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jchonphoenix
So basically, this research has shown that putting more effort in and studying
longer hours combined with more effective studying grants higher grades.

This isn't a huge surprise. If you look at why working in groups gets higher
grades, its because you have a support network to explain the material when
you get confused. When you're stuck, you can have someone explain it to you in
10 minutes rather than sitting there thinking about it for 10 hours.

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msie
I wonder if some students have a problem with study groups because they can't
find one to join. So they accuse the group of having an unfair advantage
("cheating"). As long as HW is not weighted as much as the tests (like
10%-90%, 5%-95%) I don't see a problem with groups. You can't make things
"completely fair" anyways. Also, in the real world, people collaborate on
problems all the time so it's good practice to get students working together.
The point of a course (you'd think) is to teach the material to the students
and if study groups contribute to this then all the more power to them.

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Hyena
The article mentions that there is a weird problem among African American
students at Berkeley: the middle of the SAT distribution and low end of the
income distribution were doing better than the high ends of either. They
chocked this result up to "disorientation". Treisman himself seems to
emphasize the importance of the group aspect.

Shouldn't we pull back a little on the claims about study then? It seems
possible, though without much data, that hours of study and hours of group
study aren't perfect substitutes, at least for some subset of the population.

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jsavimbi
Great read. Thanks for posting.

~~~
boneheadmed
I concur. Fantastic post! I encourage everyone to read the pdf of the
published work which is linked on the page.

~~~
jsavimbi
Still can't figure out why people downvote me for liking a story.

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omonra
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study)

~~~
chrismealy
_Here is what you would never know about the Minnesota study from reading
Jensen and Rushton, or, for that matter, Saletan. It held neither race nor
expected IQ constant; the black children were adopted at a later age than the
other children, which the study’s own authors note is associated with
depressed IQ; the black children’s mothers had lower educational levels than
those of the white children; the “quality of placement” for the white children
was higher than for the other children; and as the study’s own authors have
noted, the black and mixed-race children experienced severe adjustment
problems as they grew up._

\-- <http://www.slate.com/id/2179073>

