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Educational Resilience - African American Teenagers

            Researchers have long been fascinated with the African American experience and how it affects a student's education. In a 2010, research was conducted and presented in an article by Michael Cunningham and Dena Swanson that examined educational resilience in African American teenagers/adolescents. The overall purpose of the article was "to examine factors within the school context that facilitates educational resilience among African American high school students" (Cunningham, 2010). They defined educational resilience based on the current academic achievements of the students and their future academic and general expectations. The aforementioned factors included: the occurrence of stressful life events, perceptions of social support within the school environment, academic self-esteem, and the extent to which parents are involved in or monitor the lives of the teenagers. The results, implications and processes of this research can aid in answering the question: what is the role of research in Educational Psychology?.
             The researchers began with the assumptions that academic self-esteem would have a positive correlation with the future expectations. They also expected that there would be a positive correlation between achievement outcomes for the students and their perceptions of social support at school. The researchers' last assumption, although not as clearly stated as the others, was that gender differences may exist in any of the variables. It was clearly evident throughout the article that the research method used was a correlational study – observing variables as they already exist and determining positive or negative relationships, if any at all. The very fact that the researchers' goal was to identify "positive associations" (Cunningham) is solid evidence.
             The participants in the study were 206 (135 females, 71 males) African American high school students ranging from age thirteen to eighteen with nearly even disbursement among ninth through twelfth grades.


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