Shooting for the Stars: A Case Study of the Mathematics Achievement and Career Attainment of an African American Male High School Student

By LaTasha Thompson, Jomo Mutegi. High School Journal, 2005

73 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The mathematics success of African American male adolescents has been given limited attention. Most often, African American males are viewed in terms of their failure as opposed to their success. This tendency to focus almost exclusively on African American failure is a debilitating feature of extant literature and it constrains our understanding of African American mathematics achievement. Malik Williams is one case that stands in opposition to the norm. Realizing the importance of advanced mathematics to his college and career goals, Malik petitioned his principal to have a Pre-Calculus/Calculus course offered at his school. This article documents the story of Malik's success and in so doing, identifies key themes that inform current understanding of the mathematics achievement and career attainment of African American male students.

Subfields: Education, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/76a25aba161f3cbced1b18e40f33c11a2af66fac

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. Ebony O. McGee
2. Dan Battey
3. R. Berry
4. D. Martin
5. Kateri Thunder
6. Oren L. McClain
7. Richard Noble
8. T. Ward

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Richard Noble
2. R. Berry
3. T. Ward
4. D. Martin
5. Ebony O. McGee
6. Lori Andersen
7. Dan Battey
8. M. Miriti

In Statistics and Probability

1. R. Berry
2. Dan Battey
3. Richard Noble
4. T. Ward
5. D. Martin
6. Ebony O. McGee
7. Lori Andersen

Citations in the corpus

• Counter Narratives: Examining the Mathematics and Racial Identities of Black Boys who are Successful with School Mathematics (2011, background): “Successful Black boys in school mathematics receives little attention in the research literature, while there is a vast amount of literature that describes the academic achievement and schooling experiences of Black boys in terms of failure (Thompson & Lewis, 2005).”
• Mathematics Self-Efficacy and African American Male Students: An Examination of Models of Success (2011, methodology): “In the high school arena, Thompson and Lewis (2005) used case study methodology to portray Malik, a student-athlete who, due to an inner drive that yearned for academic excellence within an inner-city public school in East Baltimore, requested that the administration develop a Pre-Calculus/Calculus…”
• Beyond Missionaries or Cannibals: Who Should Teach Mathematics to African American Children? (2007, background): “Documenting the ways that African American, and other students, experience mathematics in highly racialized contexts should be a goal for ongoing and future research in mathematics education (e.g., Berry, 2003; Nasir, Heimlich, Atukpuwu, & O’Conner, 2007; Stinson, 2004; Thompson & Lewis, 2005).”
• Expectancy-Value Models for the STEM Persistence Plans of Ninth-Grade, High-Ability Students: A Comparison Between Black, Hispanic, and White Students (2014, background): “This finding places the causal order of career choice and course taking asserted by previous research in question (Lewis & Connell, 2005; Thompson & Lewis, 2005).”
• Robust and Fragile Mathematical Identities: A Framework for Exploring Racialized Experiences and High Achievement Among Black College Students (2015, background): “…has decreased over the past 15 years (Chen, 2009), a significant number of African Americans continue to excel in these fields at every stage of the academic pipeline (Berry, 2008; Berry, Ellis, & Hughes, 2014; Martin, 2000; Mutegi, 2013; Stinson, 2013; Thompson & Lewis, 2005; Walker, 2011).”
• Access to Mathematics: “A Possessive Investment in Whiteness”1 (2013, background): “…focuses on the successful mathematics experiences of African American students (Berry, 2005; Martin, 2000, 2006a, 2006b; Moody, 2001; Stinson, 2008; Thompson & Lewis, 2005); others have attended to using culture and/or parents as a resource for Latino students (Anhalt, Allexsaht-Snider, & Civil,…”
• Researching Race in Mathematics Education (2009, background): “An emerging literature on African American student success in mathematics (Berry, 2003, 2005; Martin, 2000, 2006a, 2006b; Moody, 2001; Nasir, 2002; Stinson, 2004; Thompson & Lewis, 2005) is beginning to challenge the racial hierarchy of mathematics ability.”