IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/uhejxx/v90y2019i6p860-883.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Learning Race to Unlearn Racism: The Effects of Ethnic Studies Course-Taking

Author

Listed:
  • Janine de Novais
  • George Spencer

Abstract

Over the past two decades, higher education research has built a consensus that engaging with coursework on race is beneficial to students’ socioemotional and cognitive development. Paradoxically, we do not have clarity as to what that means, specifically. Most studies exploring the association between diversity courses and the development of students’ racial understanding examine a variety of dependent variables and consider combinations of outcomes – attitudinal, behavior and cognitive – that, while related, are distinct. This heterogeneity of results is a challenge for institutions of higher education, researchers, and practitioners. This study addresses that challenge by narrowing the scope of inquiry. We focus on Ethnic Studies courses in particular, and on their effect on two distinct types of racial attitudes: students’ understanding of structural racism, and students’ cross-racial empathy. Employing data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen (NLSF), we address a persistent methodological challenge in the research by employing propensity score matching to statistically control for self-selection bias. We find that while there is some association between Ethnic Studies course-taking and racial attitudes, the relationship varies across different types of Ethnic Studies courses.

Suggested Citation

  • Janine de Novais & George Spencer, 2019. "Learning Race to Unlearn Racism: The Effects of Ethnic Studies Course-Taking," The Journal of Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 90(6), pages 860-883, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:uhejxx:v:90:y:2019:i:6:p:860-883
    DOI: 10.1080/00221546.2018.1545498
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00221546.2018.1545498
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00221546.2018.1545498?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:uhejxx:v:90:y:2019:i:6:p:860-883. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/uhej .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.