‘Focus on the bigger picture:’ an anti-deficit achievement examination of black male scholar athletes in science and engineering at a historically white university (HWU)

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of black male scholar athletes in science and engineering majors at a Division I research-intensive historically white university (HWU) and identify key influences that facilitated their academic achievement. Participants included three black male scholar athletes in science and/or engineering majors at a Division I research-intensive HWU. A single focus group, three in-depth individual interviews and an eight-item demographic questionnaire were employed to investigate the phenomenon of interest. The prove them wrong syndrome and an anti-deficit achievement framework were incorporated to explore the pre-college and college influences that contributed to the participants’ educational outcomes. Emergent themes highlighted the pivotal role of strong familial support, academic self-efficacy, strategic responsiveness to negative stereotypes and select benefits from athletic participation resulted in the participants’ academic achievement. Implications for policy and practice are discussed .

Keywords:

• Black male scholar athletes
• anti-deficit achievement framework
• science and engineering
• academic persistence and achievement

Notes

1. The term ‘collegian’ will be used to refer to postsecondary students in an effort to be consistent with the higher education literature and it will be used interchangeably with the term ‘students’ based on reference source.

2. The term ‘historically White university’ (HWU) and ‘historically White institutions’ (HWIs) will be used to described postsecondary institutions that enrol over 50% white students and historically excluded and/or limited the enrolment of students of Color such as black students.

3. The terms ‘Black’ and ‘African American’ will be used interchangeably throughout the manuscript based on the reference source. Both terms refer to persons having origins in any of the black racial groups in Africa and who self-identify as black or African-American.

4. The term ‘students of Color’ is used her to describe the underrepresentation of black, Hispanic, Native American and certain Asian populations in STEM fields.

5. The larger study included an 83-item student athlete college experiences questionnaire (SACEQ) (533 participants across both institutions; 406 at the HWU and 147 at the HBU), 8 focus groups (four focus groups at each institution with 33 participants) and 33 individual interviews (16 individual interviews at the HWU and 17 interviews at the HBU). The quantitative data included college athletes across all racial groups and sports at each institution, whereas the qualitative data only included black college athletes across academic performance levels (i.e. 2.49 or below and 2.8 or above) at each institution type.

6. The terms ‘historically Black university’ (HBU) and ‘historically Black colleges/universities’ (HBCUs) will be used to described postsecondary institutions that enrol over 50% black students.

7. The focus of the qualitative portion of the larger study explored and contrasted the experiences of black college athletes between and within gender groups (i.e. males and females), academic performance levels (i.e. 1.99 or below to 4.00 GPA range), sport (e.g. profit-generating (football and men’s basketball) vs. Olympic (track and field, soccer, etc.)) and institution type (historically Black university (HBU) vs. HWU); thus, the data and purpose of this study emerged from the larger study.

8. Pseudonyms are used for the participants and institution to preserve anonymity. The institutional pseudonym was randomly selected by the author, but the participants’ pseudonyms were created by the participants themselves.