Ed Yong from scienceblogs.com has the goods about the new study that hit Science:
In 2007, [Geoffrey Cohen] showed that a simple 15-minute writing exercise at the start of a school year could boost the grades of black students by the end of the semester. The assignment was designed to boost the student's sense of self-worth, and in doing so, it helped to narrow the typical performance gap that would normally separate them from white students. Now, Cohen returns with a new report of the same experiment two years on.
Things are still looking good. Even though two years have passed, the students are still feeling the benefits of those precious exercises. With the help of a couple of booster sessions, they still felt more confident about their chances of success, their grade point averages had increased (particularly among the weakest students), and the proportion who had to repeat a grade was two-thirds lower.
The study itself has a sound methodology, being that it's double-blind, randomized, and allows for researchers to control the treatment variable. The variable was whether students were administered a series of "self-affirming" exercises, which were simple yet structured. It was designed to test whether these psychological interventions had long-term benefits, but let's look at the first study, which was designed to test whether these psychological interventions had any benefit.
In the first study from 2007, a group of seventh graders, white and black, was asked to write about something important to them for approximately 15 minutes at the start of the school year. This exercise was meant to be self-affirming. There was also a control group of students that was asked to write about something that was not important to them, but explain why it may be important to someone else. The exercise was designed not to be self-affirming.
The result of the first study?
The intervention, a brief in-class writing assignment, significantly improved the grades of African American students and reduced the racial achievement gap by 40%.
The second study involves Dr. Cohen following up on the students from the first study approximately 2-3 years later. "Booster" writing exercises were administered to the self-affirming group and a writing exercise was administered to the control group, where the latter group wrote about some aspect of their daily routine (again, not self-affirming). This second study was necessary in order to establish whether or not the benefits obtained in the first study were transient. The results suggest that the writing exercises do have long-term benefits.
The abstract for the second study details the net benefit::
Over 2 years, the grade point average (GPA) of African Americans was, on average, raised by 0.24 grade points. Low-achieving African Americans were particularly benefited. Their GPA improved, on average, 0.41 points, and their rate of remediation or grade repetition was less (5% versus 18%).
This is simply outstanding. Not only because the benefits to the GPA are pretty significant, but also because the significant benefit arose from something so simple to administer. It's one of those pleasant finds that requires neither additional resources, nor significant reform, but rather teachers who care enough to implement a simple technique.
The study also makes clear that this is a social problem, as well as a state-of-mind issue, as opposed to black students lacking something in ability (which some people have claimed).
If you are registered with Science, or have access to a public information source like a library or a university, you can access the full text of the study. I recommend reading the whole thing, especially if you're a middle school teacher and thinking about employing the technique yourself.
Edit: HT to litho:
A co-investigator on the study was interviewed on The Takeaway last Thursday. An easily accessible way to get the lowdown on how the study was conducted, its results, and its limitations.