(Photo by iStock/kali9)
Greg Walton was drawn to social psychology while studying “stereotype threat,” a concept introduced by research professors Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson in the 1990s to describe how students’ fears of confirming negative stereotypes could undermine their academic performance. Walton explored how particular interventions could help students—for example, Black students at a predominantly white college or a woman in a male-dominated math classroom—make sense of their belonging and reduce their worries about being disrespected, devalued, or excluded.
Certain interventions proved extraordinarily effective, Walton found. A one-hour exercise with first-year Black students at a selective college raised grades over the next three years and resulted in greater career satisfaction even 10 years later. By helping stabilize the students’ sense of belonging, the intervention encouraged them to build more relationships with friends and mentors, which supported their success in a demanding environment. After expanding his research to the middle-school setting, Walton saw yet again how the right intervention shifted patterns of student interaction with their teachers.
Walton, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, worked with Jason Okonofua, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a team of scholars, advocates, and administrators to develop an intervention for Oakland youth returning to middle and high schools from the juvenile detention system. The researchers began by sitting down with these Oakland students and listening to their stories—about their relationships, their hopes and fears, and the challenges they faced.
The researchers set out to address how the students—who were predominantly Black—and their teachers saw each other and to build positive relationships between them. A new paper, the culmination of a 15-month pilot project with the Oakland Unified School District and the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center, shows how their intervention—a structured, relationship-building exercise involving letter writing—cut recidivism.
The researchers had participating youth write a one-page letter, or self-introduction, expressing their aspirations for school and calling on a teacher of their choice to help them succeed. Acting as a third party, the researchers delivered the letters. Following data collection and analysis, they found that the letters improved educators’ responses to students, bolstered their commitment to them, and “even increased feelings of love, hope, respect, and trust for the student.” The letters reoriented the teacher-student relationship, contributing to positive partnerships that resulted in more successful transitions to school.
“Our goal was to create an experience for kids who are coming back into school from juvenile detention—an experience in which they could think about themselves in an asset-based way and introduce that positive self to a teacher of their choosing, while being real about the challenges they face,” Walton says. “In that introduction, the student can show the teacher they’re trying and they care. And they can ask the teacher to become the support they want and need that person to be.”
Whereas social psychologists often favor implicit-bias trainings, believing that exposing people to information about how implicit bias works will mitigate it, Walton and his team deliberately avoided such a “deficit-based approach.” Instead of telling adults what they were doing wrong and about how they perpetuated stigma, the researchers created an “asset-based” opportunity to foster positive feelings while reinforcing the values that attracted teachers to the profession in the first place.
“Kids are coming back to school and asking themselves questions,” Walton says. “Is there anyone here who will support me? Will everyone put me in a box and see me as a criminal? Will anyone give me a chance? I’m already behind in math class—will someone help me catch up?” The one-page letters not only invited teachers to think about how their relationships with students mattered to them but also served as road maps of how progress could happen.
As a small field experiment, the letters represent a preliminary test of whether such self-introductions by students in difficult circumstances can reduce recidivism. But given the promising findings, the researchers are already working on extending their pilot process to San Francisco Unified and Sacramento County schools.
“Trust and empathy are foundational to any relationship,” says Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing scientific insights that help kids thrive. “When we see our students as people—who like us have stories, dreams, and fears—there is the possibility of a virtuous cycle of growing trust and empathy.”
Gregory M. Walton, Jason A. Okonofua, Kathleen Remington Cunningham, Daniel Hurst, Andres Pinedo, Elizabeth Weitz, Juan P. Ospina, Hattie Tate, and Jennifer L. Eberhardt, “Lifting the Bar: A Relationship-Orienting Intervention Reduces Recidivism Among Children Reentering School from Juvenile Detention,” Psychological Science, vol. 32, no. 11, 2021.
Read more stories by Daniela Blei.