A walk across cultural lines

Study says 'stroll' can steer teachers wrong

April 23, 2001
By Tamara Henry (USA TODAY)

As a middle school teacher in the mid-1990s, La Vonne Neal watched with amusement the deliberate swagger and exaggerated dip in the stroll of some of her black students. But now, as an education researcher, she thinks there's a serious side to that walk.

Neal's research at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, suggests what is liable to become a controversial theory: that the stylized walk or "cultural movement" could lead teachers to refer the young men to special education. Her work adds testimony to recent studies by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University that found black children are almost three times more likely than white children to be labeled mentally retarded and then assigned to special education classes.

Neal recalls that one of her duties as a teacher at Cedar Valley Middle School in Round Rock, Texas, was standing in the hallways to monitor the students as they moved from one class to another.

"I would see the boys very stylistically walk from locker to classroom," she says. "When I saw that, I saw it differently than my white peers. I saw it simply as this young man saying "Here I am in my uniqueness,' whereas many white teachers saw it in a negative way and were conjuring up negative stereotypes with the movement."

'Certain walk 'made guys look cool'

In his 1994 autobiography, Makes Me Wanna Holler, Nathan McCall describes how important perfecting the stylized walk is to black males:

"The (walk) was a proud, defiant, bouncy stride. You take a regular step with one leg, then sort of hop or drag the other on the second step. The best ... twisted their torsos slightly and swung their arms in unison with that hop. It made guys look cool and tough."

Says Neal, "Movement style is culturally conditioned; perceptions of movement style are also conditioned." She recently published her research in the Intervention in School and Clinic journal and last week presented it at the American Educational Research Association convention in Seattle.

About 90% of the nation's 3 million teachers are white and tend to acquire their perceptions of other ethnic groups from the mass media, she says. Movies, TV shows and news reports, and music videos show the walk in association with "inappropriate behavior" such as aggression, she says.

About 6.4 million students, ages 6 through 21 are in special education, which provides free tutoring and special instruction by teachers with specific training for students with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Education says black students make up 21% of special education, although they account for only 16% of the total 52.7 million public and private school students.

Students are identified for special education in a number of ways, including teacher and doctor referrals and testing. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), parents also are involved in the group that decides a child's eligibility. Eligible disabilities include autism, hearing impairment, mental retardation and emotional disturbance, among others.

'Stroll' vs. 'Standard' walk

Neal conducted her study in 1997, one year after she left her job as an eighth-grade history teacher at Cedar Valley. Joining her in the research were Audrey Davis McCray and Gwendolyn Webb-Johnson of the University of Texas-Austin and Scott Bridgest of Southwestern.

For the study, Neal went back to her old school and recruited two 13 year-old males, one black and one white of similar build. She made four videotapes; Two of the tapes captured each teen in the standard walk – defined as "erect posture, leg and arm swing synchronized with posture and pace, a steady stride, and a straight head." Two other videos were of the teens in a non-standard walk, a "stroll" characterized by "a deliberate swaggered or bent posture, head held slightly tilted to the side, one foot dragging, and an exaggerated knee bend or dip." In each tape, the youths dressed in typical teen gear #150; blue jeans, athletic shoes, white T-shirts and basketball jerseys.

Neal then randomly selected 136 middle school teachers from the ethnically diverse Round Rock Independent School District. They were mainly 46 years or older with more than 17 years of teaching experience; 105 were women; 3% were black, 90% white, 2% Asian, 3% Hispanic and 2% other.

The teachers were divided into four viewing groups, each seeing a different tape. Afterward they completed questionnaires. Results showed teachers:

• Considered both the white and black teen using the stroll lower in achievement than when they used the standard walk; they rated the white youth with a stroll lower in achievement than the black youth with a stroll.
• Viewed both teens with a stroll higher in aggression than when they used the standard walk.
• Perceived the teens with a stroll as more likely to need special education services than when they used the standard walk.

Neal says earlier research shows white students whose behavioral style is similar to black students' are more likely to be viewed as "more deviant than" the black students. Similar judgments were made by the teachers in her study, she says, who judged the white student more harshly than the black student.

Neal's research did not include the race of the teachers as a variable. She notes in her study that previous research shows teachers are "likely to mistake cultural differences for cognitive or behavioral disabilities," regardless of their ethnic backgrounds.

More research is needed

The study has drawn cautionary comments from educators. "It doesn't make sense to me why someone's swaggering walk would lead to someone being placed in special education," says Bob Chase, president of the 2.6 million-member National Education Association.

"I know we do have a disproportionate number of minority kids in special education. I'm glad to see that research is being done. But I think we need to make sure that whatever research we are doing on it is based on some real, solid data gathering."

Julie Landsman, however, who taught English and creative writing in the Minneapolis Public Schools for 25 years, echoes the study's findings in her new book, A White Teacher Talks About Race (Scarecrow Press).

"We see a kid who has a certain look: baggy pants, long shirts, high tops, bandanna, and we decide exactly how he or she will behave," she writes. "And not just the white staff. Black teachers and support staff learn to assume behaviors, too. We lower our expectations without realizing it."

Landsman says that at the school where she taught, the special education room was across from hers. "There was not one white face in the group. This is also true in large high schools all over the country. For years black students were put into special education classes almost automatically, the assumption being that they would all need help because they would not be smart enough," she writes.

Neal says her study is the first step in a series of sociocultural research projects. She next wants to do a nationwide test of the walk and also study how the race of the teachers affects their perceptions. A study of whether black females' movement styles such as "head rolling" and "hand waving" affect teachers' expectations is also in her agenda.

Ultimately, Neal, who is now an assistant professor of education at Southwestern, would like to see teacher preparation include training in how cultural issues affect teachers' perceptions of student behavior.

"We have to teach our teachers how to teach other people's children."

Reprinted from USA Today

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