A Black Curriculum for a Black School: A Case-Study Exploring Black Student's Attitudes towards Culturally Sensitive Curriculum and Its Impact on Black Student Engagement

Predominantly Black schools may struggle with ways to keep their students engaged. When Black students are not engaged in class, it could lead to low academic performance, which may reflect the lack of culturally relevant content in the curriculum. Student engagement is increasingly viewed as one of the keys to addressing problems such as low achievement, boredom and alienation, and high dropout rates (Martin & Torres, n.d.). Even if the school has predominantly Black teachers, one must not assume that the students will have an automatic academic advantage (Gay, 2010). When teachers lack cultural understanding of their students, it may have a negative impact on their students' academic achievement (Lin & Bates, 2014). This paper explores the attitudes of students in a United States History at an all-Black high school once they been taught under a culturally relevant curriculum such as an Afrocentric curriculum, or a curriculum that centers the students African and African American heritage and culture at the center of the content to which is being taught. The research concluded that students had positive feelings learning and an increase in engagement toward learning all content in United States history class, but only after learning about and appreciating their own history and culture. However, toward the end of the semester, the student's engagement leveled equally, but did not falter below engagement prior to the insertion of the Afrocentric Curriculum. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]