Cultural Knowledge in African American Children

This study sought to determine whether typically developing African American children's culturally based mainstream and ethnocultural knowledge increased between grades four and six. Because a lack of mainstream cultural knowledge has been implicated in reduced reading comprehension among many African American children, this study also investigated the degree to which ethnocultural and mainstream cultural knowledge differed.

Fifty-eight African American children in grades four, five, and six responded to the Test of Core Knowledge (Bradford & Harris, 2000), a divergent task that required free associations about topics drawn from both mainstream and African American history, arts, and news events. Responses were audiotape-recorded, orthographically transcribed, and analyzed for accuracy and quantity of information.

Participants' knowledge of both mainstream and African American cultural items increased significantly between grades four and five and their knowledge of history, news events, and African American arts increased significantly between grades four and six. Additionally, significant differences were found between grades five and six for mainstream and African American news events.

This sample of African American children demonstrated mainstream cultural knowledge that often surpassed ethnocultural knowledge. Such broadbased mainstream cultural knowledge meets academic expectations and can be used to facilitate further development of language and reading comprehension skills. However, this finding also suggests the need for future investigations of the relationship between mainstream cultural knowledge and literacy, bicultural knowledge in African American children from lower socioeconomic status and/or more ethnocentric backgrounds, and bicultural knowledge in those children who have language and reading comprehension deficits.