To Hope and Belong in Adolescence: A Potential Pathway to Increased Academic Engagement for African American Males

Abstract Despite the best intentions of many educators, scholars have theorized that systemic racism and sexism are major impediments to the academic engagement of African American males. The current study explored a potential pathway to address this issue. In a sample of 223 African American male high school students, this study examined the relationship between hope and school belonging to all three aspects of academic engagement (i.e., behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, and intellectual engagement) to better understand how these psychosocial perceptions relate to, and might be a potential pathway to increase, the academic engagement of African American males. Utilizing a series of hierarchical regressions, results indicated that hope and school belonging accounted for around 24% to 46% of all three aspects of African American males’ academic engagement. Given that hope and school belonging have been found to be easily increased, these results suggest a potential path forward to increased engagement for African American males. Impact Statement African American males combat pervasive gender and racial discrimination within the school context. This discrimination suppresses their academic engagement via extinguishing their hope and sense of belonging within the academic domain. The current study proposes a way forward.