Post-formalist explanation of academic achievement: Exploring the contribution of John Ogbu and Joe Kincheloe

Abstract The present paper attempts to interrogate the existing approach to understand academic achievement in the mainstream educational psychology. The paper explores the persistent question of “why academic achievement gap” in the modern society from the cultural ecological and postformalist framework of John Ogbu and Joe Kincheloe respectively. As mainstream educational psychology limits its scope in the narrowed individualistic lens, paper suggests that dominant identity based curriculum, pedagogy and knowledge may concretize the psychological categories unless revolutionary efforts are made to transcend the boundaries. Thus, paper adopts critical interdisciplinary framework, rejecting positivistic metatheory as an only relevant approach in educational psychology.