CHAPTER THREE: ADJUSTMENT DIFFICULTIES OF FIRST YEAR BLACK STUDENTS
3.3. INTERPERSONAL FACTORS
Hughes' (1987) third category of adjustment difficulty is interpersonal factors, including t>..cJ
communication difficulties between staff and students, black and white students and between black students of differing socio-economic backgrounds, availability of social support, and involvement in community activities on and off campus. These factors have been found to show a weak, but systematic relationship (0.2 - 0.4) to academic achievement (Van Overwalle, 1989).
Gibbs' (1973) experiences as the first black student counsellor on a predominantly white
American campus, led her to believe that many of the difficulties experienced by black students can be traced to incompatible expectations of university study, held by black students and white lecturers. She argues that white academics expect that black students will be assimilated into the university, with few changes to existing university structures. Staff are ignorant of the special needs of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and expect that black students will compete on a par with white ones, despite the more privileged education enjoyed by white students. They also expect that black students will adapt to the existing cultural life of the university and are bewildered when black students report feeling alienated and culturally isolated.
Gibbs (1973) reports that black students, on the other hand, expect the university to be more culturally diverse, both in the activities offered and the lifestyles expressed. They therefore feel alienated from the dominant white culture on campus and seek to establish a distinct identity.
This often involves greater contact with black communities off campus, and lack of participation in what they perceive as activities targeting white students. They also expect that university will have similar academic requirements to high school, and are thus overwhelmed by the heavier workload and new demands for critical thinking and interpretation of material. They also expect greater flexibility on the part of the university, in responding to their individual needs, battling to understand for example, that the university cannot provide unlimited financial aid to students.
Gibbs relates the conflict in expectation to the lack of exposure on the part of staff and students to multicultural issues, and also to the fact that many black students are first generation students.
She suggests a number of strategies to overcome the problem, including greater support services, staffed by people sensitive to the needs of black students, greater interracial contact whereby students can develop a shared social identity, and more contact between staff and students.
Comparative evidence from local campuses is. sorely lacking. Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests similar experiences to those mentioned by Gibbs. As on American campuses, local black students often choose not to participate in activities perceived as dominated by white students, such as Rag or Orientation Week. Like their American counterparts they also experience faulty expectations regarding the type of learning required at university and often respond with rote learning and inability to provide more than a summary of readings in an essay.
One of the few local studies to explore black students' interpersonal difficulties is that of Coleman (1993) who finds similar incompatible expectations among staff and students at the historically black University of Fort Hare, regarding the causes of students failure. Two areas of difficulty emerged from the results. Firstly, staff emphasised cognitive difficulties like over- reliance on rote memorisation, and inability to integrate, organise and interpret information as the source of failure, while students claimed that too much material had to be learnt and they were inadequately prepared by lecturers for the requirements of university study. The second area of difficulty related to psycho-social problems and comprised 60% of the problems mentioned by
students as affecting their academic performance. Students reported loneliness, low self-esteem and a lack of social support, while lecturers assumed that students had large support networks.
Lecturers therefore considered political disturbances to be the only psycho-social factor affecting performance. This study is one of few South African studies to directly measure the attributions for failure given by black students themselves.Italso highlights the importance of non-cognitive factors in accounting for black students' academic performance, suggesting that interventions focussed only on the teaching of study skills are insufficient to improve performance.
Another interpersonal factor to impact on black students' adjustment is the issue of social support. Several studies suggest that black students on predominantly white campuses report poor interpersonal relations, loneliness and a lack of integration into the campus community (Gibbs, 1975; Jay and D'Augelli, 1991 and Suen, 1983). Research also suggests, however, that social support mediates against these difficulties and allows for improved integration (Kessler and McLeod, 1985 in Jay and D'Augelli, 1991). Because of the links between loneliness and social isolation on the one hand, and loneliness and academic performance on the other (Suen, 1983), one would expect availability of social support to be positively correlated with academic performance. Studies suggest only a weak relation between these two factors, however, (Jay and D' Augelli, 1991; Van Overwalle, 1989), although social support may influence academic performance in a complex, indirect way. Poor support may lead to depression and loneliness, which lower students' motivation to attend classes and submit course work, hence causing them to fail. Multivariate, longitudinal studies are therefore needed, such as the Van Overwalle (1989) study mentioned above, which explore the complex interactions between a variety of causal and mediating factors which combine to influence performance.
Black students also experience difficulties in terms of inter-racial interactions and the
development of a racial identity. Normal adolescent identity crIsis symptoms of role confusion, alienation and anxiety (Erikson, 1959 in Gibbs, 1973) are compounded by their awareness of separateness from white students (Gibbs, 1973). A three year study of black students' use of mental health facilities on a predominantly white American campus (Gibbs, 1975) found that half of the black clients presented with problems related to identity conflicts and confusion
concerning their interactions with other black and white students. Students' inability to resolve
these conflicts resulted in high levels of distress, confusion concerning their core identity and poor academic performance.
Other studies find similarly high levels of cultural alienation and poor interracial interaction among black students. Smith, for example, describes black students on white campuses as caught in a "whirlwind of confusing racial identities" (1980 in Smith, 1981, p. 300). On one hand they perceive campus as a hostile environment where they are viewed as less than equal to their white peers, are required to abandon their cultural heritage to fit in, and where the curriculum is foreign to their experiences. On the other hand, they respond by joining all-black social and community groups, discouraged by the university in the supposed interests of cross-cultural integration.
Hence they are caughtin a catch-22 situation, constantly reminded of their separate racial identity but also discouraged from those activities that might overcome their isolation and alienation.
Hughes (1987) also explores black students' experiences of cultural isolation which is attributed to the dominant white culture on campus. She argues that many black students cope with this alienation by actively deferring their psycho-social and cultural development until they have graduated, indicated in the following statement: "1 have decided to tough it out. 1 will resurface and continue my life when this sentence is over" (Hughes, 1987, p. 540).
Itis therefore clear that the interpersonal environment encountered by black students on white campuses is a stressful one leading to high levels of loneliness, racial conflicts and alienation from campus life. These factors in turn impact on students' academic performance and likelihood of dropping out of university (Suen, 1983). Placed in a position oflow status many of these interpersonal experiences of black students are clearly different from those of white students, suggesting the need for special interventions aimed directly at their adjustment difficulties.