Do athletic programs help students perform better academically?

Do athletic programs help students perform better academically?

This research project invites you to better understand how racial/ethnic identity might affect educational achievement. Your assignment is to prepare a RESEARCH PROSPECTUS as if you were to engage in a year-long, ethnographic research project at Oakland Technical High School (you will not do the actual research). Prompt: your research proposal will explore how “Do athletic programs help students perform better academically?” relating to race/ethnicity (with the option of including gender or class) facilitates or impedes academic achievement in high school. The four categories you must meet are: 1) to help you understand how larger social forces may constrain or expand the life chances of individuals (think about C. Wright Mills’ “sociological imagination” as well as his distinction between “private troubles” and “public issues”); 2) to help you understand the complex role of schools in perpetuating or countering social inequality; 3) to learn library research skills by exploring electronic databases; 4) to learn how to write a literature review as a component of research papers; 5) to exercise critical thinking when applying scholarly explanations to real-life problems.