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I got good feedback from my draft that I did on Sunday. I didn’t do the whole step because I just wanted to get a feel for the step 6. Dr. Ari said for 6.1 that I needed to address my bias I had before this project for my problem and how this project challenged them. I did that by stating one before the problem and then explaining how this project changed it. I didn’t discuss 6.2 and 6.4 in my draft so I had to add those 2 parts in my step 6 also. For 6.3 I was told to add information and somethings I added was some disciplines and ideas that could help solve this problem and how it enlarged my understanding of the problem. My whole step 6 is about what interdisciplinarity but for the reflection, I have really learned a lot about the interdisciplinary research process and the different steps it takes to complete the process. With this process it is more likely to complete problems because of the intertwining of disciplines. I advise more people to learn this process.

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This research process has been lengthy and rigorous but I think it was worth it. What made it interesting was that it was a question/problem of my interest and I can relate to this problem on a personal level. This approached challenged my bias because of the many different sources that I looked at and read and got multiple insights from that might’ve differed from what I thought or believed. One bias that I had before this project dealing with this problem was that I thought education was the only discipline needed to solve this problem. After looking into the problem and doing this project, I have come to find that there is much more needed than just education, which is a key component but not the only one. My bias was challenged by doing some scholarly reading and understanding that other disciplines were needed like counseling due to the lives these athletes live and things they encounter that the avg. student doesn’t. Also I found out that the student athlete’s background and how he/she grew up impacts his/her performance at the college level in academics and athletics.

My perception of disciplinary expertise has been influenced by interdisciplinarity. I’ve always thought that it’s better to get someone that is an expert in one particular field or discipline but with that it’s very hard/difficult to get other things done and hard to see things in different ways. With interdisciplinarity you can help out in different areas without just being an expert in one discipline.

The interdisciplinary approach has enlarged my understanding for my problem as a whole by opening my eyes to different aspects pertaining to my problem. For example it’s more than just tutors that these athletes need, this approach has made me see that is not the only thing they need or only steps to take to solve this problem. Dr. Stephen Jones stated that “these student-athletes childhoods affect this problem”, so therefore parents need to monitor and guide their children more carefully and setting them up for success in the long run. Parents could help by assisting them with good study habits or signing them up at learning centers to help them out.

An interdisciplinary approach is applicable outside the classroom for this problem in many different places. One that I’m most aware of is at the College’s Sporting Academic Center/Lab. Every college/university has one of these and most differ a lot from each other but have the same goal, which is to graduate it’s student-athletes. They can use an interdisciplinary approach by giving them tutors that actually help the athletes, keeping track with their academics, giving counselors or just someone for the athletes to talk to in order to get things off of their chest, and just getting to know the student-athletes on a personal level so you can relate and understand why things are how they are.

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This research process has been lengthy and rigorous but I think it was worth it. What made it interesting was that it was a question/problem of my interest and I can relate to this problem on a personal level. This approached challenged my bias because of the many different sources that I looked at and read and got multiple insights from that might’ve differed from what I thought or believed.

The interdisciplinary approach has enlarged my understanding for my problem as a whole by opening my eyes to different aspects pertaining to my problem. For example it’s more than just tutors that these athletes need, this approach has made me see that is not the only thing they need and only steps to take to solve this problem.

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Step 6: Reflect on How Using An Interdisciplinary Approach Has Enlarged Understanding of the Problem

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Step 6: Reflect on How Using An Interdisciplinary Approach Has Enlarged Understanding of the Problem

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Education Psychology and Counseling have come to be the key elements of disciplinary insights for College African American Student Athletes and academics. After doing more research on my topic, I’ve come to realize that more disciplines are relevant to my topic. I watched two other playposit videos that were not the two disciplines that are most relevant to my problem. Family and Community Literacy was one video that I watched and believe it or not it relates to my problem also because Dr. Greenberg said some amazing things. This subject deals with reading, writing, and problem solving. Dr. Greenberg stated that “1 out of every 6 adults in the U.S read on a 6th grade level”, this made me think that maybe some of these athletes aren’t ready for college education. She also talked about adult literacy as computing and solving problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function in society and jobs. This pertains to these athletes being able to be literate to make decisions in college balancing out sports, academics, and social life. The next video I watched was Child Growth and Development. Professor Kwon stated that child growth and development is somewhere between education and psychology which is one of my most relevant disciplines to my problem.I feel that this could be relevant to my topic because of the upbringing of these athletes when they were little. Like she stated about how the child’s environment(school, family, extended family, and community) has an impact on how the child develops.Using the child development discipline allows you to know more about the background of a child which can help solve my problem because of knowing the background and why these athletes do certain things. In one of the journals by Kelly and Dixon stated that “the first 2 years of college represent a difficult period during which this group would benefit from new ideas to support their multiple transitions.” Talking about african american student athletes and the different transitions they have to encounter in college. I feel that child growth and development discipline would also help with this aspect of my problem because it takes an in-depth look at the child's background and how he/she was raised, which has a lot to do with the student athlete at its present state. In contrast to this article, Joshua Watson wrote an article in which there was a study did on athletes vs non-athletes and their attitudes towards seeking help. Watson stated that athletes are less likely to seek help than regular students. Richard Sherman who is a professional football player for the San Francisco 49ers, did a video and talked about all the things student athletes encounter in a day and how it can be overbearing or just a lot at times and need someone to talk things out with someone. Dr Stephen Jones wrote an article and I thought it went hand and hand with what was talked about in the child growth and development playposit video because he stated “The lack of academic preparation is evident in middle school and high school. Too often athletes are accepted to college without the preparation they need to graduate. Many of these students are coming from schools that are not making Adequate Yearly Progress according to the standards set by No Child Left Behind.” This just gives me clarification with what Dr. Kwon stated about it starts with family and school and it impacts how children are developed. As I continue to learn and research this problem I gain more and more information about it and leads me to see that there are more disciplines that can be involved to help African American athletes be more successful as stated in this step.

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My reflection does not consist of any feedback because I didn’t upload my draft to my padlet. I did talk to some classmates about some feedback they got back and used some of that to make sure that mine was up to par. Some of the feedback I used from some classmates was to have all 15 of my sources on the new expanded chart. I only had 8 on it so I added the other 7 to it. I also did not know if we were supposed to use the two playposit videos we analyzed in the last step or use the other two we watched. Based on being in this class the whole semester and understanding what Dr. Ari wants, I knew that when it said critically analyze the insights that I would need to go in-depth and clarify what their sources of conflict are. I learned a lot about interdisciplinarity up unto this point in the semester from the basic to having two or more disciplines combine to form interdisciplinary, to the interdisciplinary research process which requires a lot of work.

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Step 5: Critically Analyze the Disciplinary Insights Into the Problem and Locate Their Sources of Conflict

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Step 5: Critically Analyze the Disciplinary Insights Into the Problem and Locate Their Sources of Conflict

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I performed a literature search on African American Student Athletes and their struggle with academics. I found some very good sources on the GSU library website along with a few things on other sites. I found multiple pieces of literature that deal with the most relevant disciplines that apply to my problem which are educational psychology and counseling. Counseling discipline was confirmed by Kelly and Dixon talking about how mentoring impacts these athletes in college. Another article I referenced was“College Student-Athletes' Attitudes Toward Help-Seeking Behavior and Expectations of Counseling Services” One specific thing that stood out to me that Joshua stated in this article was,”a lot of student-athletes don’t seek the help and mentorship they need coming into a new atmosphere like college, so they underperform.” One reason economics is a relevant discipline is because “Athletics Over Academics: The Growing College Sports Spending Gap.” article states that these colleges and universities are making billions off of these athletes performance on the playing fields and not putting much into academics. For example the article stated, “Schools in the Southeastern Conference are the biggest athletic spenders, and have the widest gap between school spending and sports spending. Median athletic spending, per athlete, was $163,931 in the SEC in 2010; the median academic spending, per student, that year was $13,390. So on a per capita basis, SEC schools spent 12.2 times as much on sports than on academics” so economics is a relevant discipline in this problem. Educational Psychology is confirmed by multiple sources but one source is the scholarly work of A.D Woods, J Mcniff, J Coleman talking about African American athletes performance and engagement in academics.

I watched the counseling and educational psychology playposit videos. In the counseling video I watched, it stated that the spectrum starts with counselors at one end then the next is psychologist, then lastly is a psychiatrist. All of these student athletes in my problem deal with counselors but some go on to deal with psychologist also. Both work with individuals to identify their strengths and challenges and help them overcome their challenges. This is solely the reason why a lot of athletes go to see counselors to seek help and others need to do the same. A big reason why many of these athletes are not as successful as they should be is because of the counseling and mentoring aspect of college. Many are scared to seek this help and it hurts them. Also these counselors and psychologist use empathy and not sympathy because they don’t want to feel sorry for you and seem as if they are looking down on, they just relate to your problems to understand and help. In Kelly, D. D., & Dixon, M. A. article they talk about how mentoring student athletes impacts their college career as a whole from academics, to athletics, to social life. Educational psychology is a big discipline in my problem. Academics is one of the main reasons athletes go to college so therefore they are here to learn although not all of them do. So like in the “Educational Perceptions Among African American Male College Athletes” the discipline consulted was educational psychology because they talk about how these athletes perform under the conditions that they are in due to their athletics. Another thing the video pointed out was that educational psychology evaluates and analyzes certain teaching methods, testing methods, and educational programs, which in result makes it easier for students to learn.

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I started my revisions by completing my data management table. I only had 6 sources and needed 15 so I did that. I found some interesting Ted Talks that really caught my eye, one by Richard Sherman that plays in the NFL. Then I started revising my step 4. I started by pulling some data and citing some of the sources that confirmed that the disciplines I chose were most relevant to my problem. The next thing I did was add some more details to my 4.2 step. Even though I did cover what was I asked, it could be better and needed some language corrections. I did that and related the information from the video to my problem. I understand interdisciplinary pretty well. I’m starting to see interdisciplinarity in other things I do and see everyday. The meshing of different concentrations or disciplines coming together to solve a problem. We see this everyday or are involved in it everyday but may not notice it.

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I performed a literature search on African American Student Athletes and their struggle with academics. I found some very good sources on the GSU library website along with a few things on other sites. I found multiple pieces of literature that deal with the most relevant disciplines that apply to my problem which are educational psychology and counseling.

I watched the counseling and educational psychology playposit videos. In the counseling video I watched, it stated that the spectrum starts with counselors at one then the next is psychologist, then lastly is a psychiatrist. Most of these student athletes in my problem deal with counselors but some go on to deal with psychologist also. Both work with individuals to identify their strengths and challenges and help them overcome their challenges. This is solely the reason why a lot of athletes go to see counselors to seek help and others need to do the same. Also these counselors and psychologist use empathy and not sympathy because they don’t want to feel sorry for you and seem as if they are looking down on, they just relate to your problems to understand and help. In Kelly, D. D., & Dixon, M. A. article they talk about how mentoring student athletes impacts their college career as a whole from academics, to athletics, to social life. Educational psychology is a big discipline in my problem. Academics is one of the main reasons athletes go to college so therefore they are here to learn although not all of them do. So like in the “Educational Perceptions Among African American Male College Athletes” the discipline consulted was educational psychology because they talk about how these athletes perform under the conditions that they are in due to their athletics. Another thing the video pointed out was that educational psychology evaluates and analyzes certain teaching methods, testing methods, and educational programs, which in result makes it easier for students to learn.

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I really liked the feedback and used it well I think. I started by making a stronger argument by adding in some social structures that are very relevant to understanding African-American Athletes. I also went into more depth about how educational psychology is used to solve this problem. I defined biological anthropology and went to a scholarly site to get more details about what it actually studies. I then revisited my site notes and talked about some of the disciplines that they talked about in the interview and when I observed the tutor.

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My problem is complex and deals with African American student-athletes and their struggle with academics. Several disciplines that I think are potentially relevant to African American Athletes are sociology, biology, and anthropology. Disciplines that are potentially relevant to academics would be education, psychology, and biology.

I narrowed my disciplines down that are relevant to African American athletes to sociology and biological anthropology. Anthropology is one of my discipline because knowing the culture and society of African Americans and their evolution, which is a big part of knowing these athletes. I also thought this was most relevant because although it studies the culture and society, it also looks at some of the biology of these African Americans. Biological anthropology is a subfield of anthropology. This is a significant discipline for understanding my problem because biological anthropology studies “genetics, human ecology, and growth & development.”  Sociology was another discipline I thought that was very relevant because it studies “the science of society, social institutions, and social relationships; specifically : the systematic study of the development, structure, interaction, and collective behavior of organized groups of human beings”.(Sociology) There are different social structures that obtain to my problem from family to economy to class. Understanding these different social structures of these athletes lives would help in understanding this problem. I think these two disciplines are most relevant for the first part of my problem because it will teach us more about African American people. The disciplines I thought that were the most relevant for attacking academics are education and psychology, or they can be put together. Education is a necessary when talking about academics. Educational psychology is the scientific study of human learning, having to deal the instructional process, conceptual processes, and cognitive development. This is the one discipline I thought was most relevant because it talks about how people learn. I’ve also read an article that Dr. Stephen Jones wrote who is a psychologist, and I used that article in step 1 and 2.

During my site visit I interviewed the director of football athletics at GSU and one thing he pointed out to me that they did was all incoming freshmen and transfers were assigned mandatory 6 hours of study hall and tutoring sessions so that they could start off strong. I thought that this was a good implementation because they were all new to this school, but transfers having been to college somewhere know how academics go, but for the freshmen they were adapting to a new lifestyle so they needed extra guidance and help. Educational psychology is a big discipline they use to help these athletes. Also another technique//strategy they use is they have a Career Services and Life Skills director who helps them navigate through college by helping pick a major, also finding jobs and internships within their major for when they graduate. Another discipline they used that the tutor told me was counseling. These athletes face different lives outside of football and sometimes have nobody to talk to about their problems, so the tutors and other staff talk with these athletes when they need it. Not having this discipline incorporated in solving this problem will not work because these athletes wouldn’t know what to do with themselves.
“Sociology.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sociology.

“Physical Anthropology | List of High Impact Articles | PPts | Journals | Videos.” OMICS International, OMICS International, www.omicsonline.org/scholarly/physical-anthropology-journals-articles-ppts-list.php.

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My problem is complex and deals with African American student-athletes and their struggle with academics. Several disciplines that I think are potentially relevant to African American Athletes are sociology, biology, and anthropology. Disciplines that are potentially relevant to academics would be education, psychology, and biology.

I narrowed my disciplines down that are relevant to African American athletes to sociology and biological anthropology. Anthropology is one of my discipline because knowing the culture and society of African Americans and their evolution, which is a big part of knowing these athletes. I also thought this was most relevant because although it studies the culture and society, it also looks at some of the biology of these African Americans. Sociology was another discipline I thought that was very relevant because it studies “the science of society, social institutions, and social relationships; specifically : the systematic study of the development, structure, interaction, and collective behavior of organized groups of human beings”.(Sociology) I think these two disciplines are most relevant for the first part of my problem because it will teach us more about African American people. The disciplines I thought that were the most relevant for attacking academics are education and psychology, or they can be put together. Education is a necessary when talking about academics. Educational psychology is the scientific study of human learning, having to deal the instructional process, conceptual processes, and cognitive development. This is the one discipline I thought was most relevant because it talks about how people learn. I’ve also read an article that Dr. Stephen Jones wrote who is a psychologist, and I used that article in step 1 and 2.

During my site visit I interviewed the director of football athletics at GSU and one thing he pointed out to me that they did was all incoming freshmen and transfers were assigned mandatory 6 hours of study hall and tutoring sessions so that they could start off strong. I thought that this was a good implementation because they were all new to this school, but transfers having been to college somewhere know how academics go, but for the freshmen they were adapting to a new lifestyle so they needed extra guidance and help. Also another technique/strategy they use is they have a Career Services and Life Skills director who helps them navigate through college by helping pick a major, also finding jobs and internships within their major for when they graduate.

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I started my reflection by reviewing my step 2 and then critiquing what I was told to. First I added some other things offline because I only spoke off of what I knew, so I added some scholarly sources to help back up some of my work. Next I went and added more detail to 2.4 because it wasn't clear what I meant. So I added some citations and went into more depth explaining what I meant.

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African American athletes and their struggles with academics is a complex problem. This is complex because when looking at this problem you have to take into consideration that they play sports which takes up a great amount of their time and also creates fatigue within the athlete. They also travel a great bit which causes athletes to miss class. Frank Smith stated in an article that some people say “sport participation decreases grades because young athletes are over burdened with practices and games. As a result, they don’t have time to focus on schoolwork.” When fatigued it causes these athletes to not be attentive in classes and to not retain or learn the information present. Another reason this problem is complex is due to these athletes lives outside of school and football, so this goes for family issues and financial issues. Some athletes have to work jobs because of the economic state that their family may be in and this causes them to be fatigued and miss classes or just not pay attention like stated before. There are important insights from both ed psychology and the counseling disciplines. Ed psych is one of the disciplines because it deals with the learning process and also social, emotional, and cognitive processes throughout life. Counseling would be like the athlete sitting down talking with the coach about his/her sport or an advisor about academics. These two disciplines can both help solve this problem with athletes. This problem has not been able to be addressed by one single discipline due to the complexity of the problem. Different disciplines are needed to attack different parts of the problem so that it can be more effectively attempted to solve. It can’t be solved by one discipline because like Smoll said “some people think that not playing sports would help with academics while others think it would be the same.” This problem is important because these athletes are going to school but not able to do much in life. Not having a college degree limits you from a lot of different opportunities that you could have in life. “This crisis is not one that we can ignore. Too many extremely bright African Americans are ending up in prison. This includes former college athletes who do not have a degree.” (Jones) These student athletes leave school with no degree and can’t find a decent job so some go back to the same old bad conditions they left and end up getting into trouble.

Smoll, Frank. “Failing in School vs. Playing Sports.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 3 Nov. 2014, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/coaching-and-parenting-young-athletes/201411/failing-in-school-vs-playing-sports.

Jones, Stephen. “Athletes Drop Out Rate a Crisis in the Making.” SelfGrowth.com, www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Athletes_Drop_Out_Rate_a_Crisis_in_the_Making.html.

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African American athletes and their struggles with academics is a complex problem. This is complex because when looking at this problem you have to take into consideration that they play sports which takes up a great amount of their time and also creates fatigue within the athlete. When fatigued it causes these athletes to not be attentive in classes and to not retain or learn the information present. Another reason this problem is complex is due to these athletes lives outside of school and football, so this goes for family issues and financial issues. Some athletes have to work jobs because of the economic state that their family may be in and this may cause them to be fatigued and miss classes or just not pay attention like stated before. There are important insights from both ed psychology and the counseling disciplines. Ed psych is one of the disciplines because it deals with the learning process and also social, emotional, and cognitive processes throughout life. Counseling would be like the athlete sitting down talking with the coach about his/her sport or an advisor about academics. These two disciplines can both help solve this problem with athletes. This problem has not been able to be addressed by one single discipline due to the complexity of the problem. Different disciplines are needed to attack different parts of the problem so that it can be more effectively attempted to solve. This problem is important because these athletes are going to school but not able to do much in life. Not having a college degree limits you from a lot of different opportunities that you could have in life.

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Step 2: Justify Using An Interdisciplinary Approach

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Step 2: Justify Using An Interdisciplinary Approach

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Many athletes are given scholarships to play ball at the collegiate level based on their athleticism and academic talents. However, many don’t always graduate when they’re supposed too and some end up dropping out for various reasons. This case will be focused on college student-athletes in the U.S and their performance in college.

The following questions will be addressed this case:

Why do athletes complete 4 years of college but still do not graduate?

What extra strategies could colleges/ universities implement in order to help student-athletes out in academics?

What are some things that hinder students from doing well in academics?

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I started my revisions by first going and doing more research on my topic. Dr. Omer stated that I needed to backup my statements by finding research and data, and cite them for credibility. I added more details to my step 1 and went and look at some credible sites like NCAA website and two other blogs, one written by an educational psychologist and the other was a senior editor. I found some statistics and facts to show African American athletes academic progress through graduation rates. Another thing I did was make my step 1 much more longer because it was to short. I had to add a title to my step 1 of this project and I named it “African American Athletes Left Behind”. I now only have one question because the other two questions were more of finding solutions for the problem. The last thing I did was try and answer the so what question by stating that athletes can’t do anything after college sometimes because they were thrown in a major that they did not want and is not competitive in the marketplace.

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Many African American athletes are given scholarships to play ball at the collegiate level based on their athleticism and academic talents. This case will be focused on college student-athletes in the U.S and their performance in college. However, many don’t always graduate when they’re supposed too and/or some end up dropping out for various reasons. Dr. Jones stated that “college athletes dropout often times because of lack of preparation for college from their high school and middle school years”. A lot of African American students tend to come from more schools that don’t make AYP(Adequate Yearly Progress), meaning their school’s education is not that good, therefore they are not prepared for college. Graduation rates for athletes as a whole have been slowly increasing but African American athletes still lag behind other student athletes. This is due to some of the same reasons I presented earlier that Dr. Jones stated and also because of bad study habits, not knowing how to study properly. Dr. Jones is a educational psychologist that has been helping economically disadvantaged succeed in college. The GSR (graduation success rate) is the rate in which the NCAA has been showing off the 87% graduation success rate that student athletes achieved in 2017. However it does account for students who transfer in good standing academically, but there are some things that are unclear about this rate and helps boost this rate when it shouldn’t be that high. “The federal graduation rate counts any student that leaves a school as an academic failure, regardless if he/she enrolls at another school”, this rate isn’t well for tracking transfers because even if they graduate from another school, they are still considered a dropout. The FGR states that African Americans athletes have a 59% graduate rate compared to Whites with a 73% with a 66% overall.(Hosick & Durham) This shows the drop off in academics between African Americans and others.  Many of these athletes get to college and don't really have an idea of what they want to major in. Just like Southall said, “If we just want to get players into some major to keep them eligible, we're not necessarily putting them in a degree that's going to really position them to be competitive in the marketplace” athletes are sometimes just thrown into an easy major that benefits the team or University and athletes don’t really get anything out of it. Athletes are in school to learn more about what they want to do in life as well as play ball. This leaves student-athletes without anything to fall back on after the sport they are playing in college. Universities always talk about there’s life after college sports whether it’s pro (which is a very slim to none chance for many college athletes) or starting your work career, so athletes major/education is very important in the next phase of life after sports.

The following question will be addressed this case:

Why do these athletes complete 4 years of college but still do not graduate?

Citations

Jones, Stephen. “Athletes Drop Out Rate a Crisis in the Making.” SelfGrowth.com, www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Athletes_Drop_Out_Rate_a_Crisis_in_the_Making.html.

Hosick Michelle, and Meghan Durham. “DI African-American Student-Athletes Graduate at Record Rates.” NCAA.org - The Official Site of the NCAA, 8 Nov. 2017, www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/di-african-american-student-athletes-graduate-record-rates.

Steinbach, Paul. “Record NCAA Graduation Rates Don't Tell The Whole Story.” Athletic Business, Dec. 2011, www.athleticbusiness.com/Governing-Bodies/record-ncaa-graduation-rates-don-t-tell-the-whole-story.html.

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Step 1: Defining the Problem/Stating the Research Question.

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Step 1: Defining the Problem/Stating the Research Question.