The Journal article/study titled “Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Classroom: Does It Promote Student Learning?” in The Journal of Higher Education from September-October 2001 conducted a study of 1,258 students spread out throughout seven four year colleges. The students were in the field of engineering, and were mostly white males.
Students completed a series of questionnaires upon completion of the course which shed light on their experiences- how they retained information, what their diversity experience was like, how well their problem solving skills grew, etc. The answers were on a basic 1-4 scale.
The numbers in this study show that while having a less homogenous, more diverse population in the classroom may have had a positive impact on class performance, it wasn’t enough to be considered statistically significant. Even more, there was virtually no difference in class performance in the classrooms where there was no diversity at all.
A valid reason for this is that the seven colleges represented in this study are not representative of higher education as a whole, and even more importantly, the field of engineering consists of students who already are performing at a high level academically and have high problem solving skills, and are mostly (73%) male who are non minority. Taking this into account, it’s very likely that the data is skewed. The authors of this study themselves even urge not to take this as gospel, and that more studies would be needed in order to come to a more concrete conclusion.
(I have attached the pdf version of this article below)
I sent you some comments by email–please take a look.