How Can Positive Psychology Help ‎Minority Students? ‎‎

Coauthored with Abby Wilfert

Imagine you are attending a seminar course with hundreds of students. You struggle to reflect on the class material because you are preoccupied with the stress of understanding only half of the professor’s words. Seeing your peers chime in with well-received commentary, you attempt to contribute a new perspective to the discussion—but your comments are apathetically disregarded. Not only are you discouraged from ever again contributing, you begin to phase out as you can’t play a significant role in the discussion.

Once the class is dismissed, you stop a peer and suggest meeting for coffee over the weekend. The offer is passive-aggressively denied. So you spend the weekend, and every weekend until graduation, with students of your same background, culture, and language. Now, with diploma in hand, you are distressed by the dearth of networking prospects and cultural fluency that might otherwise allow you to obtain a well-paying job to suit your qualifications.

The domino cascade illustrated in this short vignette concretizes the need for change.

Since learning is ‎a cognitive, social, and cultural experience, many zero-gen students—who immigrate from foreign countries—struggle to learn. ‎When zero-gen students attend ‎American classrooms, they feel like ‎outsiders whose experiences ‎are irrelevant. “I participate but my insights and stories ‎do not resonate with my American ‎counterparts,” says a zero-gen student. “I feel alienated and shunned from the classroom learning community.”

Zero-gen students can struggle to make ‎friends because of ‎language and cultural ‎barriers. They can feel profiled, prejudged, ‎and excluded from the social circles on ‎campus. They can feel misunderstood because ‎their attempts to make friends are not ‎reciprocated by their American counterparts. “I reach out to my peers to get coffee or study together,” says a zero-gen student. “But my requests are passive-aggressively ignored.”

Although zero-gen students may graduate in successful numbers, they gain only a sliver of the college experience. But the zero-gen story does not have to end with unfortunate realities. A fruitful path exists behind the untapped door of positive psychology. In recent years, this theory has colored higher education in strengths-based approaches in career services, mental health interventions, and academic assessment. The maladies of university life experienced by zero-gen students can find healing in positive psychology.

“Recognizing strengths instead of improving weaknesses” is the mantra of positive psychology. Zero-gen students—who have rich experiences, wisdom, and talents, but who lack the cultural marks of acceptance—suffer at U.S. colleges and university. Dr. Tara Yosso coined a six-part model of community cultural wealth. In this paradigm, members of the non-dominant culture view themselves as creators of value. Steeped in self-examination and self-affirmation, community cultural wealth serves to recognize the worth of zero-gen students.

Instead of critiquing their imperfect English, can we acknowledge the hurdles of adult learning and be inspired by their endeavor to adopt a second or third language? Instead of prejudging them as culturally inept, can we admire their natural ability to adjust their ways of being across environments? Instead of shunning their attempts at authentic connection, can we extend a welcome hand and bring them into the fullness of our culture? In other words: Instead of reacting with repulsion to their struggles, can we celebrate ‎the innate hope and perseverance they demonstrate?‎

Although it is often mistaken for childish optimism, positive psychology is an invaluable tool. Only when higher education can speak honestly to the worth of the zero-gen can this tool be fully employed. Until then, higher education falls short on delivering the vital promise of improving lives.

How might the zero-gen story have been different if the university intervened to ensure their immersion? Or if the faculty pursued their input with as much regard as every other student? Or if peers simply accepted their invitation to meet outside of class? Positive psychology begins with the value of recognition—of oneself and others—that flourishes through active learning and ends with lives transformed.

Abby Wilfert is a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota.