The article “Savage and the Slave: Critical Race Theory” by Timothy Lintner is based on meta-theoretical analysis which pays a special attention to concepts and world views. The framework of the study is critical race theory. The article discusses the problem of racial stereotyping and its impact on education and learning process. The main problem is that modern education is subjective influenced by personal opinion of teachers and authors of textbook, upon their interpretation of American history and racial relations in society.
The meta-theoretical perspective is based on literature analysis and personal observations of the author. A framework of the study is a critical race theory which helps to explain and analyze the concepts and issues related to the research study. To test for treatment effectiveness across behaviors, the behaviors are all measuring the same underlying construct, as required in meta-analysis. Internal validity are satisfied for the study, but external validity involving the generalization to a larger population is probably questionable. In single-subject research, great detail is provided regarding the characteristics of the subjects. Therefore, the generalizations to a larger population are to those individuals similar to the subjects in the research study. The article gives a special attention to three aspects: racial stereotypes in textbooks, personal opinion of teachers and construction of curriculum.
The meta-analysis involves quantifying the treatment results of research studies and applying statistics to those quantifications. Timothy Lintner has relied on qualitative reviews of the literature to evaluate the generality of treatments. As with other psychological reviews, shortcomings have been identified with reviews of case literature. The narrative reviewers may be criticized for not evaluating previous studies critically by failing to examine the research methodology, not examining the relationship of the study quality to study outcomes, and eliminating studies from consideration on an arbitrary basis. If the studies are explored systematically, then the presence or absence of confounding or intervening variables could be investigated. In addition, objective evaluation of study outcomes often is not possible, because most results are based on visual inspection. A narrative review is lengthier and more detailed than a quantitative review. Greater specificity was obtained in the qualitative review by Timothy Lintner, but the systematic examination of extraneous variables was lacking. Because meta-analysis does not depend on frequency counts and statistical significance as does the vote-counting method, some of the criticisms leveled against the qualitative reviews cannot be directed at a meta-analysis. In addition, the Timothy Lintner would not find vote counting of utility, because very few studies report statistical significance.
The neta-analysis has been described by Timothy Lintner as having four general purposes: (a) to describe a body of studies, (b) to summarize the overall effect of a particular treatment, (c) to identify variables that influence the magnitude and direction of the study outcomes, and (d) to quantify the magnitude and significance of the treatment’s effect. Many of the techniques used in research studies are used by the meta-analyst to extract and organize the information for the review. The critical evaluation of previous research is carried out in the identification of variables that influence the magnitude and direction of the study outcomes. The analysis is based on Solorzano’s critical race theory (1997). “Critical race theory focuses on challenging the dominant discourse(s) on race and racism with reference to the study and practice of law and how the legal system facilitates and perpetuates the discrimination and subordination of certain ethnic groups” (Lintner 2005). Such identification is performed consistently for each study in the review, as opposed to the more inconsistent qualitative reviews of the literature. Although there are concerns expressed about how meta-analyses are performed, meta-analysis allows the researcher to investigate systematically the effects of extraneous variables, such as age, duration of the treatment, and varying treatment methods, an advantage typically lacking in the qualitative reviews.
The research design allows the author of the article to apply the theory to current studies of race and stereotypes and evaluate the research issues. The format for the presentation of the results of the meta-analysis is rigorous–a listing of all the references used in the meta-analysis, criteria on the basis of which inclusion of studies was made, procedures used to achieve the literature review, variables extracted from each study reviewed, methods for computing the effect sizes, and the statistical methods used to investigate the influential variables (. On the one hand, Lintner was not inclined to summarize empirically the results of all other studies, given their tradition of visual inspection. On the other hand, the techniques proposed may be inappropriate for single-case data or not easy to compute. Meta-analysis allows Lintner to investigate systematically whether a variable is responsible for an effect and to assess under which conditions and with what type of subjects the effect occurs, which we would argue goes beyond the evidence of one or two experiments. In parallel with the between-subject experiment, then, the within-subject effect size should be defined as a ratio of the control-treatment mean difference to the baseline standard deviation. And again in parallel with the multiple-group experiment, the researcher must decide if homogeneity of variance is present in the baseline and treatment phase.
The case study is based on critical theory characterized by detailed examination of the problem and its critical analysis. The author identifies the alternatives, because his intent was to discover what the available research says about the effect of a particular behavioral intervention and to summarize accurately the research on this treatment that is reported in the literature. Utilizing such an approach allows the author to examine systematically the covariation of study outcomes. Such a systematic investigation usually is not carried out in the qualitative or traditional literature review. Additionally, the reader of such a review may find it difficult to determine what support there is for the conclusions of the reviewer, because conclusions of a review should be stated explicitly and supported empirically. Such empirical support is difficult to obtain in a traditional review. In particular, the author concludes that “teachers must choose material that is free from blatant biases, particularly biases that perpetuate racial stereotyping. In this way, textbooks and other supplemental materials serve to give voice to maligned or neglected peoples, places, or events in history” (Lintner 2004).
In sum, the article is based on critical theory which allows the author to investigate and analyze the problem of racial stereotyping in teaching American history. The research is objective, systematic, straightforward, and replicable as are the individual studies being reviewed. The choice of methods depends on the variance and covariance assumptions that one is willing to make. The researcher pays particular attention to which assumptions are tenable before deciding on an appropriate analysis. Procedures have been proposed, based on varying assumptions for determining effect-size estimates from a case investigation. The approaches are simple to use.
References
- Lintner, T. (2004). The Savage and the Slave: Critical Race Theory, Racial
- Stereotyping, and the Teaching of American History. Journal of Social Studies Research. 2008.