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Black males often are raised in poverty, exposed to violence and toxic environments that create different levels of trauma that can cause social emotional problems which lead to mental health problems. These problems along with a lack of adequate relationships with teachers can affect their schooling and attainment. No wonder, black males often suffer disproportionately from poor achievement, high suspension, exclusions, and drop-out rates. Young people who struggle in school often lack the social and emotional skills (or “soft skills”) needed to succeed academically, deal with anger, make sound choices, and handle challenging situations constructively, ethically, and manage behaviors that prevent them from being suspended/excluded from school. It does not help that teachers who are often afraid of them, and do not know how to relate to them and lack emotional literacy (EL) themselves. Unfortunately, because of these challenges schools will often place black males in special education classes.

There is a cognitive/non-cognitive divide in education. Most of the school curriculum/pedagogy focus on cognitive aspects of education/learning (e.g., memory-based education) when compared to non-cognitive aspects of learning (social and emotional skills/learning). If our young people are to realize their full potential in our schools, it is crucial we begin educating the “whole child” and increase social and emotional provisions in our schools. It is the cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of learning combined that make young people successful. We need a new educational paradigm/mind shift. After all, educating the whole child makes good sense of course, all learning has an emotional base.

While there has been a proliferation of social and emotional learning programs in schools in recent years, social and emotional learning programs that focus on black males and cultural competence are limited. Therefore, we propose a new framework for social and emotional development/learning model for black males that focus on cultural competence. Our EL/cultural competence model is called teacher empathy, which focuses on relationship black males have with their teachers and therefore focuses on both the pupil/student EL and the teachers. The aim/goal of our model/curriculum is to: improve academic performance, motivate and help both black males and teachers, regulate and manage their behaviors more effectively, and reduce suspensions, exclusions, and drop-outs.

The purpose of this paper was to empirically integrate the structural and perceptual control programs in the identity theory. This integration involved examining how the structural concepts of prominence and salience moderate the impact that the perceptual control process of nonverification has role-specific self-esteem.

We use survey data from normative and counter-normative conditions in the parent and spouse identities to test a series of structural equation models. In each model, we test the direct impacts of prominence, salience, and nonverification on worth, efficacy, and authenticity. We also test interaction effects between prominence and nonverification as well as salience and nonverification on the three self-esteem outcomes.

Out of the 24 possible interaction effects, only three were significant. By contrast, the expected positive effects of prominence on worth were supported among all identities, while the expected positive effects of salience on self-esteem were supported only among normative identities. Also as expected, the negative effects of nonverification on self-esteem were supported, though most strongly among counter-normative identities.

Our findings indicate that the structural and perceptual control concepts have independent effects on self-esteem. Thus, future research should incorporate both programs when examining identity processes on self-esteem. However, depending on the normativity or counter-normativity of the identities of interest, research may find it useful to focus on concepts from one program over the other.

This paper is a test of integration of the two research paradigms in the identity theory, which addresses the micro–macro problem in a unique way.