Coming to terms: a discussion of John Ogbu’s cultural-ecological theory of minority academic achievement

Over the course of 30 years of academic work, the late educational anthropologist John Ogbu had an enormous influence on educational research, and on educational anthropology in particular. In this paper, I lay out the tenets of his cultural-ecological (CE) theory of minority student responses to schooling. I also offer critical commentary and point out ways in which CE theory can be sharpened to facilitate increasingly nuanced and accurate analyses. Even as I point to specific problems in Dr Ogbu’s work, my suggestions for enhancing CE theory do not contradict its basic tenets, which provide a solid resource for researchers who study minority student communities. Rather, they add nuance to it by incorporating recent developments in anthropological theory.