Achievement Gap; an effect of mastery motivation theory?

So with Elena's presentation on motivation and urban schools, I ran across the most interesting RadioLab segment (thanks Laura for sharing this site with us last year in Bibliography). It's titled "The Obama Effect" and discusses how testing is affected by mastery motivation theory (Not explicitly, but that's my connection to it). Notice how when students think they will inherently not do as well because of race or gender, they do. When told gender or race is not an issue (or reminded of the accomplishments of President Obama), they do better.

The Obama Effect, Perhaps. 17:43 1/27/09 photo by Jef Poskanzer When Jad and Robert saw this article it made them think about an earlier study by Claude Steele. 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/09/obama-effect/ 

(yes i know it's foxnews....)

Enjoy!