2008 — 2015 |
Sellers, Robert (co-PI) [⬀] Sellers, Robert (co-PI) [⬀] Rowley, Stephanie (co-PI) [⬀] Jagers, Robert (co-PI) [⬀] O'connor, Carla Chavous, Tabbye [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Irads: Center For the Study of Black Youth in Context (Csbyc) @ University of Michigan Ann Arbor
The Center for the Study of Black Youth in Context (CSBYC) will focus on research and action on social, psychological, and educational development among African American children and youth. The CSBYC has four major objectives: (1) to develop an infrastructure for a series of coordinated research investigations of the ecological, cultural, racial, and familial contexts that influence the development of African American children; (2) to provide training for early scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate students around skills necessary to do research and practice with diverse populations of ethnic minority children in diverse community and school settings; (3) to cultivate collaborative relationships and partnerships between the University of Michigan and local communities to inform current and prospective practice and intervention approaches for improving youth social and educational outcomes; (4) to serve as a resource and clearinghouse for scholarship, training, and practice approaches that can be utilized by scholarly and community stakeholders in the state more broadly, as well as among institutional and community settings nationally. To meet these goals, CSBYC investigators will conduct an initial research study of middle school aged children in four diverse community settings. The goals of the research project are to study ways parents and family caregivers socialize their children around race and to examine the influence of various types of parenting on child academic and social outcomes. Using multiple methods (surveys, family diary studies, qualitative interviews, and observations), the research will show how parents choose parenting strategies based on characteristics of their communities (e.g., racial and economic diversity) along with their appraisals of the racial, cultural, and class dynamics of their communities.
The CSBYC research will contribute to understanding of normative development of African American children within their varying family, neighborhood, and school contexts, which has received relatively little systematic attention. The study of Black youth from different social class backgrounds is important for a number of reasons. First, despite the growing Black middle class in America, a disproportionate number of studies have focused only on low-income Black children in urban settings and/or on high-risk youth populations. Consequently, race and social class often are confounded in research and in its application to practices/interventions to enhance youth development. There is less knowledge of family, educational, and social development processes of African American children across different social class groups and the implications of community social class and demographic diversity, such as Black families' movement to, and increasing representation in, middle class or suburban settings. For instance, studies show that parental education is one of the biggest predictors of school achievement among African American youth, yet even middle class African American students trail their European American counterparts in academic achievement. Such patterns suggest that parents of different social class backgrounds differentially negotiate the schooling process for their children. It also suggests there still is much to be learned about variation in family processes within lower and higher socioeconomic levels. By examining Black families from diverse community contexts, the CSBYC investigators will address important questions about the nature of development among Black youth in ways that can support the efforts of researchers, communities, schools, and families to encourage successful development among children and adolescents.
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2010 — 2017 |
Sellers, Robert (co-PI) [⬀] Sellers, Robert (co-PI) [⬀] O'connor, Carla Chavous, Tabbye [⬀] Thompson, Levi (co-PI) [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Contextual Research-Large Empirical: Race and Gender in Context: a Multi-Method of Study of Risk and Resilience in African American College Students' Pathways in Stem Areas @ University of Michigan Ann Arbor
This research project addresses a persistent STEM problem: recruiting and retaining African American students. The outcomes should expand knowledge and understanding of factors that are deterrents to African American students entering STEM disciplines by examining the academic progress of college students at four different universities (University of Michigan, Michigan State, Wayne State and Western Michigan). The study will include students in both STEM and non-STEM majors to study processes unique to students from differing academic contexts. The Principal Investigators will collaborate with the NSF funded Michigan-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (MI-LSAMP), a multi-university initiative dedicated to promoting persistence in STEM areas among underrepresented minority college students.
The longitudinal, multi-method design focuses on within group variation in the impact of personal characteristics and contextual stigma on African American student STEM success, which is an unexplored area of research. Multiple theoretical models of relationships among racial stigma, gender, racial, academic and other identities and academic adjustment and performance will be tested. Major research questions include: What types of stigma do students experience around their racial and gender group memberships? Does academic identity mediate the relation between racial stigma experiences and academic adjustment? Are there direct effects of racial identity and/or gender identity on academic identity, daily/situational motivation, and overall academic adjustment?
The research includes four inter-related studies using different methods integrated into a single research project. They include a longitudinal survey, a diary study, in-depth semi-structured interviews, and an ethnographic assessment of the institutions. Although the studies are designed to answer independent questions, combining the studies affords a unique opportunity to answer a number of questions regarding the processes by which African American students succeed and others fail in STEM fields in a manner that would not be possible without such a multi-method design.
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