Beth Kurtz-Costes - US grants

The transition to middle school is a time of great change for most youth. Although many of these changes are positive, the middle school transition is also associated with declines in motivation, self-concept, and achievement for many young adolescents. Little research on this critical transition has focused on African American students, who face additional challenges associated with their growing awareness of racial differences and racial discrimination. The goal of this project is to identify factors that lead to success across the transition to middle school for Black youth, and to investigate how the process differs for students transitioning into a racially consonant middle school environment versus those moving into a racially dissonant context. A primary focus of the study is the role of parents' attitudes and beliefs about achievement and their race socialization strategies on the achievement striving of African American adolescents. At Time 1, 300 African American fifth graders in predominantly Black elementary schools (i.e., at least 75% African American students) will complete measures of parent race socialization, race centrality, attributional beliefs, educational utility, perceived competence, and classroom engagement. Their parents will complete measures of race socialization, race centrality, attributional beliefs, educational utility, and perceptions of the child's competence. Teachers will rate students' abilities and classroom engagement. Two years later, when these youth are in middle schools that vary in racial composition, the adolescents, parents, and teachers will again complete the study measures. Achievement data will be collected from schools for both assessment points. Analyses will distinguish among the experiences of Black youth in predominantly Black versus racially integrated schools and will elucidate parental socialization that leads to successful academic achievement for African American youth.

This research will inform both general developmental theory and research specific to African American families and children. In terms of general development, it will further explicate the critical role that parenting plays during the transition to middle school. The study will also address how the development of race-specific attitudes (racial identity and race-related achievement attributions) affect the educational experiences of Black youth. Finally, the study will be a timely assessment of the role of school racial composition during this age of rapid resegregation of America's schools. Thus, these results will inform post-desegregation educational policy, policies aimed at eliminating the Black-White test score gap, and policies directed toward school reform at the middle school level more broadly.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this project is to investigate causes of gender differences in achievement striving among Black youth. We will examine the relationships among parent beliefs and practices, adolescent beliefs, and achievement striving in African-American adolescents. We hypothesize that parental socialization messages about discrimination lead children to develop attributional beliefs that deny personal responsibility for achievement outcomes. Instead of attributing academic outcomes to internal factors such as effort or ability, these youth attribute outcomes--particularly failure--to discrimination. Although these beliefs permit Black youth to maintain high self-regard in the face of failure, they do not encourage achievement striving. Because of gender differences in race socialization, Black boys are more likely to develop these attributional beliefs than Black girls, and also to develop identities that emphasize their competence in non-academic realms such as social relationships, sports, and music. In contrast, Black girls are socialized to have racial pride. A strong sense of pride, coupled with beliefs about personal efficacy, enable Black girls to develop self-identities that include a belief in academic competence, thereby enhancing classroom motivation and adaptive responses to failure. We will also examine whether race pride socialization, positive racial identity, and internal attributions reduce gender differences in achievement and achievement striving. We propose to test these hypotheses in a group of 200 African-American youth and their parents. Adolescents will complete measures of race socialization, race centrality, gender and race stereotypes, attributions, perceived competence, classroom engagement, and self-esteem. Standardized achievement scores will be retrieved from school records. Parents will complete measures of race socialization, race centrality, gender and race stereotypes, causal attributions regarding the child's achievement outcomes, and perceptions of the child's competence and achievement striving. Findings from the proposed study should advance our understanding of firmly entrenched gender differences among African-American youth and provide recommendations for points of intervention aimed at African-American boys.

Abstract

This collaborative project aims to study the effects of personal and group identity variables on STEM educational outcomes. Longitudinal data will be collected and analyzed on a number of self and other motivational variables to understand how these personal and social factors are likely to determine the educational trajectories and decisions of African-American youth. Little research, though, has addressed developmental changes in stereotype awareness and endorsement, or ramifications of stereotypes and discrimination for identity development and achievement striving in Black adolescents. The proposed study will model the relationship of two salient group memberships, race and gender, with achievement outcomes for Black youth. Prior research has underscored the need to attend to race and gender simultaneously, as well as the importance of evaluating motivational and achievement outcomes within academic domains (e.g., English and science).
The proposed study is an extension and expansion of a previous NSF-funded longitudinal study of African American youth. The goal of this follow-up study is to concentrate more explicitly on the simultaneous effects of race-related and gender-related experiences and beliefs and on investigating how these experiences play out across different course content domains (e.g., English, science, and mathematics). Using survey and qualitative methods, the study will describe normative development in self-concept, stereotypes, motivation, and parenting from fifth through twelfth grade. Another important goal of the project is to determine whether the advantages gained by girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) areas are maintained as they prepare to move through more advanced coursework and college applications, and what personal, family, and school context factors predict STEM interest and success for both genders. The proposed outcomes will aid in the understanding of how self-concept and other self variables impacts motivation as a predictor for success in STEM disciplines which may in turn broaden participation of under represented groups.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite considerable efforts to increase the representation of women and members of racial minorities in STEM disciplines, gender and race gaps persist. Academic stereotypes have been implicated in contributing to these gaps in several ways; the current research is designed to better understand how stereotypes shape children's expectancies for future success and valuing of specific academic domains. Aims of the proposed research are to test competing hypotheses about reasons for age, race, and gender differences in explicit race and gender stereotypes and to examine the relative importance of implicit and explicit stereotypes in predicting the motivational beliefs and behaviors of Black and White youth. If funded, this small project will lay the foundation for a larger longitudinal study examining the development of implicit and explicit academic stereotypes in Black and White youth. Three hundred White and African American youth from Grades 3, 6, and 9 will participate. The sample will be balanced on grade level, gender, and race. Building on new research in developmental and social psychology, the investigators will measure stereotypes both explicitly (using self-report measures) and implicitly (using cognitive tasks that do not require self-reports). Implicit measures will allow us to capture stereotypic thought processes that may operate outside awareness or beyond intentional control. By comparing implicit and explicit stereotypes, we aim to understand at what age's academic stereotypes begin to come automatically to mind, and when youth are willing and able to express versus reject these stereotypes. We will then be able to test hypotheses about age, race, and gender differences in stereotype reports, hoping to clarify inconsistent findings of earlier research. Students will also complete measures of academic self- concept, task interest, causal attributions, and domain-specific (i.e., English, science, and math) academic engagement and teachers will provide ratings of students' domain-specific engagement. Our tests of hypotheses about the relations between children's emerging stereotypes and their motivational beliefs and behaviors will enhance theory about ways that stereotypes lead some students to opt out of advanced classes in STEM disciplines and integrate the large literature on implicit social cognition with well-established theories of the development of achievement motivation. Thus, this project will shed light on the role that these aspects of implicit social cognition play in shaping group differences in achievement in STEM disciplines and identify new targets for interventions, potentially having a major impact on understanding the social dimensions of children's academic development.

This collaborative proposal focuses on African American parents' racial beliefs and experiences as mechanisms shaping their parenting relevant to youths' science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) success. The purpose of the longitudinal study is to investigate the relationship of parents' race related beliefs to their socialization (particularly their fostering of science and math skills) of their early adolescent children. The project links race as a social identity with parenting and young adolescents' performance in science and mathematics. The investigators will obtain survey data in Grades 6, 7, and 8 from 380 African American students, one of their parents, and their teachers. Hypotheses regarding the relationships between parents' race-related experiences and beliefs (i.e., racial discrimination, knowledge of inequalities, racial identity, and endorsement of race stereotypes) and the academic socialization of their children will be tested. Differences in these processes by child gender and ability will be examined.

The project's intellectual merit is its potential to advance understanding about STEM success for underrepresented youth. The focus will yield new insights in an area where African American youth are likely to face negative stereotypes and discriminatory treatment, and where most prior research has focused on classroom processes rather than parenting. Broader impacts of the work are in the realms of education and training; inclusion of under-represented groups; and dissemination to teachers, families, the public, and to the scientific community.

Racial disparities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have persisted for decades. This project assesses African American students' awareness of racial inequities and how such awareness is related to students' STEM motivation through three broad aims: (1) to investigate changes in students' science and math motivation as they transition to high school; (2) to measure changes in youth's knowledge of racial inequities across the high school transition and whether such knowledge is related to changes in STEM course-taking; and (3) to examine the influences of African American parents' race-related experiences and beliefs on their socialization of their children and on their children's STEM motivation. In addition to contributing to scientific theory regarding racial inequalities, motivation, and achievement outcomes, the study has the potential to inform intervention efforts that would target adolescents' and parents' knowledge of racial inequities and ways that families might foster youth's success in STEM domains. Immediate impacts include training of undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented backgrounds and creation of an intergroup dialogue program for students and parents aimed at increasing their race-related academic consciousness.


Participants are 380 African American youth and their parents and teachers who have already participated annually in this STEM-focused research project during the youth's middle school years. In this new stage of the project, students, parents, and teachers will complete surveys when youth are in Grades 9 and 10. Key hypotheses to be evaluated are (1) science and math motivation will be strongest among youth who already in middle school held an awareness of inequities, and whose motivational beliefs emphasize agency and efficacy; (2) students' awareness of racial achievement gaps will increase over time, and system-blame attributions (e.g., attributing achievement gaps to teacher bias) will lead to greater STEM persistence and success; (3) parents' knowledge of racial inequality will be positively associated with racial pride socialization and preparation of their children for discrimination; and (4) parents' racial socialization, homework monitoring, school involvement, and encouragement of youth's extracurricular STEM activities will be positively associated with youth's STEM success. We will test these hypotheses using latent growth curve modeling, assessing change over time and ways in which earlier measures (e.g., students' and parents' awareness of achievement gaps when youth were in middle school) predict change in parents' socializing behaviors and students' STEM motivation and success. These results will inform our intergroup dialogue program, which will be designed with the collaboration of consultants at the University of Michigan and California State University.