Building on Youngsters' Strengths in a Diverse Society

虽然由于家庭贫困、歧视和高度的社区解体，本土出生的和移民的少数族裔青少年往往在教育上处于不利地位，但很明显，许多人也取得了成功。这项研究强调了不同的背景如何成为青少年和年轻人的优势来源，以及这些优势如何增强适应力和提高成功结果的可能性。在这个框架下，有三个视角对研究有影响。一种是研究群体在价值观和动机上的差异，以及这些差异如何影响结果。由于种族、民族和性别差异与动机和学习方式的差异有关，学生在学业上面临着不同的挑战。本研究展示了文化价值观如何塑造动机和学习风格，以及家庭和学校是否认识到这种差异如何影响学校和年轻人的成绩。此外，动机水平与成就（学习）轨迹有关，但少数族裔青年和女性特别容易受到“冲击”（如家庭死亡或转学）的影响，从而偏离自己的轨迹。因此，成就被视为一个动态过程，涉及群体价值观的变化，动机水平的变化，以及学生如何从冲击中反弹以重新获得学习轨迹。第二种观点与社会依恋的群体差异有关。这种依恋是根据关系的类型来定义的——同伴、邻居、老师、家庭成员和其他人，以及他们的显著性或重要性。在涉及关系类型和显著性的概况方面存在群体差异，而这些又反过来影响学校成绩。第三个视角与学校和社区或环境差异有关，以及这些差异如何直接或间接地影响成就。语境变异是用关系术语来定义的，包括多样性（异质性）、不平等和巩固不平等（当不平等与群体差异系统相关时）。包括教育研究中常用的学校和社区特征，以及社区特征的新测度。该研究使用了教育部的数据集：国家教育纵向研究（NELS）、高中有效性研究（HSES）和共同核心数据（针对学校）。社区特征取自1990年美国人口普查（邮政编码水平）和美国国税局（邮政编码水平）关于社区组织的数据。新的程序被用来测量年轻人的关系类型及其显著性，参数化背景效应，并分析成就轨迹。成就和学业成绩被认为是涉及价值观、动机和家庭、学校和社区环境中嵌套的依恋的过程。该研究使用模糊集和动态、多层次建模技术来捕捉这些过程。

Although native-born and immigrant minority youngsters are often educationally disadvantaged because of household poverty, discrimination, and high levels of community disorganization, it is also evident that many flourish. This study emphasizes the ways in which distinctive backgrounds can be sources of strengths for youngsters and for young adults, and how such strengths bolster resilience and enhance the likelihood of successful outcomes.Within this framework, three perspectives bear on the research. One deals with group differences in values and motivations and how such differences affect outcomes. Because race, ethnicity, and gender differences are related to variation in motivation and learning styles, students are academically challenged in different ways. This study demonstrates how cultural values shape motivation and learning styles, and also how school and young adult outcomes are affected by whether such differences are recognized in families and schools. Moreover, motivational levels are related to achievement (learning) trajectories, but minority youth and females are particularly susceptible to "shock" (such as a family death or changing schools) that throw them off their trajectories. Thus, achievement is treated as a dynamic process that involves group variation in values, changing levels of motivation, and how students rebound from shocks to regain their learning trajectories. The second perspective relates to group differences in social attachments. Such attachments are defined in terms of types of relationships - peers, neighbors, teachers, family members, and others and also in terms of their salience, or importance. There are group differences with respect to profiles involving types and salience of relationships, and, these, in turn, affect school outcomes. The third perspective relates to school and neighborhood, or contextual, variation, and how such variation directly and indirectly affects achievement. Contextual variation is defined in relational terms, including diversity (heterogeneity), inequality, and consolidated inequality (when inequality is systematically related to group differences). School and neighborhood characteristics that are generally used in education studies, as well as new measures of neighborhood characteristics, are included. The research uses Department of Education data sets: National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), the High School Effectiveness Study (HSES), and the Common Core of Data (for schools). Neighborhood characteristics are drawn from the 1990 US census (zip-code level) and from IRS (zip-code level) data on community organizations.New procedures are used to measure youths' profiles of types of relationships and their salience, to parameterize contextual effects, and to analyze achievement trajectories. Achievement and school outcomes are considered in terms of processes that involve values, motivation, and attachments nested within family, school, and neighborhood environments. The research uses fuzzy-set and dynamic, multi-level modeling techniques to capture these processes.