Building on Youngsters' Strengths in a Diverse Society

尽管由于家庭贫困、歧视和社区高度混乱，本地出生和移民的少数民族青少年往往在教育上处于不利地位，但也很明显，许多人茁壮成长。这项研究强调了独特的背景可以成为青少年和年轻人优势的来源，以及这些优势如何增强弹性和提高成功结果的可能性。其中一个涉及价值观和动机的群体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风格的变化有关，学生在学业上面临着不同的挑战。这项研究展示了文化价值观如何塑造动机和学习风格，以及学校和年轻人的结果如何受到家庭和学校是否承认这种差异的影响。此外，动机水平与成就（学习）轨迹有关，但少数群体青年和女性特别容易受到“冲击”（如家人去世或转学），使他们偏离轨迹。因此，成就被视为一个动态的过程，涉及价值观的群体差异，动机水平的变化，以及学生如何从冲击中反弹，重新获得他们的学习轨迹。 第二个观点涉及社会依恋的群体差异。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，也根据他们的突出性或重要性来定义。有群体差异方面的档案涉及类型和突出的关系，而这些，反过来，影响学校的成果。第三个视角涉及学校和社区，或上下文，变化，以及这种变化如何直接和间接地影响成绩。背景变化是用关系术语来定义的，包括多样性（异质性）、不平等和巩固的不平等（当不平等与群体差异系统地相关时）。学校和邻里的特点，通常用于教育研究，以及新的措施，邻里的特点，包括在内。这项研究使用了教育部的数据集：国家教育纵向研究（NELS），高中效率研究（HSES）和共同核心数据（学校）。邻里特征来自1990年美国人口普查（邮政编码水平）和IRS（邮政编码水平）的社区组织数据。新的程序被用来测量青年的档案类型的关系和他们的显着性，参数化的背景效应，并分析成就轨迹。成就和学校成果被认为是涉及价值观，动机和附件嵌套在家庭，学校和邻里环境的过程。研究使用模糊集和动态，多层次的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.