CAREER: African American Mothers' School Involvement at the Kindergarten Transition

随着美国少数族裔儿童数量的迅速增加，研究人员有必要改进用于研究少数族裔儿童发展的研究方法。目前许多关于少数民族儿童的研究充满了理论、方法和概念上的问题。当前研究中普遍存在的一些问题是种族和社会阶层的等式，过度使用将有色人种与白人进行比较的设计，以及将社会阶层作为学校失败的负面解释。该项目将通过一个研究项目、针对少数民族的研究方法的研究生课程的教学、以及对几乎没有研究机会的非洲裔美国本科生的培训和指导来解决这些问题。在这个研究项目中，100名非裔美国儿童和他们的母亲将从幼儿园开始到二年级结束被跟踪调查。这项研究将采用一种多方法、纵向的策略来检验非裔美国母亲对学校经历的记忆、对学校的当前信念、育儿效能感、种族认同、对歧视的感知以及与孩子的互动方式，通过母亲参与孩子的学校教育，影响孩子进入幼儿园及以后的社会和学业适应。据推测，母亲对她们在学校的经历的记忆将构成她们与孩子在学校交往的方式，他们参与的活动，他们分享的讨论，以及他们对学校相关行为和态度的建模。课程将相当重视这些母亲作为非裔美国人的经历，包括她们对目前和上学时发生的歧视的看法。本研究旨在进一步探讨社会阶层与儿童学校适应之间的密切关系，并进一步解释家庭与学校互动的复杂起源。该项目的教学方面将与研究计划完全整合，并包括指导部分和课程开发部分。对于指导部分，六名本科生，两名来自主办机构，四名来自北卡罗来纳中央大学，当地的历史黑人大学（HBU），将参与研究过程的每个阶段，就像研究生一样。对于课程开发部分，首席研究员将设计并教授一门关于有色人种研究方法的研究生课程。

Award AbstractPI: RowleyCAREER: African American Mothers' School Involvement at the Kindergarten TransitionAs the number of people from ethnic minority backgrounds in the United States is rapidly increasing, it is important that researchers improve the research methods used to address development in minority children. Much of the current research on ethnic minority children is fraught with theoretical, methodological, and conceptual problems. Some issues that are prevalent in current studies are the equation of race and social class, the overuse of designs that compare people of color with Whites, and the negative focus on social class as an explanation for school failure. This project will address these issues through a research project, the teaching of a graduate course on research methods with minorities, and the training and mentoring of African-American undergraduate students with minimal access to research opportunities. For the research project, one hundred African-American children and their mothers will be followed from just before kindergarten begins through the end of their second grade year. The study will employ a multi-method, longitudinal strategy to examine the way that African-American mothers' memories of school experiences, current beliefs about school, sense of parenting efficacy, racial identity, perceptions of discrimination, and interactions with their children influence that child's social and academic adjustment to kindergarten and beyond by way of mothers' involvement in the child's schooling. It is assumed that mothers' memories of their experiences in school will frame the way they socialize their children for school, the activities they engage in, the discussions they share, and their modeling of school-related behaviors and attitudes. There will be considerable emphasis placed on the mothers' experiences as African Americans, including their perceptions of discrimination occurring currently and when they were in school. The study is aimed at further examining the strong relationship between social class and children's school adjustment and at further explicating the complex beginnings of home-school interactions. The teaching aspect of the project will be fully integrated with the research program and entails a mentoring component and a curriculum development component. For the mentoring component, six undergraduate students, two from the host institution and four from North Carolina Central University, a local Historically Black University (HBU), will be involved in each stage of the research process, much like graduate students. For the curriculum development component, the principal investigator will design and teach a graduate level course on research methods with populations of color.