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

奖摘要PI：Rowley CAREER：非裔美国母亲在幼儿园过渡时期的学校参与随着美国少数族裔背景的人数迅速增加，研究人员改进用于研究少数族裔儿童发展的研究方法是很重要的。目前对少数民族儿童的研究大多存在理论、方法和观念上的问题。当前研究中流行的一些问题是种族和社会阶层的平衡，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业失败的解释的负面关注。该项目将通过一个研究项目、教授少数群体研究方法的研究生课程，以及培训和指导机会最少的非裔美国本科生来解决这些问题。在这项研究项目中，100名非裔美国儿童和他们的母亲将被跟踪调查，从幼儿园开始到二年级结束。这项研究将采用多方法、纵向策略，考察非裔美国母亲对学校经历的记忆、当前对学校的信念、父母的效能感、种族认同、歧视观念以及与孩子的互动，通过母亲参与孩子的学校教育，影响孩子在幼儿园及以后的社会和学业适应。人们认为，母亲对学校经历的记忆将框定她们在学校对孩子进行社交的方式，她们参与的活动，她们分享的讨论，以及她们对学校相关行为和态度的模范。将相当重视这些母亲作为非裔美国人的经历，包括她们对目前和在学校时发生的歧视的看法。这项研究旨在进一步考察社会阶层和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开始。该项目的教学方面将与研究方案充分结合，并包括一个辅导部分和一个课程开发部分。在指导部分，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(当地历史上的黑人大学(HBU))，将参与研究过程的每个阶段，很像研究生。对于课程开发部分，首席调查员将设计并教授一门研究生水平的课程，内容是研究有色人种的研究方法。

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.