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

获奖摘要PI：RowleyCAREER：非裔美国母亲在幼儿园过渡期的学校参与随着美国少数民族背景的人数迅速增加，研究人员改进用于解决少数民族儿童发展问题的研究方法非常重要。 目前对少数民族儿童的许多研究充满了理论，方法和概念问题。 目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，以及对社会阶层的负面关注作为学校失败的解释。该项目将通过一个研究项目、教授关于少数群体研究方法的研究生课程以及培训和指导很少有研究机会的非裔美国本科生来解决这些问题。在这个研究项目中，100名非洲裔美国儿童和他们的母亲将从幼儿园开始到二年级结束。 这项研究将采用多种方法，纵向战略，以检查的方式，非洲裔美国人的母亲的记忆学校的经验，目前对学校的信念，父母的效能感，种族认同，歧视的看法，并与他们的孩子的互动影响，孩子的社会和学术调整幼儿园及以后的母亲参与孩子的学校教育。 据推测，母亲对自己在学校的经历的记忆将框定她们在学校与孩子交往的方式，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建模。 将相当重视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，并进一步阐明家庭与学校互动的复杂开端。 该项目的教学方面将与研究计划充分结合，并需要一个辅导组件和课程开发组件。 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州中央大学，一所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，主要研究者将设计和教授研究生水平的课程，研究方法与有色人种。

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.