Center for Research on Culture, Development and Education

尽管进行了数千项研究，数百项补救计划，几十年来被认为是一场危机，但美国某些少数族裔群体的学业成绩低下仍然困扰着教育工作者、科学家和政策制定者。最近的几个趋势增加了这场危机的份量。首先，在未来50年内，被认定为少数民族的人将占美国人口的一半。第二，新的移民潮不断涌入，确保了学校和其他背景下的跨文化动态发生了根本但未知的变化。第三，美国已经发展成为一个“知识驱动”的经济，这使得坚实的教育，特别是数学和科学方面的教育，对越来越多的劳动力至关重要。最后，最近的联邦立法要求对学龄儿童进行年度标准化评估，这一前景可能会对某些通常在这些测试中表现不佳的少数族裔不利。与以往任何时候相比，我国相当大比例的儿童面临着学业失败的风险，这对现任政府“不让一个孩子掉队”的目标构成了严重威胁。根据这一国家目标，设在纽约大学(NYU)的文化、发展和教育研究中心(CRCDE)将进行研究，旨在确定所有儿童获得学业成功的途径。以前的研究仅局限于单一背景(例如，家庭、同伴关系、学校质量等)。在预测学业成绩方面，或者已经单独调查了种族、种族、移民地位、性别或社会经济地位的作用。然而，这两种方法都没有充分解决多种背景对教育成功和/或差距的贡献方式，也没有充分说明发展时期和文化的不同路径。此外，过分强调群体差异导致忽视了种族、社会经济或文化群体内的学业结果模式。最后，所有这些领域的研究都倾向于使用单一的方法，很少将调查、人种学、实验和观察方法整合在一起。为了解决这些差距，CRCDE将收集和传播有关在不同文化背景的儿童和青少年中实现成功的学术参与和表现的途径的数据。CRCDE的科学使命是使用综合概念框架、跨学科合作和多种方法来(1)确定将儿童在家庭、学校、同伴、照顾者的工作和媒体这五个教育背景下的经历与他们的学业投入和表现联系起来的关系的性质；(2)研究这些过程在文化群体内部和跨文化群体和发展阶段是否以及如何变化；以及(3)促进对家庭、同龄人、学校、照顾者的工作和媒体如何相互影响并共同影响儿童和青少年的学业参与和表现的理解。CRCDE的教育使命是：(1)培训新一代学者，特别是那些来自代表性不足的少数群体的学者，从事促进科学使命的研究；(2)制定工具和方法，加强研究界的科学能力，以对学术参与和表现进行具有文化敏感性的研究；(3)通过传播教育政策和实践的成果和教训，向决策者、教育从业者和研究人员传递研究结果。该中心位于纽约市(NYC)的不同背景下，是一个致力于文化、发展和教育交汇的研究中心的理想选择。

The academic underachievement of certain ethnic minority groups in America continues to perplex educators, scientists, and policy makers, despite thousands of studies, hundreds of remedial programs, and decades of being considered a crisis. Several recent trends add weight to the crisis. First, within the next 50 years, people identified as ethnic "minority" will comprise half the U.S. population. Second, new waves of immigrants continue to arrive, ensuring fundamental but unknown changes in the intercultural dynamics of schools and other contexts. Third, the United States has evolved into a "knowledge-driven" economy, making a solid education, particularly in math and science, vital for an increasingly large sector of the workforce. Finally, recent federal legislation calls for annual standardized assessments of school children, a prospect that may disadvantage certain minorities who typically underperform on these tests. More than ever, a sizable proportion of our nation's children are at risk of academic failure, posing a serious threat to the current Administration's goal of "leaving no child behind." In line with this national goal, the Center for Research on Culture, Development and Education (CRCDE), housed at New York University (NYU) will conduct research designed to identify pathways to academic success for all children. Prior research has focused narrowly on a single context (e.g., the family, peer relationships, school quality, etc.) in predicting academic outcomes, or has investigated the roles of ethnicity, race, immigrant status, gender, or socioeconomic status separately. Neither approach, however, has adequately addressed the ways in which multiple contexts contribute to educational success and/or disparities, nor how pathways vary by developmental period and culture. Furthermore, an over-emphasis on group differences has resulted in the neglect of patterns of academic outcomes within ethnic, socioeconomic, or cultural groups. Finally, studies across all of these areas have tended to utilize single methodologies, rarely integrating survey, ethnographic, experimental, and observational methods. To address these gaps, the CRCDE will gather and disseminate data about the pathways that lead to successful academic engagement and performance among culturally diverse children and adolescents. The scientific mission of the CRCDE is to use an integrative conceptual framework, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and multiple methods to (1) identify the nature of relationships that link children's experiences in five educationally relevant contexts, home, school, peers, caregivers' work, and media, to their academic engagement and performance; (2) examine whether and how these processes vary within and across cultural groups and across developmental periods; and (3) advance an understanding of how home, peers, school, caregivers' work, and media affect one another and jointly influence children's and adolescents' academic engagement and performance. The educational mission of the CRCDE is to (1) train a new generation of scholars, especially those from underrepresented minority groups, to engage in research that advances the scientific mission; (2) produce instruments and methods that will strengthen the scientific capacity of the research community to conduct culturally sensitive research on academic engagement and performance; and (3) transmit findings to policy makers, practitioners in education, and researchers, through dissemination of findings and lessons for educational policy and practice. The Center's location in the diverse context of New York City (NYC) is ideal for a center devoted to research at the confluence of culture, development, and education.