PostDoctoral Research Fellowship

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Scholarly literature in social and educational psychology assert the important role of self-efficacy in academic engagement and persistence. Currently, there is a dearth of research studies examining self-efficacy beliefs among African American youth. This omission is striking given the emphasis on motivational attributes in models developed to explain African American underachievement. Similarly, the growing scholarship on minority racial identity often includes assertions of the importance of racial identity to youths' development of positive self-evaluations and to their continued engagement and persistence in the face of racial barriers. However, there has been little explicit examination of self-efficacy in the literature. More specifically, no study to date has examined how both self-efficacy beliefs and racial identity beliefs contribute to African American youths' academic adjustment and how the two factors interact to buffer the effects of experienced racial discrimination. Intellectual Merit. The intellectual merit of the proposed project is to contribute to the theory and research seeking to address how specific profiles of African American youth based on discriminatory experiences, self-efficacy beliefs, and racial identity beliefs explain their academic achievement outcomes. For instance, how do youth with specific racial identity and self-efficacy beliefs cope with discrimination? Do adolescents with certain racial identity beliefs have higher self-efficacy beliefs? Does a certain amount of racial identity and self-efficacy predict high achievement outcomes? Specific profiles may contribute to the academic achievement of African American adolescents and utilizing a person-oriented approach will allow for the identification of multiple patterns of racial identity and self-efficacy beliefs that could potentially buffer the effects of discriminatory experiences. Broader Impacts. The broader impact of the proposed project will enhance the fellow's theoretical approach to the study of how self-efficacy beliefs and racial identity beliefs operate in the lives of African American children and youth. This will be the first step in understanding how person-centered beliefs promote and/or hinder academic outcomes. The research also examines a diverse sample of African American adolescents, allowing for the identification of pattern similarities of experiences of students, despite their socioeconomic background. Findings will be disseminated among the scientific community, scholars, and community stakeholders and will advance the current literature on the importance of both efficacy and racial identity beliefs of Black children and youth. Overall, in addition to advancing the Fellow's career, this work has the potential to have positive impact on educational performance of African American youth.