African American Adolescents' Daily Engagement at the High School Transition: Contributions of Classroom Experiences and Racial and Gender Identity and Stereotypes

该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济学博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。学业投入与学业成绩和其他衡量人生成功的指标有关，但在青春期，学业投入明显下降。了解非裔美国青年的学术参与尤其重要，因为作为一个群体，他们面临着无法充分发挥其学术潜力的风险。该项目的目的是为非裔美国青少年的学术参与提供理论和知识方面的帮助。具体地说，这项工作试图阐明青年S的课堂体验与数学和英语这两个不同性别的学术领域的积极学业投入有关的过程和条件。除了知识贡献外，这项研究还纳入了几项方法创新，并将为对少数群体心理研究感兴趣的少数群体和第一代本科生提供研究培训机会。根据自我决定理论(SDT)，当青少年在学校体验到自主性、能力和人际关系时，他们也表现出更强的学业投入。因此，了解非洲裔美国青年S的课堂经历是促进他们参与学术活动的关键一步。以前关于SDT的大多数研究都假设这些过程是普遍的，重要的一步是确定非裔美国青年的特征，这些特征可能在自决过程和学术参与之间的联系中发挥作用。此外，学术科目是性别划分的，STEM科目被标记为刻板印象的男性，言语领域被标记为女性，这一模式也突显了超越普遍性假设，在具体主题的背景下研究自决过程的重要性。最后，本研究偏离了以往关于自我决定体验和成就的个体差异的研究重点，试图捕捉个体内部过程跨越时间和背景的动态本质。在培训期间，该研究员将使用每日日记的方法来检验非裔美国青年的日常变化？S在数学和英语课堂上的自主性、能力和关联性的课堂体验与青年的相应的人内差异？S的行为、认知、情感投入和学业成就之间的联系。超越普遍主义的方法，使用种族同质性设计来捕捉非裔美国青年的差异来源，结果将增加对学业成就的研究，这是许多青少年未能充分发挥潜力的领域。通过同时关注种族和性别，这位研究员的目的是帮助理解这些社会类别可能如何以对自决过程和学术结果产生影响的方式对非裔美国年轻人产生影响。最后，每日日记的设计将为年轻人的学习投入提供新的见解，记录这种投入是如何随着日常课堂经历、青年特征和背景(数学与英语课)的变化而变化的，以及它如何与课程成绩等长期学术成果联系在一起。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Academic engagement is related to academic achievement and other indicators of success in life, but there are noticeable declines in academic engagement across adolescence. Understanding academic engagement among African American youth is particularly important because, as group, they are at risk for not reaching their full academic potential. The purpose of this project is to contribute to theory and knowledge on academic engagement among African American adolescents. Specifically, this work seeks to illuminate the processes through which and conditions under which youth?s classroom experiences are related to positive academic engagement for two gendered academic domains: math and English. In addition to knowledge contributions, the study also incorporates several methodological innovations and will provide research training opportunities for minority and first generation undergraduates who are interested in psychological research with minority populations. According to self-determination theory (SDT), when youth experience autonomy, competence, and relatedness in school, they also exhibit stronger academic engagement. Thus, understanding African American youth?s classroom experiences is a critical step toward promoting their academic engagement. Most prior research on SDT has operated with the assumption that these processes are universal, and an important step is to identify characteristics of African American youth that may play a role in the links between self-determination processes and academic engagement. Further, academic subjects are gendered, with STEM subjects marked as stereotypically masculine and verbal domains as feminine, a pattern that also highlights the importance of moving beyond an assumption of universality to study self-determination processes in the context of specific subject matter. Finally, this study departs from the focus of prior research on individual differences in self-determination experiences and achievement in its effort to capture the dynamic nature of within-individual processes across time and contexts.During the training period, the fellow will use a daily diary method to test links between day-to-day variations in African American youth?s classroom experiences of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in math and English classes and corresponding within-person variations in youth?s behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement and academic achievement. Moving beyond universalistic approaches and using an ethnic homogeneous design to capture sources of variation among African American youth, results will add to research on academic achievement, an area in which many adolescents are failing to reach their full potential. By focusing on both race and gender, the fellow aims to contribute to understanding of how these social categories may intersect for African American youth in ways that have implications for self-determination processes and academic outcomes. Finally, a daily diary design will provide novel insights into youth's academic engagement by documenting how it varies as a function of daily classroom experiences, youth characteristics, and context (math versus English class) and how it is linked to longer-term academic outcomes like course grades.