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的社会，行为和经济科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，工业或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF的奖励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。NSF致力于促进来自科学界各部门的科学家，包括来自代表性不足的群体的科学家参与其研究计划和活动;博士后期间被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的重要水平。每个博士后研究员必须解决推进各自学科领域的重要科学问题。学术参与与学业成绩和其他生活成功指标有关，但在整个青少年时期，学术参与明显下降。了解非裔美国青年的学术参与是特别重要的，因为作为一个群体，他们有可能无法充分发挥其学术潜力。该项目的目的是促进非裔美国青少年学术参与的理论和知识。具体而言，这项工作旨在阐明的过程中，通过和条件下，青年？的课堂经验与积极的学术参与两个性别学术领域：数学和英语。除了知识的贡献，这项研究还纳入了一些方法上的创新，并将提供研究培训的机会，少数民族和第一代本科生谁有兴趣在心理学研究与少数民族人口。根据自我决定理论（SDT），当青少年在学校经历自主，能力和相关性时，他们也表现出更强的学术参与。因此，了解非洲裔美国青年？的课堂体验是促进他们学术参与的关键一步。以往关于特殊和差别待遇的研究大多假设这些进程是普遍的，重要的一步是确定非洲裔美国青年的特点，这些特点可能在自决进程和学术参与之间的联系中发挥作用。此外，学术科目是性别化的，科学、技术、工程和数学科目被陈规定型地标记为男性，语言领域被标记为女性，这种模式也突出了超越普遍性假设以研究特定主题背景下的自决进程的重要性。最后，这项研究偏离了以往的研究重点，在自我决定的经验和成就的个体差异，努力捕捉跨时间和contextuals.During培训期间的动态性质的个人过程中，该研究员将使用每日日记的方法来测试在非洲裔美国青年的日常变化之间的联系？学生在数学和英语课堂上的自主性、能力和相关性的课堂经验以及青年人相应的人内变化？的行为，认知和情感的参与和学术成就。超越普遍性的方法，并使用种族同质的设计，以捕捉非洲裔美国青年之间的变化来源，结果将增加对学术成就的研究，在这一领域，许多青少年未能充分发挥其潜力。通过关注种族和性别，该研究员旨在帮助了解这些社会类别如何以对自决进程和学术成果产生影响的方式与非裔美国青年相交。最后，每日日记的设计将提供新的见解青年的学术参与记录它如何变化作为日常课堂经验，青年的特点和上下文（数学与英语课）的函数，以及它是如何与长期的学术成果，如课程成绩。

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.