Center for Research on Culture, Development and Education

尽管有成千上万的研究，数百个补救方案，几十年来一直被认为是一种危机，但美国某些少数民族的学习成绩不佳仍然困扰着教育家、科学家和政策制定者。最近的几个趋势加重了危机。首先，在未来50年内，被认定为“少数族裔”的人将占美国人口的一半。第二，新的移民浪潮继续到来，确保学校和其他环境的跨文化动态发生根本性但未知的变化。第三，美国已经发展成为一个“知识驱动”的经济体，这使得扎实的教育，尤其是数学和科学教育，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在校学生进行年度标准化评估，这一前景可能会使某些在这些测试中表现不佳的少数民族处于不利地位。与以往任何时候相比，我国相当大比例的儿童面临着学业不及格的风险，这对本届政府“不让一个孩子掉队”的目标构成了严重威胁。为了实现这一国家目标，位于纽约大学（NYU）的文化、发展和教育研究中心（CRCDE）将开展旨在为所有儿童确定通往学业成功之路的研究。先前的研究在预测学业成绩时只关注单一背景（例如，家庭、同伴关系、学校质量等），或者单独调查种族、种族、移民身份、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环境对教育成功和/或差异的影响方式，也没有解决发展时期和文化如何改变途径的问题。此外，过度强调群体差异导致了对种族、社会经济或文化群体内学术成果模式的忽视。最后，所有这些领域的研究都倾向于使用单一的方法，很少整合调查、民族志、实验和观察方法。为了解决这些差距，该中心将收集和传播有关不同文化背景的儿童和青少年成功参与学业和取得学业成绩的途径的数据。CRCDE的科学使命是使用一个综合的概念框架、跨学科合作和多种方法来(1)确定儿童在五个教育相关环境（家庭、学校、同伴、照顾者的工作和媒体）中的经历与他们的学业投入和表现之间关系的本质；(2)研究这些过程是否以及如何在不同文化群体内部和不同文化群体之间以及不同的发展时期发生变化；(3)进一步了解家庭、同伴、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投入和表现。CRCDE的教育使命是：(1)培养新一代学者，特别是那些来自未被充分代表的少数民族的学者，从事推进科学使命的研究；(2)制定工具和方法，加强研究界的科学能力，开展对学术参与和学术表现具有文化敏感性的研究；(3)通过传播教育政策和实践的研究结果和经验教训，将研究结果传递给政策制定者、教育从业者和研究人员。该中心位于纽约市（NYC）的不同背景下，是一个致力于文化、发展和教育融合研究的理想中心。

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.