Doctoral Dissertation Research: Detained Potential-Associative Stigma as a Core Mechanism Behind Educational Inequality for Children of Incarcerated Parents

教育不平等是美国人生活中一个长期存在的问题。对教育和代际流动的研究主要集中在分析社会阶级、种族和民族如何塑造教育轨迹。虽然父母监禁是另一个可能造成教育不平等的特征，但它一直被广泛忽视。本项目将考虑父母监禁的耻辱是否以及如何通过教师的不同期望和待遇导致不平等。教师在学校的期望和行为对教育成就和成就有影响，这构成了青年进入成年期和劳动力市场时的机会和轨迹。这些影响对收入、社会阶层、福祉和健康都有长期影响。了解污名如何影响教师对父母被监禁的学生的评估以及对学生学业的评估，将通过将父母被监禁纳入教育不平等的关键决定因素的分析来推进研究。该项目的调查结果将为学校的干预措施提供信息，并影响教师的培训，从而支持教育平等和向上流动，从而促进美国的繁荣。教育不平等限制了向上流动，父母被监禁的耻辱可能影响教师的期望和行为，进而影响学生的成绩和成就。为了探讨污名在教师评价青年及其工作中的作用，本项目将采用实验设计。850名高中教师将收到一份学生的传记，其中随机分配了父母的监禁状况：父亲、母亲或没有父母。然后，他们将完成一系列与学生的学术技能和行为有关的任务。参与者将对学生的写作样本评分并提供反馈，并评估学生的能力。然后，参与者将回答有关学生行为事件的问题，并制定行为管理计划。最后，参与者将回答一系列关于他们自己和实验的问题。这个实验将产生定性和定量的分析数据。定量数据，包括写作分数、反馈长度、学生能力评估和行为反应问题，将使用t检验和回归分析，将父亲和母亲监禁的干预组与没有父母监禁的对照组进行比较。定性数据将采用一般归纳法进行分析，探究干预组和对照组在语气、质感和风格上的差异。该项目的研究结果将为耻辱的社会心理学理论提供信息，并为与教育不平等和社会流动性相关的社会学理论提供信息。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Educational inequality is a persistent issue in American life. Research examining education and intergenerational mobility has concentrated on analyzing how social class, race, and ethnicity shape educational trajectories. While parental incarceration is another characteristic that may shape educational inequality, it has been widely been ignored. This project will consider whether and how the stigma of parental incarceration contributes to inequality through differential teacher expectations and treatment. Teacher expectations and behaviors in school have implications for educational achievement and attainment, which structure the opportunities and trajectories of youth as they move into adulthood and the labor market. These implications have long-term consequences for income, social class, wellbeing, and health. Understanding how stigma affects teachers’ assessments of students of incarcerated parents and evaluations of student school work will advance research by incorporating parental incarceration into analysis of the key determinants of educational inequality. Findings from the project will inform interventions in schools and influence training of teachers, so as to support educational equality and upward mobility, thus advancing American prosperity.Educational inequality limits upward mobility, and the stigma of parental incarceration may influence teachers’ expectations and behaviors, which in turn influence student achievement and attainment. To explore the role of stigma in teachers’ assessments of youth and their work, this project will employ an experimental design. Eight hundred and fifty high school teachers will receive a student biography with randomly assigned parental incarceration status: paternal, maternal, or none. Then they will complete a series of tasks that relate to student academic skills and behaviors. Participants will grade and provide feedback on the student’s writing sample and evaluate the student’s competency. Then, participants will respond to questions about student behavioral incidents and create behavioral management plans. Finally, participants will respond to a series of questions about themselves and the experiment. This experiment will create qualitative and quantitative data for analysis. The quantitative data, including the writing score, length of feedback, assessment of student competency, and behavioral response questions, will be analyzed using t-tests and regression to compare the intervention groups, paternal and maternal incarceration, to the control group of no parental incarceration. The qualitative data will be analyzed using a general inductive method to explore differences in the tone, texture, and style between the intervention groups and control group. Findings from the project will inform social psychological theories of stigma, and inform sociological theories related to educational inequality and social mobility.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.