Surviving Being Dark: A Pedagogy of the Sacred for Survival in a Divided Society

Abstract

Historically, Blacks have out of necessity prioritized survival in educating their younger generations for existence in the racially hostile and divided context of the U.S. This education and religious education has occurred formally and informally in homes, schools, community organizations, and in congregations. This paper examines three aspects of survival: survival and emancipatory education, survival and justice, and survival with emerging Black generations. Three examples will be offered that highlight each aspect of survival. The examples will demonstrate how education generally and religious education in particular have undergirded pedagogies of the sacred for the survival of Black life.     

Leisure time physical activity in Australian women: relationship with well being and symptoms

This paper explores the association between moderate levels of physical activity (PA) and health benefits in well being and symptoms such as tiredness, back pain, and constipation. Participants in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health, 14,502 young women (ages 18-23 years), 13,609 middle-age women (45-50 years), and 11,421 older women (ages 70-75 years), answered questions about vigorous and less vigorous exercise (used to determine a physical activity score), well being (SF-36), symptoms, and medical conditions. There were significant associations between the PA score and SF-36 in each cohort. Odds ratios (OR) for a range of symptoms and conditions were lower for women who reported low to moderate activity than for sedentary women, for example, for young women or for constipation = 0.76 (CI, 0.65-0.89), for middle-age women or for tiredness = 0.70 (0.63-0.78). There was no threshold of PA at which health benefits increased significantly. Although cross-sectional, the findings suggest that low-to-moderate levels of exercise are associated with a range of health benefits for women of all ages. These preliminary findings will be followed up during the longitudinal study.     

Promoting Parents' Social Capital to Increase Children's Attendance in Head Start: Evidence From an Experimental Intervention

Improving children's attendance is a high priority for Head Start and other early childhood education programs serving low-income children. We conducted a randomized control trial in a major northern city to evaluate the impact of a low-cost intervention designed to promote parents' social capital as a potential influence on children's attendance in Head Start centers. The intervention assigned children to treatment group classrooms based on (a) neighborhood of residence (geography condition) or (b) the geography condition plus the opportunity for parents to form partnerships in support of their children's attendance, or to control group classrooms according to Head Start guidelines only. We did not find impacts on average attendance throughout the year. However, the intervention did lead to increased attendance during the winter when average center attendance was lowest. There were no impacts on fall or spring attendance. Follow-up exploratory analyses of focus groups with parents and staff suggested that parents' level of connection and trust, self-generated partnership strategies, and commitment to their children's education may be factors by which parents' social capital expands and children's attendance improves.     

SCHOOL RACIAL CLIMATE AND THE ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF SCHOOL ENGAGEMENT

This investigation utilized an integrative model of development for ethnic minority children and a process model of engagement to explore whether three dimensions of school engagement (behavioral, emotional, and cognitive) mediated relationships between school racial climate, academic performance, and educational aspirations. A total of 139 African American students were recruited from a high school in the southeastern United States. Findings revealed an indirect association between perceptions of racial fairness and academic achievement indicators through behavioral and cognitive engagement. Behavioral and cognitive engagement also mediated relationships between youths’ perceived peer discrimination and academic achievement indicators. No significant indirect associations between teacher discrimination and academic achievement through school engagement dimensions were found. Study limitations, future directions, and implications are discussed.     

“Brothers Gonna Work It Out:” Understanding the Pedagogic Performance of African American Male Teachers Working with African American Male Students

Drawing from ethnographic data, this paper explores how African American male teachers working with African American male students performed their pedagogy. This paper highlights how teachers’ understanding of African American males social and educational needs shaped their pedagogical performance. Interestingly however, teachers’ performance was contingent on the diverse ways they imagined African American males should engage within their social and political worlds. These findings suggest then that African American male teachers’ pedagogic performances were both complex and multifaceted.     

Predicting multicultural effectiveness of international students: the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire

The present study considered the reliability and validity of the 78-item revised version of the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire, a multidimensional instrument aimed at measuring multicultural effectiveness of expatriate employees and students. The questionnaire includes scales for cultural empathy, open-mindedness, emotional stability, social initiative and flexibility. Participants were native and foreign students of an international business school (N=171) in the Netherlands. The MPQ scales appeared to be more strongly predictive of adjustment of international students as compared to native students. Moreover, the instrument was able to explain variance in students’ adjustment beyond self-efficacy.     

Tongan students’ attitudes towards their subjects in new zealand relative to their academic achievement

Research indicates that affective attitudes such as liking of a subject and confidence in one’s ability within a subject predict academic performance. Generally, immigrant minority students have positive attitudes and often have low academic performance. This study examines the self-efficacy and liking of subjects of New Zealand students and analyses the relationship of those attitudes towards academic performance in mathematics, writing, and reading by self-reported ethnicity. Data were obtained from the norming samples from the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning project in New Zealand. Of special interest are the relationships between attitude and performance for Pasifika and Tongan students in New Zealand. Tongan and Pasifika students had positive attitudes, but their mean scores were not significantly different to other ethnic groups except in writing for Tongan students. Tongan and Pasifika students did have lower academic performance than majority and Asian immigrant students in all three subjects. The correlation between liking and self-efficacy was fundamentally zero for Tongan and Pasifika students, while it was weakly positive for majority and Asian immigrant students. Together these results question the power of self-efficacy and liking attitudes to predict academic performance for immigrant students from agrarian or traditional societies. Further, the data suggest that ‘school effects’ are most likely explanations for this relationship, rather than lack of attachment, opposition, or deficiency theories.     

Relation between reading problems and internalizing behavior in school for preadolescent children from economically disadvantaged families

This longitudinal study of 105 economically disadvantaged children examined the relation between reading problems and internalizing behavior in 3rd- and 5th-grade assessments (8- to 12-year olds). The variable-centered results showed that reading problems predicted change in internalizing behavior in the context of child and family predictors. The person-centered results showed that children with reading problems in both grades had higher internalizing scores in 5th grade but not in 3rd grade than children with reading problems in 3rd grade or no problems. Child-reported negative emotion experiences varied similarly across grade. The results tie reading problems to emotional distress in school and support conclusions about the direction of effects and the internalization of academic difficulty for disadvantaged children.