“If You Show Who You are,Then They are Going to Try to Fix You”: The Capitals and Costs of Schooling for High-Achieving Latina Students

Schools are supposed to be places where students learn academic and technical skills while also expanding their social networks. Although much research exists that examines academic achievement from a variety of lenses, schools and educators continue to lack insight into the various strengths—or capital—students bring with them to school alongside the barriers—or costs—they face once there. To help bridge the gap between the extant research and what is practiced in schools, we provide insight into what educators can do to capitalize on students' strengths and minimize the barriers to achievement. This article draws from two theoretical frameworks, Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) and Racial Opportunity Cost (ROC), and two qualitative research projects that examined Latina high school students' academic achievement from a capitals and costs perspective. Although significant research has identified assets-based approaches to schooling, our results indicate that the interplay between the norms of the school and the norms the students embraced played a critical role in terms of creating conditions for a positive school experience. Based on our findings, we offer recommendations for educators to address the costs that students experience.     

The Talent Development Model of Schooling: Placing Students at Promise for Academic Success

The work at the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk (CRESPAR) has been guided by the Talent Development model, a comprehensive paradigm for school reform. The Talent Development model asserts that all students can learn in demanding, high-expectation academic settings. This goal is reachable if schools are committed to implementing multiple, evidence-based activities to "overdetermine success," and if all relevant stakeholders are genuinely involved, supportive, and held accountable. First, however, the traditional function of schooling must be redirected from that of classifying, sorting, and weeding out students to maximizing every child's potential for academic development. The model is itself a work in progress. Research done at CRESPAR is presented to demonstrate how we are building and evaluating it, with the ultimate aim to contribute to preparing our nation's children for productive participation in their communities and society at large.     

Stability and change in attachment security across adolescence

This study examined both continuity and familial, intrapsychic, and environmental predictors of change in adolescent attachment security across a 2-year period from middle to late adolescence. Assessments included the Adult Attachment Interview, observed mother-adolescent interactions, test-based data, and adolescent self-reports obtained from an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of moderately at-risk adolescents interviewed at ages 16 and 18. Substantial stability in security was identified. Beyond this stability, however, relative declines in attachment security were predicted by adolescents' enmeshed, overpersonalizing behavior with their mothers; depressive symptoms; and poverty status. Results suggest that although security may trend upward for nonstressed adolescents, stressors that overwhelm the capacity for affect regulation and that are not easily assuaged by parents predict relative declines in security over time.     

A secure base in adolescence: markers of attachment security in the mother-adolescent relationship

This study sought to identify ways in which adolescent attachment security, as assessed via the Adult Attachment Interview, is manifest in qualities of the secure base provided by the mother-adolescent relationship. Assessments included data coded from mother-adolescent interactions, test-based data, and adolescent self-reports obtained from an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of moderately at-risk 9th and 10th graders. This study found several robust markers of adolescent attachment security in the mother-adolescent relationship. Each of these markers was found to contribute unique variance to explaining adolescent security, and in combination, they accounted for as much as 40% of the raw variance in adolescent security. These findings suggest that security is closely connected to the workings of the mother-adolescent relationship via a secure-base phenomenon, in which the teen can explore independence in thought and speech from the secure base of a maternal relationship characterized by maternal attunement to the adolescent and maternal supportiveness.     

The influence of communal vs. individual learning context on the academic performance in social studies of grade 4–5 African-Americans

Empirical research utilizing the communal learning construct suggests that culturally-informed pedagogy enhances academic performance for African-American children. The present investigation examined the effect of culturally-informed learning contexts on recall performance in geography lessons. The sample consisted of 69 African-American Grade 4–5 public school students. Weeks 1 and 2 consisted of both learning and testing phases. Week 3 consisted only of a testing phase. Analyses of variance techniques revealed that, overall, subjects in the communal learning context performed significantly better on each of the two weekly quizzes and on the comprehensive examination than those in the individual learning context. Limitations of the findings and future research directions are discussed.