Mapping the margins and searching for higher ground: examining the marginalisation of black female graduate students at PWIs

The number of Black females enrolled in colleges and universities has grown in recent years, particularly at predominately white institutions (PWIs). Currently, research on the rise of Black females at PWIs is limited and fails to adequately address the emotional, social, and mental well-being of these students. Recent studies also largely ignore the critical roles that natural and formal Black female faculty play in serving as a buffer between Black female graduate students (BFGS) and PWIs more broadly. From a critical perspective using counter-narrative, we address the limitations of the scholarly literature on BFGS and other challenges faced by BFGS. We come to the disappointing – albeit unsurprising – conclusion that PWIs should do more to make the academy a welcoming place for BFGS, however, the ways in which PWIs function make support for BFGS unlikely. We conclude with a discussion about the implications of continued marginalisation of BFGS at PWIs for individuals, families, communities, disciplines, and for PWIs across the nation.     

Self-Efficacy Beliefs,Classroom Management,and the Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline

In this article, we focus on connections between and among teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, classroom management practices, and the cradle to prison pipeline. Drawing from Bandura’s (1986) theorization of self-efficacy, we discuss how teachers’ beliefs shape their classroom management practices and how these beliefs and practices can be essential sites to understanding and decreasing disparate outcomes in disciplinary referral patterns among practicing teachers. We emphasize the importance of building teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and sense of efficacy to inform their classroom management practices/decisions. In particular, we focus on three sites of learning that, we argue, are essential to building teachers’ sense of efficacy in the classroom: learning about and building powerful and sustainable relationships with students; learning about and developing an understanding of outside of school contexts that students experience; and recognizing and appropriately responding to traumatic experiences of students.     

An Expected Response Function Approach to Graphical Differential Item Functioning

In this paper a new approach to graphical differential item functioning (DIF) is offered. The methodology is based on a sampling-theory approach to expected response functions (Lewis, 1985; Mislevy, Wingersky, & Sheehan, 1994). Essentially error in item calibrations is modeled explicitly, and repeated samples are taken from the posterior distributions of the item parameters. Sampled parameter values are used to estimate the posterior distribution of the difference in item characteristic curves (ICCs)for two groups. A point-wise expectation is taken as an estimate of the true difference between the ICCs, and the sampled-difference functions indicate uncertainty in the estimate. Tbe approach is applied to a set of pretest items, and the results are compared to traditional Mantel-Haenszel DIF statistics. The expected-response-function approach is contrasted with Pashley's (1992) graphical DIF approach.     

Toward a Social Care Program of Research: A Population-Level Study of Neighborhood Effects on Child Development

The article reports results from a Human Early Learning Partnership initiative that aims to address limitations within the literature concerning neighborhood effects on child development. Problems include the tendency for studies to (a) rely on small samples of children, (b) focus on high-risk populations, (c) define neighborhood by Census boundaries, (d) attend only to 1 or 2 developmental domains, and (e) adhere to a narrow understanding of socioeconomic status. By collecting data from a near-census of kindergarten children in British Columbia, Canada, using the Early Development Instrument, our research addresses all 5 problems. Findings reported in this article lay the groundwork for the Human Early Learning Partnership's much more ambitious program of social care research that aims to measure directly the processes by which physical and social settings influence human development in the formative early years, rather than to infer them from data routinely collected for other purposes. The article concludes by inviting international colleagues to critically evaluate our program of research in its early days of implementation.     

Racial differences in attitudes toward aging,aging knowledge,and contact

The present study assessed knowledge of aging, attitudes toward aging, ageism, and contact with older adults in a sample of 271 Non-Hispanic White and African-American undergraduates. Research examining racial differences in knowledge of aging, attitudes toward aging, ageism, and contact with older adults has been sparse. Results for the current study demonstrated a significant correlation between knowledge of aging measured by the Facts on Aging Quiz-Revised (FAQ-R) and attitudes toward aging measured by the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD) for Non-Hispanic Whites but not African-Americans. In contrast, correlations between the FAQ-R and the Fraboni Scale of Ageism (FSA) were significant for both groups. Significant group differences were also noted for the ASD-total score and ASD-Instrumentality subscale as well as for the FSA-total score, Antilocution, and Discrimination subscales. Discussion focuses on the importance of identifying cultural and contextual factors that have been neglected in the “one size fits all” approach to promoting more positive attitudes toward older adults across different racial and ethnic groups.     

Infant Day-Care, Attachment, and the "File Drawer Problem"

The research literature on infant day-care and attachment may be biased by the unavailability of "file drawer" studies, unpublished data showing no statistically significant effects. Replication studies, whether showing an effect or not, are essential to clarify the relation between day-care and attachment. This study of 105 12-month-olds is an attempt to replicate four similar studies summarized and combined by Belsky to show that infants in day-care are at risk for insecure attachment. In the present study, no results were robust enough to emerge consistently, although there was a trend for more negative attachment outcomes to be associated with little or part-time day-care rather than with full-time day-care. In general, the results suggest that the specific measures, definitions of full- and part-time, and statistical techniques used in studies examining the relation between day-care and attachment are likely to affect the outcome of such studies.

For any given research area, one cannot tell how many studies have been conducted but never reported. The extreme view of the "file drawer problem" is that journals are filled with the 5% of the studies that show Type I errors, while the file drawers are filled with the 95% of the studies that show nonsignificant results. [Rosenthal, 1979, p. 638]

     

Examining interest throughout multiple text use

Reading and Writing - Prior work has examined the role of interest in students’ single text processing and comprehension, but interest has been under-examined within the context of multiple...     

University Counseling Centers’ Perceptions and Experiences Pertaining to Emotional Support Animals

Increasing numbers of students are requesting accommodations for emotional support animals (ESAs) in higher education settings. Since the legislation pertaining to this type of service animal differs from the laws governing disability service animals, colleges and universities are faced with developing new policies and guidelines. A sample of 248 University Counseling Centers (UCCs) completed a survey about student requests for ESA letters of support from their counselor. The UCCs were also asked if they issue official disability diagnoses for clients. Responses showed that UCCs are not yet being asked to write many letters of support for ESAs—56.9% almost never do it, and 31.05% do it only several times per year. And, only 47.18% of UCCs write official diagnosis letters in support of disability accommodations. Yet, most UCCs are aware of the need for official policies in this arena. This article provides general recommendations for establishing university policies.     

Relationship between language proficiency and growth during reading interventions

Many English language learners (ELLs) experience difficulties with basic English reading due in part to low language proficiency. The authors examined the relationship between English language proficiency and growth during reading interventions for ELLs. A total of 201 second- and third-grade students with a variety of home languages participated. The students were identified as needing a targeted intervention, because scores on the fall oral reading fluency screening measure fell below the benchmark criterion. Thus, all participating students received reading interventions approximately four times each week throughout the school year. Results indicated that those students identified in the lowest English proficiency stage on the Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State (ACCESS) made the highest growth as indicated in the spring benchmark assessment, and the ACCESS score added negligible variance beyond baseline reading skills. Implications for practice and research are discussed.