Community,love, and culture: pedagogical insights for Black students in White spaces

Abstract

To address the tension between public education norms and the lived experiences of racially marginalized students, this study examines how Brother to Sister (BTS), a community group, promotes sense of belonging and college access among Black high school students using the school as a primary dialogical space. Specifically, through qualitative assessment, this study interprets the pedagogy of Brother to Sister through narrative accounts of how the organization functioned in the lives of its members. As experienced by participants, BTS enacts culturally centered pedagogy and African-centered education to promote personal development and community enrichment outcomes.     

Linking ethnic/racial discrimination to adolescent mental health: Sleep disturbances as an explanatory pathway

Ethnic/racial discrimination is associated with negative psychosocial outcomes, and this study considered sleep disturbance as a mediating pathway. Employing a combination of daily diary and biannual surveys, multilevel structural equation models estimated the indirect effects of sleep/wake concerns on negative, anxious, and positive mood, rumination, and somatic symptoms. In a sample of 350 urban Asian (74% Chinese, 8% Korean, 4% Indian, 1% Filipinx, 1% Vietnamese, and 12% other), Black, and Latinx (25% Dominican, 24% South American, 22% Mexican, 15% Puerto Rican, 5% Central American, and 9% other) youth (M = 14.27 years, 69% female, 77% U.S. born, 76% monoethnic/racial, data collected from 2015 to 2018), there was evidence for sleep disturbances mediating the impact of ethnic/racial discrimination on adjustment. Nighttime disturbance, daytime dysfunction, and daytime sleepiness evidenced partial or full mediation for daily- and person-level outcomes (υ = 0.1%–17.9%). Reciprocal associations between sleep disturbances and negative mood and rumination were also observed.     

Teachers’ emotions in the reconstruction of professional self-understanding

This research study explores teachers’ specific emotions and the reconstruction of teachers’ professional self-understanding during a comprehensive school reform initiative. Through interviews and archival material, this study seeks to examine teachers’ specific emotions during critical incidents that occurred during the period of reform and to explore the reconstruction of their professional self-understanding. The findings illustrate that the teachers experienced fear and intimidation when their professional self-understandings were challenged. However, with the support of a literacy coach and university faculty they reconstructed these self-understandings, leading to improvements in student achievement and their own instructional practices. These positive changes led to emotions of pride and excitement. The study provides recommendations for state and local school administrators and highlights implications for future research.     

Reading difference: picture book retellings as contexts for exploring personal meanings of race and culture

In racially and culturally homogeneous school settings, opportunities for children to interact with those who are unlike themselves are not always available. Picture book retellings provide contexts within which students are exposed to racial and cultural differences by allowing them to engage in vicarious events with people they might not otherwise encounter. In this article, the authors explore two fourth graders' aided and unaided picture book retellings. They argue that retellings are dialogic literacy events that provide children with opportunities to explore difference through social imagination and develop empathetic response to a wide range of fictional others.     

Listening to Another's Distress in Everyday Relationships

Talking about a difficult event may reduce discloser distress, but it may increase it in the listener. This essay offers a model that assesses some antecedent and interactional variables proposed to be involved with listening and connected with listeners' negative distress. Based on 82 reports of interactions with close relational others, levels of negative distress correlated positively with the amount of responsibility people felt for the other and time reported listening to the others' disclosure. Those who reported validating the other also reported more negative distress than did those who said their response style was to give advice. This article offers possible modifications to the model based in these results.     

The Impact of Daily Discrimination on Sleep/Wake Problem Trajectories Among Diverse Adolescents

This study examines how everyday discrimination is associated with 6-day trajectories of sleep/wake problems, operationalized as sleep disturbance and daytime dysfunction, among 350 diverse adolescents (M_age = 14.27, SD = 0.61, 69% female; 22% African American, 41% Asian American, 37% Latinx; 24% multiethnic/racial; across participating schools, 72% of students eligible for free/reduced price lunch) in the Northeastern United States. Adolescents encountering discrimination experienced changes in sleep/wake problem trajectories (i.e., significant increases in same-day sleep/wake problems), whereas adolescents reporting no discrimination experienced no changes in trajectories (Cohen’s ds = .51–.55). Multiethnic/racial (compared to monoethnic/racial) adolescents experiencing everyday discrimination reported greater same-day sleep/wake problems, yet steeper decreases in sleep/wake problems suggesting stronger impact coupled with faster return to baseline levels.     

The effects of integrating service learning into computer science: an inter-institutional longitudinal study

This study is a follow-up to one published in computer science education in 2010 that reported preliminary results showing a positive impact of service learning on student attitudes associated with success and retention in computer science. That paper described how service learning was incorporated into a computer science course in the context of the Students & Technology in Academia, Research, and Service (STARS) Alliance, an NSF-supported broadening participation in computing initiative that aims to diversify the computer science pipeline through innovative pedagogy and inter-institutional partnerships. The current paper describes how the STARS Alliance has expanded to diverse institutions, all using service learning as a vehicle for broadening participation in computing and enhancing attitudes and behaviors associated with student success. Results supported the STARS model of service learning for enhancing computing efficacy and computing commitment and for providing diverse students with many personal and professional development benefits.     

The needs of students with intersex variations

To date, people with intersex variations have been mainly studied via small-scale clinical research, with only a small amount of reflective commentary contributed by sociocultural scholars. This paper reports on findings from a 2015 online Australian survey of 272 people with intersex variations, which aimed to redress the gap in research on this groups’ experiences and perspectives concerning education. Participants ranged in age from 16 to 87 years, and represented all Australian states and territories. Most had experienced two medical treatment interventions related to their intersex variation: commonly reported interventions included hormonal treatment and genital surgery delivered to participants when they were aged under 18 years of age. Participants reported various physical and psychological impacts from these treatments. Well-being risks were high; most of the group had engaged in suicidal ideation, particularly when individuals first found out about their variation. This impacted on their schooling – almost one-fifth of survey respondents had received no high school certification due to their early dropout and the overwhelming majority did not attend schools with inclusive puberty/sex education provision or counselling. Most survey participants had not disclosed their intersex variation to staff, although more than half had done so to their classmates. Many had experienced bullying. Only one-quarter of participants rated their overall education experiences positively. Participants suggested improvements to schools’ information provision and support features.