Facilitators and barriers to African American high school students' self-determination skill expression

We conducted four focus group interviews with 24 high school youth to examine facilitators and barriers to African American high school students' expression of various self-determination skills (e.g., choice/decision making, self-advocacy, goal setting, and attainment etc.). The majority of our research participants were African American, with one student identifying as multiracial (African American and White). Key findings revealed that personal (e.g., desire to graduate from school) and contextual factors (e.g., school counselor and teacher support) influenced the participants' expression of multiple self-determination skills. We also found that some of the participants' motives for utilizing or not utilizing specific skills were influenced by what they perceived as racist, punitive, and restrictive school practices (e.g., teachers holding negative perceptions about African American students and school counselors restricting their access to advanced courses). Findings from this study support ongoing calls for educators to consider students' cultural backgrounds and lived experiences when promoting their expression of self-determination skills.     

Effects of an Attachment‐Based Intervention on Child Protective Services–Referred Mothers' Event‐Related Potentials to Children's Emotions

This study examined the neurobiology of maternal sensitivity to children's emotions among mothers involved with Child Protective Services (CPS) and low‐risk comparison mothers (M_age = 31.6 years). CPS‐referred mothers participated in the Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch‐up (ABC) intervention or a control intervention. Mothers' event‐related potentials (ERPs) were measured while they categorized images of children with crying, laughing, and neutral expressions. CPS‐referred ABC mothers (n = 19) and low‐risk comparison mothers (n = 30) showed a larger enhancement of ERP responses for emotional faces relative to neutral faces than CPS‐referred control mothers (n = 21). Additionally, the magnitude of ERP responses to emotional faces was associated with observed maternal sensitivity. Findings add to the understanding of the neurobiology of deficits in parenting and suggest that these deficits are changeable through a parenting intervention.     

Reporting NAEP Results Using Standards

What is the difference between NAEP anchor levels and achievement levels? How are the processes different for creating these levels? What points of controversy surround use of these levels for reporting achievement? Will having standards for NAEP promote improvement of public education?     

The “overdue kid”: A face-to-face library service encounter as ritual interaction

Using the theoretical frameworks of Erving Goffman and Michael Lipsky, an example of school library staff and student interactions is examined, using functional discourse analysis to reveal how practice is produced as a clerical control routine which upholds institutional authority over users, rather than legitimate service work. The study, which consists of a single interaction between a middle school library clerk and a young adolescent with overdue books, is an example of what Goffman calls a “remedial interchange” in which the clerk, with the use of the library's computer, identifies the student's “offense” of keeping books overdue, despite repeated notices. Upon admission of the student's virtual transgression, the clerk provides an “offering” to hold his desired books until he returns the others, thus redressing the balance of the interaction while still retaining asymmetrical institutional control over the student.