Reflecting on change: Critical consciousness as a protective factor for Black youth.

OBJECTIVES: The previous decade has seen an abundance of scholarship on the benefits of critical consciousness (CC) for racial and ethnic minority youth. However, it is unclear whether CC is a buffer against the negative effects of racial discrimination on Black adolescents' outcomes. The present study examined whether three CC dimensions buffered against the negative effects of racial discrimination on academic attitudes. METHOD: A total of 205 Black adolescents (Mage = 15.10) reported racial discrimination and CC. We conducted multiple regression analyses for each component of CC to test for their direct and protective effects on academic attitudes. RESULTS: Our results revealed associations between CC dimensions and academic attitudes. Critical reflection and critical action also buffered against racial discrimination's negative effects. CONCLUSIONS: Implications for research on the nature and impact of CC dimensions on racial discrimination and academic attitudes are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Black Adolescents' Critical Reflection Development: Parents' Racial Socialization and Attributions About Race Achievement Gaps.

This research explored the development of Black adolescents' (N = 454) critical reflection, conceived as individual (i.e., blaming Black people) and structural (i.e., blaming systemic racism) attributions for race achievement gaps. In this longitudinal study, adolescents and their parents reported their individual and structural attributions for race achievement gaps and parents' racial socialization. Adolescents' structural attributions increased from Grade 10 to Grade 12. Average levels of individual attributions did not change. Adolescents' reports of parental racial socialization and parents' structural attributions when youth were in Grade 10 predicted increases in adolescents' structural attributions. Findings are applied to future research and efforts to increase adolescent critical reflection.

Charting How Wealth Shapes Educational Pathways from Childhood to Early Adulthood: A Developmental Process Model.

Wealth plays a pervasive role in sustaining inequality and is more inequitably distributed than household income. Research has identified that wealth contributes to children's educational outcomes. However, the specific mechanisms accounting for these outcomes are unknown. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and its supplements, SEM was used to test a hypothesized longitudinal chain of mediating processes. Framed by the parent investment model, this study tracks children and their parents over twenty-seven years, from pre-birth to early adulthood. The analytic sample was comprised of 1247 young people who were between 6-12 years of age (M= 5.66, SD= 2.12) in 1997, the first wave of the PSID's Child Development Supplement. This analytic sample was roughly equivalent by gender (N= 774; 53% identified as female and N= 693; 47% identified as male). The racial/ethnic background of participants was nearly an equal split between individuals who identified as White (N= 666; 45%) or Black (N= 634; 43%), with an additional 7% (N= 97) who identified as "Hispanic," 2% (N= 40) as "Other," 1% (N= 20) as Asian or Pacific Islander, and less than 1% (N= 6) who identified as American Indian or Alaskan Native. The results indicated that wealth (a) engenders parental and child processes-primarily expectations and achievement-that promote educational success, (b) plays a different role across the life course, and (c) that pre-birth wealth has a significant mediated relationship to educational attainment seventeen years later. These findings advance understanding of specific mediating mechanisms by which wealth may foster children's educational success across the life course, as well as how wealth may differentially shape educational outcomes in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood.

Correction to: Charting How Wealth Shapes Educational Pathways from Childhood to Early Adulthood: A Developmental Process Model.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Contextual factors shaping diverse political action: A commentary on the special issue on adolescent political development.

This timely special issue on political development broadens the empirical conversation around how adolescents are engaging politically and civically, what factors shape their involvement, how their involvement impacts their wellbeing, and how to engage diverse populations of youth in the political system. From the perspectives of critical consciousness and sociopolitical development, we reflect on two themes in particular: the importance of context and the various ways in which political development and involvement is conceptualized and defined. We conclude with suggestions for future empirical work and implications for policy and practice.

Threats and Supports to Female Students' Math Beliefs and Achievement.

This study examines how student perceptions of teacher practices contribute to female high school students' math beliefs and achievement. Guided by the expectancy-value framework, we hypothesized that students' motivation beliefs and achievement outcomes in mathematics are fostered by teachers' emphasis on the relevance of mathematics and constrained by gender-based differential treatment. To examine these questions, structural equation modeling was applied to a longitudinal panel of 518 female students from the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study. While controlling for prior achievement and race, gendered differential treatment was negatively associated with math beliefs and achievement, whereas relevant math instruction was positively associated with these outcomes. These findings suggest inroads that may foster positive math motivational beliefs and achievement among young women.

Promotive and Corrosive Factors in African American Students' Math Beliefs and Achievement.

Framed by expectancy-value theory (which posits that beliefs about and the subjective valuation of a domain predict achievement and decision-making in that domain), this study examined the relationships among teacher differential treatment and relevant math instruction on African American students' self-concept of math ability, math task value, and math achievement. These questions were examined by applying structural equation modeling to 618 African American youth (45.6 % female) followed from 7th to 11th grade in the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study. While controlling for gender and prior math achievement, relevant math instruction promoted and teacher differential treatment corroded students' math beliefs and achievement over time. Further, teacher discrimination undermined students' perceptions of their teachers, a mediating process under-examined in previous inquiry. These findings suggest policy and practice levers to narrow opportunity gaps, as well as foster math achievement and science, technology, engineering and math success.

The Role of Documentation Status Concerns, Perceived Discrimination, and Social Support on Latinx Adults' Physical and Mental Health.

There is a growing number of immigrants arriving in the USA, with the majority being of Latinx descent. Coupled with this increase, there has also been growing anti-immigration legislation which impacts the experiences this group faces and creates additional concerns for those who are residing in this country without documentation. Experiences of overt and covert discrimination and marginalization have been shown to relate to poorer mental and physical health outcomes. Drawing from Menjivar and Abrego's Legal Violence Framework, this paper explores the impact of perceived discrimination and social support on the mental and physical health of Latinx adults. We further observe whether these relationships differ based on participants' concerns about their documentation status. This data comes from a community-based participatory study conducted in a Midwestern County. Our analytic sample was comprised of 487 Latinx adults. We found social support to be related to fewer self-reported days of mental health symptoms for all participants regardless of documentation status concern. Perceived discrimination was found to be related to worse physical health for participants with concerns about their status. These findings point to the pernicious role of discrimination for Latinx's physical health and the importance of social support as an asset beneficial for their mental health.

Political identification, political ideology, and critical social analysis of inequality among marginalized youth.

This study applies multiple indicator and multiple causes modeling to examine to what extent critical social analysis of inequality, a dimension of critical consciousness (CC), may be explained by political party identification (i.e., Republican vs. Democrat) or political ideology (i.e., conservative vs. liberal). These issues were examined among 237 public high school students from a large Midwestern city, who generally came from historically marginalized groups. Analyses suggest that political party identification was only marginally associated with critical social analysis of inequality and political ideology had a small positive association with critical social analysis of inequality. Further, political identification and political ideology only explained between 2% and 4% of the variance in critical social analysis of inequality. These results suggest complexity in how youth think about political institutions and inequality, while also providing evidence that a critical social analysis of inequality is largely independent of political identification and ideology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).