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Working mothers, broken homes, poverty, racial or ethnic background, poorly educated parents—these are the usual reasons given for the academic problems of poor urban children. Reginald M. Clark contends, however, that such structural characteristics of families neither predict nor explain the wide variation in academic achievement among children. He emphasizes instead the total family life, stating that the most important indicators of academic potential are embedded in family culture. To support his contentions, Clark offers ten intimate portraits of Black families in Chicago. Visiting the homes of poor one- and two-parent families of high and low achievers, Clark made detailed observations on the quality of home life, noting how family habits and interactions affect school success and what characteristics of family life provide children with "school survival skills," a complex of behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge that are the essential elements in academic success. Clark's conclusions lead to exciting implications for educational policy. If school achievement is not dependent on family structure or income, parents can learn to inculcate school survival skills in their children. Clark offers specific suggestions and strategies for use by teachers, parents, school administrators, and social service policy makers, but his work will also find an audience in urban anthropology, family studies, and Black studies.
Working mothers, broken homes, poverty, racial or ethnic background, poorly educated parents—these are the usual reasons given for the academic problems of poor urban children. Reginald M. Clark contends, however, that such structural characteristics of families neither predict nor explain the wide variation in academic achievement among children. He emphasizes instead the total family life, stating that the most important indicators of academic potential are embedded in family culture. To support his contentions, Clark offers ten intimate portraits of Black families in Chicago. Visiting the homes of poor one- and two-parent families of high and low achievers, Clark made detailed observations on the quality of home life, noting how family habits and interactions affect school success and what characteristics of family life provide children with "school survival skills," a complex of behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge that are the essential elements in academic success. Clark's conclusions lead to exciting implications for educational policy. If school achievement is not dependent on family structure or income, parents can learn to inculcate school survival skills in their children. Clark offers specific suggestions and strategies for use by teachers, parents, school administrators, and social service policy makers, but his work will also find an audience in urban anthropology, family studies, and Black studies.
No matter how mathematics achievement and persistence are measured, African Americans seem to lag behind their peers. This state of affairs is typically explained in terms of student ability, family background, differential treatment by teachers, and biased curricula. But what can explain disproportionately poor performance and persistence of African-American students who clearly possess the ability to do well, who come from varied family and socioeconomic backgrounds, who are taught by caring and concerned teachers, and who learn mathematics in the context of a reform-oriented mathematics curriculum? And, why do some African-American students succeed in mathematics when underachievement is the norm among their fellow students? Danny Martin addresses these questions in Mathematics Success and Failure Among African-American Youth, the results of a year-long ethnographic and observational study of African-American students and their parents and teachers. Mathematics Success and Failure Among African-American Youth goes beyond the conventional explanations of ability, socioeconomic status, differential treatment, and biased curricula to consider the effects of history, community, and peers--and the individual agency that allows some students to succeed despite these influences. Martin's analysis suggests that prior studies of mathematics achievement and persistence among African Americans have failed to link sociohistorical, community, school, and intrapersonal forces in sufficiently meaningful ways, and that they suffer from theoretical and methodological limitations that hinder the ability of mathematics educators to reverse the negative achievement and persistence trends that continue to afflict African-American students. The analyses and findings offered in Martin's book lead to exciting implications for future research and intervention efforts concerning African-American students--and other students for whom history and context play an important role. This book will be useful and informative to many groups: mathematics education researchers, education researchers interested in the social context of learning and teaching, policymakers, preservice and in-service teachers, students, parents, and community advocates. It will also be of interest to readers concerned with multicultural education, cross-cultural studies of mathematics learning, sociology of education, Black Studies, and issues of underrepresentation in science and mathematics.
This book brings together experts from diverse scientific disciplines who share an interest in the topic of father involvement. Unlike most books in the field, which tend to solely draw from a psychological perspective, this Handbook merges theories and research from the unique fields of psychology, economics, demography sociology, anthropology, and social policy. For the most part, research on fathering is motivated by concern for children's well-being. Social scientists share a core set of questions, including: *"Who are fathers?" *"What is father involvement and how does it affect children and families?" *"What are the determinants of father involvement?" *"How do cultural contexts shape fathers' roles in families?" This Handbook sheds light on how a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of fathering can advance knowledge about these fundamental questions. This integrative approach is fundamental to a comprehensive understanding of human development generally, and to fathering more specifically. At the core of this book are the goals of describing and understanding the nature, antecedents, and consequences of father involvement across biological status, family structure, culture, and stages in children's development--both within and across scientific boundaries. Each of the scientific disciplines represented offers unique methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of fathering and to the interpretation of behavioral patterns that characterize ecological systems that include--as well as extend beyond--family units. Together, the chapters offer provocative and challenging insight into the nature and meaning of fatherhood and father involvement by questioning longstanding assumptions about fathers' roles in the lives of families and children in current history.
Sponsored by Division 15 of APA, the second edition of this groundbreaking book has been expanded to 41 chapters that provide unparalleled coverage of this far-ranging field. Internationally recognized scholars contribute up-to-date reviews and critical syntheses of the following areas: foundations and the future of educational psychology, learners’ development, individual differences, cognition, motivation, content area teaching, socio-cultural perspectives on teaching and learning, teachers and teaching, instructional design, teacher assessment, and modern perspectives on research methodologies, data, and data analysis. New chapters cover topics such as adult development, self-regulation, changes in knowledge and beliefs, and writing. Expanded treatment has been given to cognition, motivation, and new methodologies for gathering and analyzing data. The Handbook of Educational Psychology, Second Edition provides an indispensable reference volume for scholars, teacher educators, in-service practitioners, policy makers and the academic libraries serving these audiences. It is also appropriate for graduate level courses devoted to the study of educational psychology.
Hispanics in the United States represents a collective exploration providing a basic foundation of the information available to understand Hispanics in the United States and create an effective policy agenda. Hispanics are projected to be the largest minority group in the United States in the twenty-first century. The contributions define an agenda which will be useful for students, scholars, service practitioners, political activists, as well as policy makers. The opening essays define the diversity of the Hispanic experience in America and put each of the other essays within a larger context. This edition adds a new introduction by the editors incorporating and evaluating the implications of the results of the national 2000 census. The book is organized into two sections: the first establishes the historical, demographic, religious, and cultural context of Hispanics in the United States. The second describes the major issues facing this population in the American social structure, specifically the areas of health care, the labor market, criminal justice, social welfare, and education. The work concludes with a discussion of the role played by Hispanics in the political life of the nation. The contributors, all of whom are scholars with demonstrated competence in the areas, include: Teresa A. Sullivan, David Maldonado, Melissa Roderick, Barry Chiswick, Michael Hurst, Zulema Suarez, Alvin Korte, Katie McDonough, Cruz Reynoso, and Christine Marie Sierra, as well as David Engstrom and Pastora San Juan Cafferty. Together they have produced a book which will be extremely useful to anyone developing public policies and creating social interventions at either the national or local levels during the coming decade. This new edition is a valuable contributor to discussions about the issues defining the population that will be the largest minority group in the United States in this century.
Black studies emerged from the tumultuous social and civil rights movements of the 1960s and empowered African Americans to look at themselves in new ways and pass on a dignified version of Black history. However, it also enriched traditional disciplines in profound and significant ways. Proponents of Black and ethnic studies confronted the false notion that scholarly investigations were objective and unbiased explorations of the range of human knowledge, history, creativity, artistry, and scientific discovery. As they protested against hegemonic notions like universal psychology and re-evaluated canonical texts in literature, a new model of academic inquiry evolved: one committed to serving a range of populations, that critiqued traditional politics, culture, and social affairs, and worked with activist energy for the transformation of the existing social order. With an all-star cast of contributors, The Black Studies Reader takes on the history and future of this multi-faceted academic field. Topics include Black feminism, cultural politics, Black activism, lesbian and gay issues, African American literature and film, education, and religion. This authoritative collection takes a critical look at the current state of Black studies and speculates on where it may go from here.
This timely and unique book explores the concept of colorism, which is discrimination based on the color of a person’s skin, in a world where arguably light skin is privileged over dark, and one’s wealth, health, and opportunities are impacted by skin color, sometimes irrespective of one’s racial background. In the context of our multi-cultural and increasingly global society, and the historical backdrop of slavery, the text takes a unique approach by moving from personal anecdotes to adopting a scientific perspective grounded in empirical evidence. Hall explores how skin color is a more effective framework for examining prejudice and discrimination, as racial identities become increasingly mixed due to inter-racial unions and immigration. He argues that racism as discrimination by race is contrived, polarizing, and non-quantifiable, and that it is often skin color that is used to "identify" race, often inaccurately. With skin color being a visual and physical characteristic, with race-based prejudices attached to it, the author shows how skin color can be a loaded identifier of value and identity. In a world where the objective measure of skin color crosses racial boundaries and where race will become increasingly indiscernible over time, the ultimate aim of this book is to prepare for the social future of mankind that has already begun to take shape. Split into three parts, examining historical, contemporary, and potential future perspectives on colorism, this is fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology, social work, education, criminal justice, and other social sciences. The text will also be useful for providing validation for including colorism into the public domain.
Adolescent Identities draws the reader into the inner world of the adolescent to examine the process of identity formation through the various lenses of history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and psychoanalysis. The volume reveals there is no single "normal" adolescent, nor is there a singular adolescent experience. Editor Deborah L. Browning illustrates that in the course of development, each individual must integrate one’s unique biologically-given constitution and temperament, personal life history, and the influence of the social and cultural milieu. The book consists of six sections, arranged by concentric circles of influence, from the most exterior, identifiable, and potentially overt and conscious, to the most internal, private, and potentially unconscious concerns. Opening papers are drawn from sociology, European history, and cross-cultural anthropology, and address the question of whether and how adolescence can be considered a stage in development. The second section explores how visible or potentially knowable minority statuses are experienced, and how these interact with individual identity processes. Moving closer to the adolescent’s interpersonal world, the third section presents papers about intimate relationships between adolescents and about the conscious preoccupations of adolescents when they are alone. Extensive excerpts of Erikson’s most important contributions on identity formation and adolescence are offered in the fourth section. Papers on the most internal, private, and potentially unconscious conflicts comprise the fifth section. The book concludes with a section of papers on "failed solutions" to the challenge of adolescent identity consolidation: homelessness, drug abuse, eating disorders, and suicide. Adolescent Identities provides mental health practitioners, teachers, and graduate students in both fields with a variety of perspectives on the internal experience of adolescents.