Socializing Youth for Success: The Role of Schools, Teachers, and Parents in Students’ Educational Perceptions

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium is a collection three papers that approach the question of how youth are socialized and influenced by external forces. An ecological systems theory framework and three distinct research methodologies (critical auto-ethnography, multi-level modeling, and grounded theory) help the symposium authors show the power of students’ environments to influence their perceptions and ideas surrounding education. The first paper focuses on the school features, individual-level factors, and their interaction to predict school interracial climate perceptions. The second paper follows the inner-world of a teacher of a diverse classroom and how her interactions with her students affect their development and her own ideas of success. The final paper follows immigrant parent narratives and their educational achievement goals for their children.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Multicultural/Multiethnic Education: Theory, Research, and Practice

Chair

• Amir Germain Francois, University of Virginia

Papers

• Creating Climates for Positive Racial/Ethnic Interaction: School and Individual Factors in American High Schools - Amir Germain Francois, University of Virginia; Joanna Lee Williams, University of Virginia

• Teachers as Agents of Socialization Into a Diverse Society: A Call for Multicultural Competence - Tinia R. Merriweather, Ethical Culture Fieldston School / Fordham University

• Immigrant Parents’ Educational Hopes for Their Children: Qualitative Study of West Africans in New York - Sonia Roubeni, Fordham University