What does it mean to be a Jewish girl today and how do Jewish adolescent girls navigate their identity? The study that I undertook is exploratory and designed to understand how three girls, who are recent day school graduates, experience the process of identity development as they begin high school. While the sample is small, the study reveals new…

In the past several decades, women have made considerable progress toward gender equity in the USA, but women in general and women of color in particular continue to be underrepresented in some fields of STEM, notably engineering and computing. Women of color in these fields are also underrepresented in the STEM education research literature. In…

This paper uses part of the data from a larger qualitative inquiry in two International Baccalaureate schools, one in Australia and one in an Indian Ocean Island Nation (a pseudonym), to identify the factors and forces that contribute to the sense of self and understanding of and engagement with the notion of international mindedness in two 'third…

This study contributes to the emerging research literature on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) support and persistence activities among urban teenage African American and Latina girls. We present three case studies of girls who participated in an afterschool STEM curriculum. Our within- and cross-case analyses focused on…

Through two stories of youth voice, learning, and identity development in an afterschool science program for girls only, we show the ways in which such programs can be understood as important identity-building practices. We describe key dimensions of a socio-cultural approach to youth voice, learning, and identity, situated also in the context of…

American Indians (AIs) have lower higher education enrollment and completion rates than Whites and most minority groups. AI women, however, participate at higher rates than AI men, White women, and White men. Research has not examined what contributes to their higher education aspirations. This study explored the middle and high school experiences…

We suggest that recent concerns about young people's excess body weight have generally been treated quite separately to longer standing concerns about young people (particularly, young women) and eating disorders. The few papers that have addressed this connection directly have focused on how practices motivated by the obesity discourse have had…

This quantitative study investigated whether and to what extent the motivational and sociocultural factors affect female Asian American high school physics students' achievement, their intended major in college, and their planned career goals at work fields. A survey of 62 questions, extracted from subscales of AAMAS,STPQ and PSE, were…

This article examines media coverage of a high school Native American mascot controversy. Discourse analysis of media documents and artifacts was utilized to explore how the issue was socially constructed for public consumption. Critical race feminism was used as a framework to examine how media discourses can oversimplify the complex interaction…

The 5th International Conference on Language, Literature and Culture has been hosted by Mehmet Akif Ersoy University (Burdur, Turkey), in cooperation with Çankaya University (Ankara, Turkey) and Süleyman Demirel University (Isparta, Turkey). Our main aim has been to provide a forum for discussion, to facilitate integration in these fields, and to…

Reform initiatives such as "Science for All Americans" (AAA, 1989) and "National Science Education Standards" (NRC, 1996) argue for making science accessible to all children regardless of age, sex, cultural and/or ethic background, and disabilities. One of the most popular and prevailing phrases highlighting science education reform in the last…

In Western cultures, girls' self-esteem declines substantially during middle adolescence, with changes in body image proposed as a possible explanation. Body image develops in the context of sociocultural factors, such as unrealistic media images of female beauty. In a study of 136 U.K. girls aged 11-16, experimental exposure to either ultra-thin…