This research explored the career beliefs of inner-city adolescents (N = 97). Results identified six types of beliefs: success is related to effort, job satisfaction, work interest and liking, flexibility/adaptability, achievement and persistence, and toleration of uncertainty. A majority of these young people believed that their success was not…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine what inspires or leads seventh-grade African-American girls toward an interest in STEM, to characterize and describe the context of an out-of-school STEM learning environment, explore the impact on the seventh-grade African-American girls who participated in the program as it relates to…

This study examined African American mothers' work socialization messages in relation to adolescents' work-related values. Moderation effects of mother-adolescent relation quality on the linkage between maternal socialization messages and adolescents' outcomes were also examined. Participants were 245 single African American mothers and their…

The author examined changes in the educational and career goals of 66 young women who completed surveys in Grades 7 and 12. Participants identified desirable versus undesirable aspects of mathematics- and science-based careers to better understand the characteristics that do or do not attract women from these fields. Over time, participants'…

The findings in this article are from the first phase of a 5-year longitudinal interpretive study that seeks an understanding of how students enrolled in academically low-achieving schools located in economically disadvantaged areas socially construct their academic and career aspirations. This article describes the general perceptions that…