Background: In an American society where a majority of students are from minoritized backgrounds, a better understanding of the relationship between psychosocial factors and school climate across racial groups is needed to assist schools in providing a supportive and positive learning environment for all students. Objective: The relationship…

With growth in STEM postsecondary programs and careers positioned as a national priority, ensuring that K-12 science classrooms are staffed with highly qualified teachers is an important step towards building student interest in STEM and preparing students for STEM careers. However, previous studies of out-of-field teaching have indicated that…

Research has called for nuanced scholarly investigations that synergise, complicate, and advance social theories of literacy. Accordingly, this study melds critical literacy, critical race theory, and multiliteracies to distil students' involvement with the canonical "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," investigating: What are…

Previous studies investigating how the school choice paradigm shapes school segregation have found that students' ethnic school preferences drive school segregation by leading students to rank and change current schools following ethnic homophily orientations. This study investigates an intermediate moment in which these preferences contribute to…

In this paper, I explore the challenge and promise of developing an anti-racist and anti-colonial curriculum and pedagogy in a time of racialized dread. Drawing on my experience teaching a 10-week course on racial justice, delivered in the Korean language, to 1st generation Korean American seniors in the Southern United States. I explore how the…

Culturally responsive school counseling (CRSC) is the call to action for school counselors, aimed at meeting the needs of underrepresented groups. CRSC is often described as an approach that serves all students, but definitions fail to mention and center underrepresented populations (i.e., students of color). Literature has included varying…

The heterogeneity in the developmental trajectories of math motivational beliefs (i.e., expectancies for success and subjective task value beliefs) was examined among Asian and Latinx male and female students from Southern California across Grades 8 through 10 (n = 2,710; 50% female; 85% Latinx; 15% Asian; M[subscript age] = 13.77). By conducting…

Digital self-harm, the anonymous online posting, sending, or otherwise sharing of hurtful content about oneself, has not received the same amount of scholarly scrutiny as other forms of self-directed abuse. In the current paper, we analyze three independent national surveys of U.S. teens (aged 13-17, M = 14.96) in repeat cross-sectional studies…

The high school principalship today requires a complex skill set steeped in relationship building, strategic oversight, and systemic approaches. Female principals of color not only have to develop this skill set, but also deal with the societal structures that inherently contain professional and personal obstacles that inhibit their abilities to…

This dissertation utilizes a basic qualitative exploratory approach to examine the schooling experiences of eight Black high school males in a predominantly White community. It seeks to understand how they define and make sense of their own mental health and well-being through a theoretical framework of Mental Health and Well-being: A…

This study explored the impact of academically supported mentorship on the self-efficacy and perceptions of racially marginalized high school students regarding advanced course enrollment. Using a mixed-methods approach, it combined quantitative pre- and post-intervention surveys with qualitative open-ended questions and semi-structured…

The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore the creation of Homeplace between Black women who recently graduated from high school and their former high school counselors who were also Black women. Additionally, this study strove to examine the perceived benefits of experiencing Homeplace in the relationship with their former…

This study theorizes two new constructs--"reflection" and "refraction"--for teaching argumentative writing about literature in secondary classrooms. Derived from a year-long ethnographic study and through contextualized analysis of a student's essay, it examines a Latinx student's argument about the novel "Sing, Unburied,…

Educators and researchers have long sought to understand--and illuminate--factors outside of school that shape students' educational outcomes. In 2019, the Research Alliance published a policy brief ("Aggressive Policing and Academic Outcomes: Examining the Impact of Police "Surges" in NYC Students' Home Neighborhoods,"…

Racial inequality in exclusionary discipline is a salient educational equity issue. The implications of educators' discretion in administering discipline and the complexity of repeated office discipline referrals (ODRs) and suspensions are reflected in school discipline policy debates nationwide. This brief uses New York City to learn more about…