Promoting Academic Resilience In Multicultural America

Promoting Academic Resilience in Multicultural America combines biographical sketches of resilient students, examples of effective programs designed to encourage resilience, recent research in the field, and their own experiences of resilient academics of color. The book illustrates exactly how academic success occurs within traditionally challenged learning environments. The authors focus most closely on the crucial transition between high school and college. The individuals spotlighted and programs outlined cross racial, gender, socioeconomic, and ethnic lines, and include African American, Hispanic, and white students. In part, the authors conclude that there are specific multidimensional protective factors that work collaboratively to enable the success of these exceptional students. It is the detailed exploration of these phenomena that lie at the heart of this work and that has the potential to help all children excel. Among other uses, this book could be a valuable addition to a college freshmen seminar series, a foundations of education course, a course on multiculturalism in America and/or any course focused on basic educational psychology.

This extensive qualitative study focused on the academic resilience phenomenon, detailing the educational resilience experiences of fifty low socioeconomic students of color from various racial and ethnic backgrounds. The book chronicles specific protective factors and processes in the students' lives and several symbiotic relationships between groups of protective factors.

In this book, Mu crafts a sociology of resilience through his multi-year research with Australian students. The content is not merely concerned with individual achievements in precarious conditions but also ponders over transformative, reflexive, and power-rejective everyday practices that make social change possible, probable, and even inevitable. Since Emmy Werner and her colleagues discovered the "self-righting" and "invincible" children on the Hawaiian island of Kauai who fared well despite exposure to significant household risks, positive psychology has markedly advanced the knowledge about child and youth resilience to adversities. Yet, many children and adolescents continue to slide through system cracks. This fact does not invalidate psychology of resilience; rather, it urges new frameworks to break the reproductive circle of inequality. Reframing the traditional psychological notion of resilience through recourse to Bourdieu’s relational and reflexive sociology, the book moves beyond individual adaptation to adverse conditions and takes a deep dive into sociological resilience to structural problems. It offers school professionals and educational researchers an epistemological tool to reapproach resilience and reappropriate Bourdieu for social change. Offering scholarship that will interest researchers in the areas of child and youth resilience, sociology of resilience, and sociology of education, the volume is written to engage with the intellectual work of both established scholars and emerging researchers within Australia and beyond. The empirical analyses also provide useful insights for educational professionals in schools and resilience researchers in universities.

"Over the course of ten years, this extensive qualitative study focused on the academic resilience phenomenon. The research delves into the educational resilience experiences of fifty low socioeconomic students of color from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. In addition to chronicling specific protective factors and processes active in the students' lives, several symbiotic relationships between groups of protective factors are documented and explored. A Resilience Cycle theory, which was chronicled in previous works of the authors, is used as a framework to view essential elements of the students' academic success. Ultimately, the data and findings are used to propose practical suggestions for promoting academic resilience in at-risk youth nationwide. Furthermore, because one author specializes in education and the other in psychology, both of these disciplines are brought to bear on this crucial and understudied topic." -- from back cover.

This Black Administrators in Higher Education book displays a group of administrators from predominantly white and historically black institutions from both four-year and two-year institutions. Through the lenses of autoethnography and personal narrative studies, this extraordinary edited volume by two former deans of education provide the audience with cutting-edge research findings on a variety of topics relative to black administrators working in higher education.

With the turmoil and conflict that has been present in recent times, it is imperative that new methods of teaching are explored in order to produce emotionally secure and connected individuals. Social-emotional learning and whole learner education has emerged as a strategy to ensure that students are actively engaged in learning, the school, and their community. It teaches them tactics that allow them to better manage their emotions, maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. It is imperative that the whole learner is supported and encouraged to ensure proper mental health, academic achievement, and social responsibility of current and future generations. Multifaceted Strategies for Social-Emotional Learning and Whole Learner Education is a critical research publication that supports teachers who wish to utilize these teaching theories to meet their students’ needs academically, socially, and emotionally and to ensure that they become lifelong learners. Highlighting topics such as adult learners, professional development, and culturally responsive education, this book is ideal for teachers, guidance counselors, researchers, academicians, and students who want to improve their understanding of learners and their social-emotional growth at various stages of learning, to find strategies that will assist in the development of any learner, and to find strategic models that promote lifelong learning.

This open access volume provides an understanding of the different aspects of success, school continuity and social mobility among European Roma, including the motives justifying the high rates of school dropout and failure among this group. It offers a critical and reflexive perspective about social reality from a multidisciplinary and transversal point of view, sharing knowledge and practices in different countries about the articulations between Roma families, individuals, school and public policies. Over time, there has been an increase in the educational attainment of European citizens, but there are still persistent inequalities between Roma and non-Roma, including gender inequalities, which greatly affect Roma women. The volume explores the issue of Roma education and includes chapters from Western European, South and Central and Eastern European researchers using different theoretical and methodological perspectives. The intersection of this diversity and plurality of standpoints makes possible to obtain a comprehensive view on the education and schooling of European Roma.

Do you ever feel like more and more of your students come to your classroom not knowing how to study or what to do in order to be successful in your class? Some students come to college knowing the ropes, knowing what it takes to be successful as STEM students. But many do not. Research shows that students who are the first-generation in their family to attend or complete college are likely to arrive at your classroom not knowing what it takes to be successful. And data shows that more first-generation students are likely to be arriving on your doorstep in the near future. What can you do to help these students be successful? This book can provide you with some research based methods that are quick, easy, and effortless. These are steps that you can take to help first-generation college students succeed without having to change the way you teach. Why put in this effort in the first place? The payoff is truly worth it. First-generation college students are frequently low-income students and from ethnic groups underrepresented in STEM. With a little effort, you can enhance the retention of underrepresented groups in your discipline, at your institution and play a role in national efforts to enhance diversity in STEM. "This book provides an excellent description of dealing with immigrant and first generation college STEM students whose socioeconomic backgrounds often hinder them from reaching their full potential. The text touches on various aspects of student, faculty and mentor interaction that will lead to the exploitation of the student natural talents and provide life changing outcomes." ~ Paris Svoronos, Ph.D. Queensborough Community College of CUNY "Gail Horowitz’s new book Teaching STEM to First Generation College Students is a timely and important resource to improve the success of college students who come from families with little or no experience in the US higher education system. “First-gens” are a growing population whose academic success is important to both the institutions they attend and our nation’s economy. Dr. Horowitz, an experienced chemistry educator, describes in detail the challenges first-gens face in historically difficult STEM classes. In doing so, she is honest but also optimistic. First-gens encounter difficulty not merely with the technical subject matter they may have been poorly prepared for in high school, but also with their own wrong-headed beliefs about how to study and where to find help on campus. At the same time, Horowitz is also highly respectful of the strengths that many first-gens bring to college, strengths often under the radar of instructors who may only see inexplicable behaviors they attribute to first-gens being clueless, unmotivated, or irresponsible. Horowitz provides an excellent review of constructs from psychology about students’ and teachers’ beliefs about academic success and failure, demonstrating that first gens are too often tripped by self-defeating and often incorrect beliefs about their legitimacy as college students and what it takes to pass difficult STEM courses. These, she explains, fuel first-gen students’ fear about revealing their ignorance and illegitimacy as college students. With clear-eyed and experienced-based optimism about techniques that help first-gens succeed, she then gives excellent, specific suggestions for faculty, graduate teaching assistants, and the students themselves to help first-gens learn to “do” STEM courses and college successfully. This is an important and highly-recommended book, a gift of honesty and hope, by an experienced STEM instructor who clearly cares deeply about first-gen students and their college experience." ~ Dr. Louise Hainline CUNY - Brooklyn College Director, Center for Achievement in Science Education (CASE) Director of NYS Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP) Director of NIH Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) Director, NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) Peer-Assisted Team Research program Director, Brooklyn College subcontract, NSF Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Awards (IRACDA) to SUNY Stony Brook "As the college population becomes more diverse, STEM instructors have a responsibility to cultivate the success of all students. In this important and engaging book, Gail Horowitz provides a valuable resource for understanding the educational experiences of first-generation students and why they often struggle in STEM courses. The author persuasively conveys two important insights. First, that first-generation students can achieve success in STEM courses by becoming self-regulated learners. Second, that college faculty and graduate instructors can easily introduce effective learning strategies into their courses. These arguments are supported by extensive references to the research literature, which provide a wealth of additional resources. Just as important, however, is the deep humanity that the author brings to her subject—a sincere belief that our classrooms and colleges are made better by the aspirations, resilience, and experiences of first-generation students." ~ Dr. Trace Jordan New York University "G. Horowitz’s book should be required reading for both teachers and students. It provides valuable insights into the behaviors and coping mechanisms of not only many first-generation college students, but also continuing generation students who struggle with STEM coursework. Recognizing these behaviors and mindsets is the first step towards becoming a better educator." ~ Leda Lee, M.S. Brooklyn College