Adolescence can be a difficult time for youth, and several additional factors intensify the stress and risk associated with adolescence for refugee youth. Refugee adolescents, for example, often have to learn and speak different languages in different contexts, establish new peer relationships, and adjust to new cultural norms. It is important to understand how such cultural negotiations influence refugee youth's educational experiences because improved educational outcomes for youth are associated with improved health outcomes. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to explore the relationships between peer connectedness, parental monitoring, academic self-efficacy, educational barriers, and school engagement with a sample of refugee adolescents. Research hypotheses were tested using exploratory factor analysis and bivariate correlational, multiple regression, and MANOVA analyses. Data were collected from a sample of 120 refugee adolescent participants who were between 13-18 years old and arrived in the United States from Bhutan, Burma, Somalia, Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, or Iraq. Refugee adolescent participants and their families were recruited from Ecumenical Refugee and Immigrant Services (ERIS) and the African Community Center (ACC), which are refugee resettlement agencies located in Denver, Colorado. Language interpreters were recruited to assist with communication during data collection. Study findings showed that (a) a significant amount of variance in academic self-efficacy was uniquely accounted for by participants' educational barriers, school engagement, and parental monitoring, (b) a significant amount of variance in educational barriers was uniquely accounted for by ethnically similar peer connectedness, ethnically dissimilar peer connectedness, academic self-efficacy, and school engagement, (c) peer connectedness and educational barriers were positively, rather than inversely, correlated, (d) a significant amount of variance in school engagement was accounted for by educational barriers and academic self-efficacy, and (e) group differences in the level of relationships between variables were found as a function of current geographic location. Research implications include re-evaluating the use of negatively-worded and confusing items within the measures and collaborating with community partners when working with vulnerable populations. Practice implications include involving parents to decrease educational barriers through collaboration and providing educational support to foster success within the school and community.

Thesis advisor: Mary E. Walsh / Childhood obesity is a pervasive health issue in the United States. Research has demonstrated that various correlates are associated with the onset and maintenance of overweight status, including physical health conditions, psychological well-being, interpersonal relationships, family functioning, and educational attainment. Policymakers and educators have agreed that elementary and secondary schools are crucial settings for the promotion of healthy development and ameliorating obesity. Therefore, comprehensive school-based interventions that collaborate with community agencies are being implemented to improve the achievement and well-being of at-risk students. The present study focused on City Connects, an optimized student support intervention grounded in relational developmental systems theory that functions in predominantly high-poverty urban locations. City Connects recognizes students as possessing unique constellations of protective and risk factors (i.e., strengths and needs), and an integral aspect of the intervention is that it connects students to tailored services to enhance strengths and address needs. The endeavor of the present study was to examine K-5 students that City Connects identified as manifesting with overweight issues via a holistic, collaborative assessment process, and how these students differed from peers not designated as overweight. Findings indicated statistically significant differences across the groups, in terms of demographic characteristics, overall level of perceived risk, strengths and needs recognized, school-related academic and thriving outcomes, and the influence of specific psychosocial and familial strengths and needs on those school outcomes. Specifically, students presenting with overweight concerns were more likely to be from lower socioeconomic backgrounds; have a high association with special education service needs; represent a more intensive overall risk level; manifest a diverse array of strengths and needs across academic, social-emotional/behavioral, family, and health/medical domains; and mostly exhibit poorer school performance. The effects of certain strengths and needs moderated school performance differences in several instances. Implications for theory, policy, and practice are discussed, with recommendations for future research. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

As college classrooms increase in size, the challenge of keeping students engaged in the course becomes a greater challenge. Instructors are burdened with the task of managing larger classrooms while maintaining high levels of student participation. Research has shown that students tend to hide and are less likely to participate in larger classrooms. Research has also shown that student participation is affected by fear of judgment from their peers and the instructor. However it is unclear whether this fear is tied to students’ perceived ability or self-efficacy. In addition, it may be that students’ perception of the instructor may affect their class participation. The present study attempted to disentangle how these factors work together to influence student engagement in the classroom. The present study was conducted over the fall 2013 semester. Two hundred forty four students were recruited from three introductory psychology courses. At the beginning of the semester, students were asked to report their perception of their academic ability (academic self-efficacy; ASE) and demographic information. During the last week of instruction, students were asked to self-report their ASE, level of course engagement, and perceptions of the instructors teaching self-efficacy (PIE). After grades were posted, the final grades for each student were collected. Three predictions were explored: (a) changes in ASE would predict students’ course grade, (b) the relationship between student ASE and student grades would be mediated or moderated by student engagement, and (c) PIE would moderate the relationship between students’ ASE and student engagement. Two of the predictions were supported. Changes in ASE did predict students’ course grades such that increases in ASE predicted increases in grades as well. Student engagement partially explained the relationship between ASE and grades. Closer examination showed that performance (wanting good grades in the course) accounted for the relationship between ASE and course grades. The final prediction could not be evaluated because PIE was not related to ASE. However results show that PIE does significantly impact student engagement in the course. This adds to previous literature and shows that perceptions of an instructor’s teaching self-efficacy can influence how students engage in the course. These results also align with previous research that has shown that students with higher sense of ASE and course engagement have better academic outcomes.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between college students' social class and their academic outcomes. A structural equation model was proposed, hypothesizing that a student's socioeconomic status (SES) is related to their motives for attending college, thus influencing their perception of fit at the university, their satisfaction with the university, their academic self-efficacy, and their grades, attendance, and likelihood for retention.. The results from a sample of 500 undergraduate students show that overall, the hypothesized model was a borderline good fit of the data. While SES was negatively related to interdependent motives for attending college, it was not related to independent motives for college. Independent motives for attending college were positively related to perceptions of fit at the university, while interdependent motives were not. Finally, fit at the university was positively related to satisfaction, which was related to intention for retention, class attendance, and academic self-efficacy. Academic self-efficacy was significantly related to students' grade point average. These results suggest that students from low SES backgrounds are more interdependent. Further, those who are more independent feel a greater sense of fit with the university and are more likely to be satisfied, express commitment to continuing at the university, and attend their classes. These results provide support for a proposition that higher education institutions should value students who have different types of motives and to consider what is communicated to students through programs and expectations that are focused on independent values.

abstract: Recent reports have indicated that there are both mental health and educational disparities between Latino youth and their European American counterparts. Specifically, Latin youth are at a heightened risk for negative mental health outcomes in comparison to their non-Latino youth (e.g., Eaton et al., 2008). Further, 16.7% of Latino adolescents dropped out of high school compared to 5.3% of European American youth over the past several decades (1960-2011; U.S. Department of Education, 2013). Mexican American (M.A. youth in particular, have the lowest educational attainment among all Latino ethnic groups in the U.S. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). While these mental health and educational disparities have often been attributed to discrimination experiences that Latino youth encounter, there is also consistent empirical evidence linking discrimination with these maladjustment problems. These studies confirmed that discrimination directly related to depressive symptoms (e.g., Umana-Taylor et al., 2007), externalizing behaviors (Berkel et al., 2010), self-esteem (e.g., Zeiders et al., 2013), and academic outcomes (e.g., Umana-Taylor et al., 2012). Few studies to date have examined the underlying mechanisms (i.e., moderation and mediation) that help us to better understand resiliency paths for those Latino youth that display positive adjustment outcomes despite being faced with similar discrimination encounters that their maladjusted peers face. Therefore, the following two studies examined various mechanisms in which discrimination related to adjustment to better understand potential risk and resiliency processes in hopes of informing intervention research. Paper 1 explored cultural influences on the association between discrimination, active coping, and mental health outcomes in M.A. youth. Paper 2 examined how trajectories of discrimination across 5th, 7th, and 10th grades related to cultural values, externalizing behaviors, and academic outcomes in M.A. youth. Taken together, these studies provide a culturally informed overview of adjustment processes in M.A. adolescents who face discrimination in addition to identifying critical directions for future research in efforts to gaining a more contextualized and comprehensive understanding of the dynamic processes involved in discrimination and adjustment in M.A. youth. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Family and Human Development 2014

Social stratification research has consistently found persistent inequalities in the academic outcomes of children from different socio-economic status (SES) groups. Research in the sociology of education has shown that students from higher SES groups outperform peers from lower SES groups on various academic indicators as well as make greater academic progress when assessed at two or more separate points in time. Recent evidence from the US has also shown that participation in leisure out-of-school activities (OSA) is among the factors which may contribute to maintaining or even widening these inequalities. Similar evidence is lacking in the UK. The present research focuses on this issue by analysing the role of participation in leisure OSA in the process of reproduction of social inequalities in academic outcomes among British school-aged children. The study draws on social and cultural capital theories to address the following questions: a) Are there differences in participation in OSA among school-aged children in dissimilar SES groups?; b) Taking into account children’s SES, is participation in OSA associated with their academic outcomes?; c) Does the association between participation in OSA and children’s academic outcomes vary across different SES groups? Using data from the third and fourth sweeps of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), when cohort members were aged 5 and 7 years old, the research explores participation in three categories of leisure activities; a) social-group activities, b) commercial-public activities, and c) home-centred activities. Children’s academic outcomes are assessed using verbal and non-verbal standardised tests, as well as by teachers’ assessment. The study applied regression models to examine the relationships between children’s SES, participation in OSA and academic outcomes. The statistical analyses were carried out in a multilevel framework which enabled the MCS hierarchical data structure and area variations to be accounted for. The findings suggest that participation in some, but not all leisure OSA is one of the factors which contributes to socio-economic inequalities in educational outcomes among British school-aged children. This is because participation in OSA is associated with better academic performance among all students, however those in high SES groups are more likely to be exposed to such activities. After controlling for SES, gender, family characteristics, school type, absenteeism and geographical variation, there is a small to moderate positive relationship between participation in a number of different leisure OSA and 7-year-olds' academic performance. Interestingly, variations among children from different SES groups were found in the extent to which attendance at certain OSA (e.g. after-school clubs) is associated with academic development between age 5 and 7: children from lower SES who attend such activities tend to progress more academically than children from intermediate and higher SES.

No description available.

The Mississippi State Department of Education (MDE) adopted a state assessment in 2014 to measure early literacy skills for incoming kindergarten students (Mississippi Joint Legislature Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review [PEER], 2015). The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of early childhood education (ECE) programs in a selected school district in the state. A quantitative research design was used to conduct the study. Specifically, this study sought to determine if there were differences in the mean scores on the Star Early Literacy baseline assessment for students who attended an ECE program and those who did not. In addition, this study sought to determine if there were differences in the mean scores on the Star Early Literacy baseline assessment for four literacy classifications (early emergent reader, late emergent reader, transitional reader, and probable reader), as well as differences for gender, race, and socioeconomic status (SES) among students who attended an ECE program and those who did not. Lastly, the study determined if there were significant differences in the mean scores on the Star Reading and Star Math end-of-year (EOY) assessments as well as differences by gender, race, and SES for students who attended an ECE program and those who did not. Existing data included Star Early Literacy baseline scores, Star Early Literacy four literacy classifications, Star Reading EOY scores and Star Math EOY scores, gender, race, and SES. The results of the study showed that students who participated in an ECE program scored statistically higher on all student academic outcomes when compared to students who did not participate in an ECE program. The results showed there were no statistically significant differences in the mean scores based on gender, race, or SES for student academic outcomes when comparing students who did and did not participate in an ECE program.

High school yoga programs are gaining popularity throughout the United States. The many perceived benefits of such programs among adolescent groups have shown promising outcomes. This mixed-method evaluation of a high school yoga program aims to evaluate the effects of the program on student-reported stress, resilience, and academic outcomes. Program participants include high school students in yoga classes (n = 61) and comparison classes (n = 37), who completed pre- and post-measure surveys along with social validity measures. Overall findings showed a decrease in stress levels among yoga students compared to comparison students, which approached statistical significance, no significant differences between groups on the resilience and academic measures, and high social validity among teachers and students in yoga classes. Future research should include larger sample sizes, interrater reliability for fidelity ratings of yoga practice, and compare yoga to other forms of students' physical activity.

Food insecurity plagues college students and is associated with negative health and academic outcomes. The aim of the study was to examine the prevalence of food insecurity, its determinants, and food intake outcomes associated with students found to have low food security. A cross-sectional study design of Mississippi university students completed online surveys that included socio-demographic, Adult Food Security questions, coping strategies, and money expenditures. Descriptive, correlation, and chi-square analyses determined how student characteristics were associated with food security. A total of 246 (41.3%) students were food insecure. Significant variables associated with food insecurity were African American or other minority, low GPA, use of public transportation, do not own a car, reported fair or poor perceived health status, higher money expenditure scores, and lower coping strategy scores. Additional research and institutional strategies are needed to close the gap of food insecurity among this population.