The achievement gap is an important problem with serious consequences for the United States’ economy. A long history of oppression has contributed to a substantial gap in achievement between students of minority status or low socioeconomic status and their white or higher income peers. Large scale efforts to address this problem have been unsuccessful in substantially reducing the problem. As parent involvement has been linked to student achievement, capitalizing on strong family-school partnerships offers a valuable opportunity to target student achievement. Low-income and minority parents face many barriers to parent involvement. If schools embrace a more inclusive view of parent involvement and collaborate with parents to reduce these barriers, however, successful family-school partnerships may be formed. Themes for creating such partnerships include recognizing that parents care about their children’s education and want them to succeed, treating parents as equal partners in the educational process, and using innovative techniques to solve problems. / text

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Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the association between entrepreneurship and health amongst millennials with ethnic minority backgrounds. Methods: Interviews were conducted with 8 people from 8 countries in Europe. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using content analysis. Findings:  The content analysis resulted in four categories ‘between despair and hope, ‘the virtues and vices of information technology’, ‘the ethnic background and racial identity as challenge and strength’ and ‘the pressure of being successful’. Conclusion: This study increased the understanding of entrepreneurship in association with health, how millennials from ethnic minority backgrounds face mental health issues due to many factors such as financial difficulties, cultural background, education, race etc. The results indicated the importance of providing safe spaces for millennial entrepreneurs from minority backgrounds to access mental health facilities, guidance, and support in their endeavors.

There have been concerns about low educational achievement of ethnic minority students in China. Previous studies have explored this area, especially in regard to the relationship between economic backwardness and achievement. However, a new field of study examines ethnic identity being considered as a cause of low achievement. This study is to use meta-analysis to determine the aggregate results of current research on the effects of self-identity on ethnic minority students and their achievement in China. The literature has been collected through searching library holdings, and online electronic resource search. Different levels of identity construction are discussed. This thesis concludes that there is a significant relationship between ethnic identity and student achievement. The findings show that the issue of identity is especially significant to ethnic groups. However, current focus is still on monetary inputs of education and its relationship with achievement. Some recommendations are provided for future research.

Previous organizational research has shown that people who perceived discrimination can bounce back from their negative experiences by constructing underdog stories: narratives in which others do not believe an individual could succeed, but in the end, the person succeeds. However, this concept has not been tested in the educational setting. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine if constructing underdog stories can influence how college students perceive potential barriers in education. Participants were randomly assigned conditions: Underdog and control (neutral stories) condition. We hypothesized that creating underdog stories would reduce perceived barriers in college. We further hypothesized that creating "neutral" control stories, narratives where people do not have to overcome any challenges, will not affect perceived barriers in college. These hypotheses were tested by comparing participants' underdog story reflections and the control group's story reflections. McWhirter's Perceived Barriers Scale (1992), a commonly instrument used in perceived college barriers and education studies, was used to establish and analyze participants' perceived barriers in education.

No / This article Contributes to theoretical debates on minority political participation in the UK, with specific reference to inter-generational variations within the South Asian Muslim community; Contributes to the scholarly literature on the impact and effectiveness of new political parties within the British political system, through a case study of the Respect Party; Adds to empirical primary data on strategies adopted by political parties in courting specific sections of the ethnic minority vote in the UK; Offers an empirically-led demonstration of the changes taking place within the political sphere of South Asian Muslim diasporas in Britain. In March 2012, the Respect Party won an unexpected by-election in the British city of Bradford, previously regarded as a safe Labour seat. This article examines the party's campaign strategy and in particular how it courted South Asian Muslim voters. A dominant feature of South Asian Muslim politics in the UK has been community bloc voting along lines of kinship (biraderi). The use of kinship networks for political gain effectively disenfranchised many young people and women. We demonstrate how Respect used their experience of campaigning in constituencies with significant numbers of South Asian Muslim voters to achieve an unlikely victory in Bradford. A key strategy was to mobilise otherwise politically marginalised sections of the South Asian Muslim community by offering an alternative to the culture of patronage in Bradford whilst at the same time utilising certain community structures in order to gain their own bloc votes.

It is argued in this paper that: ethnic minority population and their enterprises, predominated by South Asians, are growing faster than their mainstream counterparts in the UK; past research paid more attention to either South Asian ethnic minority SMEs based in and around London only or owned by Indian entrepreneurs only than South Asian ethnic minority SMEs elsewhere in the UK or owned by Pakistani and Bangladeshi entrepreneurs. Further, scholarly investigation is needed to explain: the relationship between educational levels and entrepreneurial orientation; and intra-ethnic minority entrepreneurial differences between South Asian ethnic minority entrepreneurs in the UK by expanding the research scope both geographically and contextually.

In the United States, asthma remains a major cause of frequent urgent care visits, hospitalizations, and preventable deaths among children. Nationwide, the chronic disease continues to fall disproportionately on minorities, mostly residing in urban localities. When a child is diagnosed with asthma, the parents are typically tasked with managing the child's condition. Establishing a collaborative partnership between parents and their child's primary physician is significant for improving asthma self-management among youth. Using the theory of reasoned action as a theoretical framework, this mixed-methods study examined whether a relationship exists between parental perceptions of physician cultural sensitivity and parental care in asthma treatment adherence. Phenomenology was used to explore the real-world experiences of study five ethnic minority parents and one guardian grandparent of asthmatic children aged 0–17 who shared similar perspectives. Descriptive surveys were used in combination with in-depth interviews to develop an understanding of parental perceptions on physician cultural sensitivity related to asthma treatment adherence. Overall, 108 minority parents were eligible to complete the survey. The study findings revealed that parents who feel recognized, valued, and respected by their child's physician were more likely to be engaged in shared decision-making about treatment. The findings support the potential for positive social change in terms of modifying the health care behaviors of minority parents with asthmatic children, increasing parental self-efficacy in managing their child's asthma, and improving the cultural sensitivity of physicians who serve the needs of diverse minority families.

Extant scholarship has paid considerable attention to exploring the impact of people-dependent intangible resources on business success but in large organisations only. Research about the role of these resources in small businesses, in general, and in ethnic minority small businesses, in particular, is scarce. The current study attempts to narrow this gap. Since it is impossible to study all the ethnic minority small businesses, this study uses a case study strategy that focuses on South Asian ethnic minority small businesses that deal in fashion. The study adopts a qualitative research methodology, it uses the semi-structured in-depth interview method to collect data, and it espouses an inductive thematic technique for coding/analysis of the data. Five overarching themes emerged from the interview data. These are: business success; compassionate customer service; relationships; knowledge, experience, training and education; and ethnic culture and the wider economic and political environment. Discussion of these themes leads to the formation of the culture-induced entrepreneurship model. According to this model, the continued success of these businesses is driven by the ethnic culture, while the existence of these businesses helps to maintain the culture in return. However, overdependence on the coethnic base might risk the future success of these businesses. This thesis concludes by highlighting its theoretical contributions to the culturalist view and the mixed embeddedness model of ethnic minority entrepreneurship and small business literature. The implications of this study for researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers, as well as its limitations and the possible future research paths, are also discussed.

This thesis investigates asylum seekers/refugees’ orientations to belonging and identity. It is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted among asylum seekers/refugees residing in Scotland between 2006 and 2008 and on a media monitoring of a number of UK newspapers. The interviews were analysed for interviewees’ orientations to feelings of belonging and identity with the UK, Scotland and homelands. They were also analysed for interviewees’ perceptions (beliefs and understandings) of newspapers’ reporting of asylum and importance to their sense of national belonging and national identity forming. The monitoring provided the context of newspapers’ reporting of asylum at the time of interviews. It enabled a small-scale examination of media content with reference to interviewees’ perceptions. The thesis explores two assumptions. Firstly, asylum seekers/refugees’ national belonging and national identity formations are complex and contingent upon their everyday ‘lived’ experiences. Secondly, asylum seekers/refugees’ belonging and identity formations, as social processes of citizenship, cannot be understood in isolation from the high visibility of the asylum issue in UK media. As an empirical study, therefore, its findings are deployed to critique policymaking, theoretical and media accounts of non-British citizens’ forms of belonging to, and identification with the British ‘nation’. It is suggested that, in addition to policymaking, there are other social circumstances that would facilitate ethnic minority migrants’ national belonging and national identity formations. These factors do not only account for the prioritising of Scottishness over Britishness, but also migrants’ ‘hyphenated’ identities. This thesis will therefore provide evidence suggesting that non-citizens (ethnic minorities), have their own meanings and agency of orientating to a feeling of national belonging and national identity that is nuanced and contingent on their experiences. The thesis does not aim to establish media causality. However, it highlights the fact that newspaper coverage can evoke responses from marginalised groups and provide the context from which identities are narrated and mobilised. The thesis will improve our understanding of the practices, meanings and contestations of belonging and identity that is grounded in the ‘lived’ experiences of noncitizens. This sociological dimension to ethnic minorities’ citizenship forming is not only poorly understood, but has been dominated by theoretical and policymaking accounts in the contemporary state.