What Factors Enable Children to be Successful in School?

Recognizing that many research instruments have been developed based on white, middle-class children, CRCDE researchers are going "back to the drawing board" to devise entirely new, culturally sensitive methods to identify successful outcomes for the children of tomorrow. They devoted the first year of their project to performing an in-depth ethnographic study of families from all five ethnic groups. Researchers repeatedly spent full days with the families over a period of 6 months, following them to daycare, to the grocery store and to school.

"We accumulated many hours of interviews in an effort to better understand the experiences that are important to development within each of the groups we are studying," the Principal Investigators explain. "The knowledge gained from that first ethnographic year is informing our larger study. We are not using culturally biased measures."

Early results from the CRCDE's pilot ethnography and research reveal:

• Not all learning takes place in traditional ways. Within certain families, learning is most likely to occur during mealtime. With others, it may be the family is gathered around the TV when learning occurs. And it may not always be the parents, but Grandma or another extended-family member who plays the central role in guiding the child's development.
• The majority of low-income immigrant parents, even those eligible, do not apply for federal programs to help families and children because of fears about consequences for their citizenship. In many cases these fears are not grounded in current Immigration and Naturalization Services policy.
• New measures of how parents spend money on child-related expenses are being developed. Through extensive qualitative and survey interviewing of parents, CRCDE researchers found that the principal national assessment of household expenses ¬≠ the Consumer Expenditures Survey ¬≠ needs to be revised to increase its sensitivity to the increasingly culturally diverse U.S. population.
• Chinese youth from immigrant families suggest both higher levels of academic achievement than youth of other ethnic groups in New York City, and also lower levels of psychological well-being. Multiple factors, including family, school, and transnational immigration experiences, may explain this paradoxical combination of high achievement and low psychological adjustment gaps.

The CRCDE is effectively training a new generation of scholars, especially those from underrepresented minority groups, who are capable of working with immigrant families in their native tongues. Training is multi-disciplinary and scholars working at the Center include those from the fields of psychology, sociology, education, public policy, and economics.ÔøΩ

In the long run, understanding cultural differences in children's learning will play a crucial role in achieving the CRCDE's core mission: identifying pathways to academic success.