Sharon Wolf

Developing critical consciousness or justifying the system? A qualitative analysis of attributions for poverty and wealth among low-income racial/ethnic minority and immigrant women.

OBJECTIVES Economic inequality is a growing concern in the United States and globally. The current study uses qualitative techniques to (a) explore the attributions low-income racial/ethnic minority and immigrant women make for poverty and wealth in the U.S., and (b) clarify important links between attributions, critical consciousness development, and system justification theory. METHODS In-depth interview transcripts from 19 low-income immigrant Dominican and Mexican and native African American mothers in a large Northeastern city were analyzed using open coding techniques. Interview topics included perceptions of current economic inequality and mobility and experiences of daily economic hardships. RESULTS Almost all respondents attributed economic inequality to individual factors (character flaws, lack of hard work). Structural explanations for poverty and wealth were expressed by fewer than half the sample and almost always paired with individual explanations. Moreover, individual attributions included system-justifying beliefs such as the belief in meritocracy and equality of opportunity and structural attributions represented varying levels of critical consciousness. CONCLUSIONS Our analysis sheds new light on how and why individuals simultaneously hold individual and structural attributions and highlights key links between system justification and critical consciousness. It shows that critical consciousness and system justification do not represent opposite stances along a single underlying continuum, but are distinct belief systems and motivations. It also suggests that the motive to justify the system is a key psychological process impeding the development of critical consciousness. Implications for scholarship and intervention are discussed.

Intrayear Household Income Dynamics and Adolescent School Behavior

Economic life for most American households is quite dynamic. Such income instability is an understudied aspect of households’ economic contexts that may have distinct consequences for children. We examine the empirical relationship between household income instability, as measured by intrayear income change, and adolescent school behavior outcomes using a nationally representative sample of households with adolescents from the Survey of Income and Program Participation 2004 panel. We find an unfavorable relationship between income instability and adolescent school behaviors after controlling for income level and a large set of child and family characteristics. Income instability is associated with a lower likelihood of adolescents being highly engaged in school across the income spectrum and predicts adolescent expulsions and suspensions, particularly among low-income, older, and racial minority adolescents.

Cumulative Risk and Teacher Well-Being in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Remarkably little systematic research has examined the living and working conditions for teachers in sub-Saharan Africa and how such conditions predict teacher well-being. This study assesses how various risks across several domains of teachers’ lives—measured as a cumulative risk index—predict motivation, burnout, and job dissatisfaction in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cumulative risk is related to lower motivation and higher burnout levels, and the relationship between cumulative risk and burnout is moderated by years of teaching experience. Specifically, less experienced teachers report the highest levels of burnout regardless of their level of cumulative risk. Experienced teachers with the low cumulative risk scores report the lowest levels of burnout, and burnout increases with higher levels of cumulative risk, suggesting that burnout decreases with experience but not for teachers who experience more risk factors. Implications for research and education policy in low-income and conflict-affected countries are discussed.

Experimental Impacts of the “Quality Preschool for Ghana” Interventions on Teacher Professional Well-being, Classroom Quality, and Children’s School Readiness

Abstract We assessed the impacts of a teacher professional development program for public and private kindergartens in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. We examined impacts on teacher professional well-being, classroom quality, and children’s readiness during one school year. This cluster-randomized trial included 240 schools (teachers N = 444; children N = 3,345, Mage = 5.2) randomly assigned to one of three conditions: teacher training (TT), teacher training plus parental-awareness meetings (TTPA), and controls. The programs incorporated workshops and in-classroom coaching for teachers and video-based discussion groups for parents. Moderate impacts were found on some dimensions of professional well-being (reduced burnout in the TT and TTPA conditions, reduced turnover in the TT condition), classroom quality (increased emotional support/behavior management in the TT and TTPA conditions, support for student expression in the TT condition), and small impacts on multiple domains of children’s school readiness (in the TT condition). The parental-awareness meetings had counteracting effects on child school readiness outcomes. Implications for policy and practice are discussed for Ghana and for early childhood education in low- and middle-income countries.

Impacts after One Year of "Healing Classroom" on Children's Reading and Math Skills in DRC: Results from a Cluster Randomized Trial.

ABSTRACT This article examines the effects of one year of exposure to “Learning to Read in a Healing Classroom” (LRHC) on the reading and math skills of second- to fourth-grade children in the low-income and conflict-affected Democratic Republic of the Congo. LRHC consists of two primary components: teacher resource materials that infuse social-emotional learning principles into a reading curriculum and collaborative school-based teacher learning circles to exchange information about and solve problems in using the teacher resource materials. To test the impact of LRHC on childrens reading and math skills, 40 school clusters containing 64 schools and 4,465 students were randomized to begin LRHC in 2011–2012 or to serve as wait-list controls. Hierarchical linear models (students nested in schools, nested in school clusters) were fitted. Results indicate marginally significant positive impacts on childrens reading scores (dwt = .14) and geometry scores (dwt = .14) but not on their addition/subtraction scores. These results should be treated with caution given the reported significance level of p < .10. The intervention had the largest impacts on math scores for language minority children and in low-performing schools. Research, practice, and policy implications for education in low-income conflict-affected countries are discussed.

Promoting children's learning and development in conflict-affected countries: Testing change process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Improving childrens learning and development in conflict-affected countries is critically important for breaking the intergenerational transmission of violence and poverty. Yet there is currently a stunning lack of rigorous evidence as to whether and how programs to improve learning and development in conflict-affected countries actually work to bolster childrens academic learning and socioemotional development. This study tests a theory of change derived from the fields of developmental psychopathology and social ecology about how a school-based universal socioemotional learning program, the International Rescue Committees Learning to Read in a Healing Classroom (LRHC), impacts childrens learning and development. The study was implemented in three conflict-affected provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and employed a cluster-randomized waitlist control design to estimate impact. Using multilevel structural equation modeling techniques, we found support for the central pathways in the LRHC theory of change. Specifically, we found that LRHC differentially impacted dimensions of the quality of the school and classroom environment at the end of the first year of the intervention, and that in turn these dimensions of quality were differentially associated with child academic and socioemotional outcomes. Future implications and directions are discussed.

Barriers to school attendance and gender inequality: Empirical evidence from a sample of Ghanaian schoolchildren

Governments in sub-Saharan Africa have made marked efforts to increase school enrollment. Yet attendance and completion rates remain low, particularly for girls. This study examines the reasons that school children do not attend school in a sample of Ghanaian students. Girls were more likely to miss school because a family member was sick, whereas boys were more likely to miss school due to work. Caregivers’ inability to pay school fees and belief that it is better to educate boys than girls were related to lower school attendance for girls but not for boys. Implications of the findings to inform efforts to improve educational access for all children are discussed.

The stability of elementary school contexts from kindergarten to third grade

The nature and measurement of school contexts have been the foci of interest in community, developmental, and school psychology for decades. In this paper, we tested the stability of six elementary school-context factors over time, using a nationally representative and longitudinal sample of schools from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K), and systems theories as a conceptual framework. Confirmatory factor analyses and tests of measurement equivalence revealed that six latent factors fit the data equally well across kindergarten, first grade, and third grade: school strain, school safety practices, school academic performance, school instructional resources, positive school climate, and school violence and crime. The factors were highly stable across the early elementary school years, with standardized stability coefficients ranging from .87 to .99 between kindergarten and first grade and from .71 to .98 between the first and third grades. Equivalence in the two sets of stability coefficients was also found across time. Both the magnitude and equivalence of the stability coefficients were robust to the inclusion of five key exogenous school characteristics as covariates in the model. Results suggest that elementary school contexts are remarkably stable over time and shed light on methodological considerations regarding the treatment of school-level measures in analyses that examine links between school context and childrens academic and developmental trajectories.

Family poverty and neighborhood poverty: Links with children's school readiness before and after the Great Recession

This paper examines how neighborhood and family poverty predict childrens academic skills and classroom behavior at school entry, and whether associations have changed over a period of twelve years spanning the Great Recession. Utilizing the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten 1998 and 2010 cohorts and combined with data from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey, we find that the proportion of kindergarten children living in moderate and high poverty neighborhoods increased from 1998 to 2010, and that these increases were most pronounced for non-poor and white children. Using OLS and fixed effects regression analyses and holding family poverty constant, we find that children in neighborhoods with higher levels of poverty start school less ready to learn than their peers. Specifically, children from the highest poverty neighborhoods start school almost a year behind children from the lowest poverty neighborhoods in terms of their academic skills. In addition, we find that the academic skills gap between poor- and non-poor children within neighborhood poverty categories grew from 1998 to 2010, particularly in high poverty neighborhoods. These findings appear to be explained both by changes in the composition of families within neighborhood poverty categories and income increases among non-poor families. The findings indicate that neighborhood poverty may be a useful proxy to identify children and families in need of additional support.

Changes in classroom quality predict Ghanaian preschoolers’ gains in academic and social-emotional skills.

Rates of participation in early childhood education (ECE) programs are on the rise globally, including in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet little evidence exists on the quality of these programs and on the role of classroom quality in predicting learning for young children across diverse contexts. This study uses data from the Greater Accra Region of Ghana (N = 3,407; Mage = 5.8 years; 49.5% female) to examine how changes in four culturally validated dimensions of ECE classroom quality predict children’s growth in early academic and social-emotional skills from the beginning to the end of one academic year. We find that improvements in domains of classroom instructional quality are related to small, positive gains in children’s early academic and social-emotional outcomes over the school year, and that these improvements are generally larger for children and classrooms with higher baseline proficiency and quality levels. Associations between changes in social-emotional aspects of classroom quality and child outcomes were mixed. These results extend the knowledge base on ECE quality to a new and underrepresented context while also providing important information regarding the contexts and children for whom teacher training and other quality-focused improvement efforts may be most needed.