PROJECTS

Envisioning a Meaningful Future: Improving academic outcomes and college access through familial and school-based support

Purpose:  Focused on reducing gaps in school engagement and belonging and improving postsecondary planning and sense of purpose, and understanding perceptions of the economy.

Academic engagement is known to decline across high school, with some students’ engagement remains low throughout high school and thus limiting postsecondary school options. Concomitantly, college-readiness and enrollment are increasingly important, as a college degree has become necessary to earn a living.

This longitudinal study across the high school years focuses on the family, teacher/counselor relationships, and students’ inner-resources as they may help youth envision a meaningful future, which may motivate academic engagement, thereby improving academic outcomes and post-secondary transitions. The overarching goals are to hone and test hypotheses, policies, and practices for improving academic engagement and achievement among diverse high school students by focusing on students’ ideas about their future (e.g., sense of purpose, future orientation, college-going identity) and inner resources (e.g., efficacy, decision-making). A major part of these goals is clarifying the roles of familial and school relationships to inform research, policy and practice, more generally.

Pathways to the Middle-class: Knowledge, Skill Development and Supporting More Equitable Postsecondary Planning

Youth struggle as they transition from high-school to meaningful work, especially without a Bachelors degree. It is especially challenging for those who are ethnic minorities or from lower income backgrounds. One issue is identifying youths’ marketable job skills and signaling them to plausible employers. Further, schools and families are often more focused on academic outcomes than on postsecondary transitions to the job market. Many high school jobs and coursework develop higher-level job skills that can be translated to middle-income jobs.  However, there is difficulty signaling these skills to employers. 

The central focus of this project is to understand how to translate knowledge and skills gained in high school into pathways into the middle class and improve school and familial support for upward mobility. Through research with students, families, guidance counselors and plausible employers, we will identify the resources and skills needed to succeed and how to signal mastery of these skills. Further, we will focus on teachers and how their pedagogy will guide the development of a mapping tool that will be used to code coursework for higher-level job skill training that mat be used to signal youths’ mastery of valuable skills and dispositions, which will better position them for upward mobility.