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Culturally Distinctive and Academic Socialization: Direct and Interactive Relationships with African American Adolescents’ Academic Adjustment

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Abstract

Theories of ethnic minority development have largely suggested that African American parents engage in a combination of practices that include culturally distinctive socialization as well as behaviors that are characteristic of more universal forms of academic socialization. However, few studies have examined how these socialization dimensions interact to influence the academic adjustment of African American adolescents. The current study explored the independent and interactive roles of parental academic and culturally distinctive socialization on the academic adjustment of African American adolescents. The sample was comprised 144 African American adolescents (M = 12.4; SD = 1.14; 56% female). Findings provided partial support that cultural and academic socialization were independently associated with indicators of academic adjustment. However, the interaction between these dimensions also was associated with youths’ adjustment in the academic domain.

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Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by an Individual National Research Service Pre-doctoral Award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development granted to the author (1F31HD046414-01). We would like to express extreme gratitude to the Families, Friends, and Schools Project Research Team as well as the students who participated in the study. An early draft of this paper was prepared when the author was a postdoctoral fellow supported by the Training Program in Research on Black Child Development (T32-HD049325-01, Vonnie C. McLoyd, Director), National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of NICHD or the National Institutes of Health.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina at Columbia, 554 Barnwell College, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Shauna M. Cooper

  2. Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Ciara Smalls

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  2. Ciara Smalls
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Cooper, S.M., Smalls, C. Culturally Distinctive and Academic Socialization: Direct and Interactive Relationships with African American Adolescents’ Academic Adjustment. J Youth Adolescence 39, 199–212 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-009-9404-1

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