A general theory of domain identification is used to describe achievement barriers still faced by women in advanced quantitative areas and by African Americans in school. The theory assumes that sustained school success requires identification with school and its subdomains; that societal pressures on these groups (e.g., economic disadvantage, gender roles) can frustrate this identification; and that in school domains where these groups are negatively stereotyped, those who have become domain identified face the further barrier of stereotype threat, the threat that others' judgments or their own actions will negatively stereotype them in the domain. Research shows that this threat dramatically depresses the standardized test performance of women and African Americans who are in the academic vanguard of their groups (offering a new interpretation of group differences in standardized test performance), that it causes disidentification with school, and that practices that reduce this threat can reduce these negative effects.

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A Threat in the Air How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance

Richard Schmidt presents on the role of consciousness in second language learning at the 1988 Second Language Research Forum (SLRF) held in at the University of Hawai‘i.

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The role of consciousness in second language learning

Mindfulness-as a state, trait, process, type of meditation, and intervention has proven to be beneficial across a diverse group of psychological disorders as well as for general stress reduction. Yet, there remains a lack of clarity in the operationalization of this construct, and underlying mechanisms. Here, we provide an integrative theoretical framework and systems-based neurobiological model that explains the mechanisms by which mindfulness reduces biases related to self-processing and creates a sustainable healthy mind. Mindfulness is described through systematic mental training that develops meta-awareness (self-awareness), an ability to effectively modulate one's behavior (self-regulation), and a positive relationship between self and other that transcends self-focused needs and increases prosocial characteristics (self-transcendence). This framework of self-awareness, -regulation, and -transcendence (S-ART) illustrates a method for becoming aware of the conditions that cause (and remove) distortions or biases. The development of S-ART through meditation is proposed to modulate self-specifying and narrative self-networks through an integrative fronto-parietal control network. Relevant perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral neuropsychological processes are highlighted as supporting mechanisms for S-ART, including intention and motivation, attention regulation, emotion regulation, extinction and reconsolidation, prosociality, non-attachment, and decentering. The S-ART framework and neurobiological model is based on our growing understanding of the mechanisms for neurocognition, empirical literature, and through dismantling the specific meditation practices thought to cultivate mindfulness. The proposed framework will inform future research in the contemplative sciences and target specific areas for development in the treatment of psychological disorders.

/pdf/self-awareness-self-regulation-and-self-transcendence-s-art-nxieg3fkqj.pdf

Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness.

Iwas an elementary school student in the Arkansas delta in the 1950s. One of my most powerful memories is the images of the happy and loyal slaves in my social studies textbooks. I also remember that there were three other Blacks'in my textbooks: Booker T. Washington, the educatofTcJeoTge Washington Carver, the scientist; and Marian Anderson,\"the contralto. I had several persistent questions throughout my school-days: Why were the slaves pictured as happy? Were there other Blacks in history beside the two Washingtons and Anderson? Who created this image of slaves? Why? The image of the happy slaves was inconsistent with everything I knew about the African American descendants of enslaved people in my segregated community. We had to drink water from fountains labeled \"colored,\" and we could not use the city's public library. But we were not happy about either of these legal requirements. In fact, we resisted these laws in powerful but subtle ways each day. As children, we savored the taste of \"White water\" when the authorities were preoccupied with more serious infractions against the racial caste system.

The Lives and Values of Researchers: Implications for Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society

This study examines over 300 letters of recommendation for medical faculty at a large American medical school in the mid-1990s, using methods from corpus and discourse analysis, with the theoretica...

Exploring the Color of Glass: Letters of Recommendation for Female and Male Medical Faculty:

A G RO W IN G EM PH A SIS in the left is on the priority to be given to the developm ent of consciousness as the key factor in the revolutionary process, and, within this, the building of a body of ideas challenging those prevailing in our society. “Revolu­ tionary culture” , “counter-hegem ony” , “counter-consensus” are various terms used. A cceptance of the key place of consciousness in the developm ent of revolution directs attention to the processes by which consciousness develops or may be developed in large numbers of people. I t is, clearly, a most intricate subject. Tt involves physiology, psychology, philosophy. It involves the reaction of hum an beings on each other individually and as “classes” , politically and culturally; the role of social institutions and structures. I t involves the different ways in which the process might take place in different groups of people.

Eric Aarons

Papers

The Development of Consciousness

As I Saw the Sixties

The Chilean Revolution

Czechoslovak Action Program

Lenin on "Counter-Hegemony"