Georgia College & State University

About: Georgia College & State University is a education organization based out in Milledgeville, Georgia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Higher education. The organization has 950 authors who have published 1591 publications receiving 37027 citations.

Linking Family Processes and Academic Competence Among Rural African American Youths

Abstract: For most of this century, the potential influence of the family on intellectual development has been largely overlooked. This state of affairs is understandable because, when the nation entered the era of universal public education, the major responsibility for educating all children in society was transferred from the home and assigned to a social institution, the school. In the early 1960s and 1970s, the primacy of the school's role in promoting language and cognitive growth began to be challenged. During this period, sociologists (e.g., Majoribanks, 1972) identified a number of childrearing practices that they believed would stimulate cognitive growth in children. Their studies revealed a high correlation between home variables, such as reading to children, and achievement in school. Combined with the classic investigations by Hess and Shipman (1965), which also suggested that parental childrearing behavior could have an impact on cognition, this research led social scientists to reevaluate the role that families play in promoting cognitive growth. According to an ecological model of human development, academic competence among children and adolescents is influenced not only by factors such as teaching practices and social processes in their immediate classroom environments, but also by aspects of their family environments. In the ecological model the family is conceptualized as a context that directly influences child and adolescent behavior by contributing to the development of competencies that increase the likelihood of academic success. The family also plays a mediational role in linking factors such as social class to adolescent academic competence (Bronfenbrenner, 1989; Garbarino, 1982). Factors, such as family financial resources and parental educational attainment, that contribute social class status also affect family relationships and parental involvement in school activities; these family processes in turn are linked to youths' academic competence (Bronfenbrenner, 1989; Garbarino, 1982). To date, the research examining this mediational sequence has linked economic hardship to troubled family relation ships, and troubled family relationships to child and adolescent adjustment problems (Conger et al., 1992, 1993; McLoyd, 1989, 1990). We extend this work by focusing on the links among family financial resources, parents' educational attainment, family processes, and academic competence among African American youths in rural, two-parent families. Little is known about the ways in which the over one million rural African American families facilitate their children's academic competence-measured, for example, y reading and mathematics grades, or by performance on the vocabulary and mathematics subscales of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). McAdoo (1982) has argued that many African Americans view education as the only means to upward mobility, given the restriction of opportunities that exists for them. Research indicating that African American parents living in rural areas named educational attainment as an important developmental goal for their children (Stoneman et al., 1991) supports this position. Ethnic minority researchers have argued that a knowledge base placing development in a broad ecological context is essential for the development of culturally sensitive prevention and intervention efforts targeting children and adolescents (Harrison, Wilson, Pine, Chan, & Buriel, 1990; McLoyd, 1990). In recognition of the emphasis that African American parents place on educational attainment and of the importance of obtaining information that is sensitive to the ecological-cultural context, we focus on the ways in which sociocontextual factors affect academic competence among rural African American youths. In our study we obtained data from mothers, fathers, teachers, and the youths themselves, using multi-method measures and procedures that were designed with the assistance of African American community members. …

Effect of Think-Aloud Instruction on Elementary Students' Comprehension Monitoring Abilities

Abstract: This study investigated the effectiveness of explicit instruction in think aloud as a means to promote elementary students' comprehension monitoring abilities. Sixty-six fourth-grade students were ...

Unraveling Representative Bureaucracy A Systematic Analysis of the Literature

Abstract: Scholars have provided great theoretical insight and empirical understanding to the concept of representative bureaucracy, documenting the changing makeup of the civil service and demonstrating the...

The Impact of Human Resource Information Systems: An Exploratory Study in the Public Sector

Abstract: Various authors have advocated that the use of a Human Resource Information System (HRIS) should lead to valuable outcomes for the organization. Decreased costs, improved communication, and decreases in time spent on mundane activities should create an environment wherein the Human Resources (HR) department would play a more strategic role in the organization. This study is an initial attempt to determine whether HRIS has reached these potential benefits. Based on responses from a sample of HR directors of from public universities we found that, while valuable, HRIS has not yet reached its full potential in this environment.