The Journal of Early Adolescence

Encouraging student prosocial behavior (PSB) is a challenge for urban middle schools. The issue of student behavior is a racialized one, as Black students generally evince more negative behavioral outcomes than their White peers. This racial “behavior gap” may be conditional on the school environment. This study examines how one element of the school environment—racial composition—affects PSB, drawing on a sample that includes approximately 2,000 Black students and 1,400 White students in 11 urban middle schools in the Southeastern United States. Results of multilevel regression models show that the effect of racial composition on PSB is different for students of different races. As the proportion of Black students in a grade cohort increases, the gap in PSB between Black and White students shrinks and becomes insignificant. The closing of the gap is driven mostly by the declining PSB of White students, while Black students’ PSB stays constant. Implications for school practice are discussed.

A growing body of research considers the role of school settings in supporting adolescents’ social-emotional and behavioral development through instructional, social, and organizational practices (Eccles & Roeser, 2009). Recent lines of inquiry have begun to investigate individual aspects of the school setting and their influence in promoting positive academic outcomes and youth development (Shinn & Yoshikawa, 2008). These authors argue that, through an ecological lens, the school environment serves as a mechanism of change in supporting early adolescents’ academic identities. By presenting evidence that the school plays a fundamental role in changing these high-risk, African American youths’ academic perceptions, trajectories and aspirations, which led further to a 92% rate of students’ matriculation to college, we introduce how school setting characteristics support these youths’ conceptualizations of their academic identities. Moreover, this article addresses how our understanding of early adolescents’ academic identities implicates future research and practice.

Guided by the family relational schema model, the current study examined the direct and indirect contributions of maternal psychological control to subsequent relational and overt peer victimization, via early adolescents’ conduct problems, fear of negative evaluation, and depressive symptoms. Participants were 499 10- to 14-year-olds (53% female; 77% European American) involved in two waves of a study with 1 year between each wave. Path analyses indicated that depressive symptoms mediated the associations between maternal psychological control and increases in both forms of peer victimization across the 1-year time period. Although conduct problems were concurrently associated with maternal psychological control, and fear of negative evaluation predicted change in both forms of peer victimization, neither variable mediated the maternal psychological control-peer victimization associations. Results were generally consistent across gender, with a few notable differences. Study findings provide partial support for the family relational schema model and implications are discussed.

Studies examining the link between parental socialization and child functioning in varying cultural contexts are scarce. Focusing on early adolescents in suburban middle-class families in India, the present study examined interrelations among reports of mothers’ socialization goals, socialization behaviors in response to child emotion, child emotion regulation, and child socioemotional functioning. One hundred and ten mothers and one of their children attending seventh grade at middle schools in Gujarat, India participated. Results indicated that suburban Indian mothers were more likely to endorse relational than autonomous socialization goals, and relational socialization goals were related to mothers’ reported explanation-oriented socialization behaviors in response to their children’s anger or sadness. Children’s self-reported regulation of anger and sadness mediated the negative relation between reports of mothers’ explanation-oriented supportive behaviors and child behavior problems. Moreover, children’s self-reported dysregulation partially mediated the positive association between reports of mothers’ nonsupportive behaviors and child behavior problems.

Adopting a multi-informant methodology, the current study examines the relative influence of multiple parental characteristics (civic responsibility, encouragement of civic action, parent-youth closeness) on adolescents’ civic responsibility (local and global). The participants were 384 early and middle adolescents (47.9% male), randomly selected from an Italian city (mean age = 13.6; SD = 1.63), and one parent for each adolescent. The results show a positive association between the parents’ local civic responsibility and the adolescents’ responsibility toward the local community, and between the parents’ global civic responsibility and the adolescents’ responsibility toward societal issues. Moreover, parental encouragement of civic action and parent-youth closeness were positively associated with the adolescents’ civic responsibility. Finally, an interaction between the parents’ local civic responsibility and parent-child closeness was found in which parents’ civic responsibility had stronger influence on youth civic responsibility when the parent-child relationship was characterized by medium or high levels of closeness.