Category: Researcher’s Window

Taking closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

 This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of Jayanthi Mistry, a professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University.

1. What drew you to do work in human development?

As a high school student I was drawn to literature and literary analysis. Eventually my fascination with character development and story lines in fiction led me to psychology as a field of study. Later as a graduate student, I vividly recall feeling that my own developmental contexts and history were not represented in the mainstream knowledge base of human development. This triggered my interest in learning about cultural perspectives on human development and led to an NIMH post-doctoral fellowship with Barbara Rogoff. Since then, the application of socio-cultural perspectives to understanding children’s development has remained at the center of my scholarship. As a parent raising two children in the U.S., guiding our children as they navigated their multiple worlds and identities precipitated a more specific interest in the development of children from immigrant and culturally diverse backgrounds. At that time, I took advantage of opportunities at Tufts University to work with colleagues across disciplines (e.g., in interdisciplinary programs such as International Relations, Asian American Studies). These were transformative experiences that convinced me of the value of cross-disciplinary dialogue.

2. Did you have any mentor or a researcher who had substantial influence in your path or work? Is there a significant moment or story that capsulizes the nature of that influence on your scholarship or professional journey?

Two mentors have had substantial influences on my professional trajectory. Professor T.S. Saraswathi was my MA program advisor and has remained a valued and wise mentor who keeps me grounded in global perspectives on human development. Professor Barbara Rogoff was my mentor for the NIMH Postdoctoral Fellowship and introduced me to sociocultural theory.  Barbara’s influence on my scholarship is best reflected in the following story. Once during a discussion of with her team of postdocs, Barbara shared her professional goal.  In the mid-1980s when cultural perspectives in human development were as yet nascent, she explained her intention to bring culture to the core of human development.

3. You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development.

At this point in my career I am most committed to interweaving my theoretical and empirical scholarship. Here I mention two recent publications that best represent my theoretical contributions to the field. The first publication is a chapter (Mistry & Dutta, 2015) in the seventh edition of the Handbook of Child Psychology & Developmental Science, in which my colleague and I document the emerging convergence of cultural psychology and developmental science perspectives as both emphasize the mutually constitutive nature of individual development and culture. The second publication (Mistry et al., 2016) presents a conceptual framework that highlights the interrelated nature of developmental contexts, developmental domains, and culturally-situated interpretive processes. This is part of a connected set of papers published as a Special Section on Asian American Children and Youth in Child Development. The conceptualization of culture integrates both the broadly generalizable ideologies and practices shared by groups, as well as, the meaning-making processes through which individuals interpret their environmental contexts as they act in, with and upon their environmental contexts in the developmental process.

4. Your one wish for the study of human development. If you had just one wish for the study of human development, what would it be?

My one wish for the study of human development is best presented in Mistry & Dutta (2015). In this chapter we document that discussions of the mutually constitutive nature of individual development and culture were occurring concurrently nearly two decades ago among cultural psychologists (e.g., Cole, 1996; Rogoff, 1990), developmental scientists (e.g., Overton, 1997), and cognitive scientists (e.g., Rowlands, 1999). However, scholars were too often engaged in parallel discussions and not in dialogue across perspectives. The following excerpt from the chapter explains this wish best:

“The convergences we have highlighted in this chapter can pave the way for developing theories of human development that are culturally inclusive and relevant globally. The need for such a global orientation stems from the state of science and technology that situates us in an interconnected world bringing diverse people together on scientific, economic, and social fronts. In this climate of interconnectivity and coexistence of diverse peoples, we call for greater dialogue and discourse as a critical mechanism for the development of culturally inclusive theories and knowledge of human development. We hope that the emerging convergences we have delineated in this chapter will promote the dialogue that can promote integration and synthesis of perspectives.” (p. 401).

The viability of such cross-perspective dialogue has been brought home to me in the recent experience of preparing the Special Section on Asian American Child Development with members of the SRCD Asian Caucus. The opportunity for sustained dialogue and discussion through which we bridged and synthesized our varying theoretical perspectives was most rewarding.

5. A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing

Mentoring is at the core of being a transformative educator. As a mentor I strive to be “an empowering mentor” and one who “offers encouraging yet deep and critical feedback that promotes a more nuanced and deeper understanding of the field.”

About the researcher

Dr. Jayanthi Mistry is a professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. Dr. Mistry received her doctorate degree from Purdue University in 1983 and then completed an NIMH Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Utah. Her current research projects include investigations of multiple ethnic identities among ethnic minority, immigrant, and under-represented communities in the United States; an evaluation of a teen parenting program, with a focus on understanding the lived experiences of young immigrant and ethnic minority mothers; and a research and curriculum development project based on home-school collaborations with teachers and parents of dual language learners in Head Start classrooms serving two distinct communities of recent immigrants (from China and Central America).

 

Edited and launched by Yoko Yamamoto & Deborah J. Johnson

SSHD Publicity Committee

Taking closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

 This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of Susan D. Holloway, a professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley.

1. What drew you to do work in human development?

The earliest influence on my interest in human development is probably my experience as the oldest of four closely spaced children. My youngest brother was born shortly before my seventh birthday, and I felt some responsibility to help my parents by nipping at the heels of the herd. In 1965, when I was 10 my family moved from the suburbs to San Francisco. As an adolescent I went to school with kids from many different ethnic and racial backgrounds. I also soaked in the political atmosphere of the time. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I was interested in non-violent resistance and did attend protests and trainings in the East Bay and San Francisco. When I wasn’t floating around the Bay Area in long skirts and hiking boots, I spent a lot of time reading nonfiction and novels by as well as feminist writers. Simone de Beauvoir was a particular hero. All these experiences informed my interest in understanding how humans develop in the context of race, culture, gender, and class.

2. Did you have any mentor or a researcher who had substantial influence in your path or work? Is there a significant moment or story that capsulizes the nature of that influence on your scholarship or professional journey?

I feel very fortunate to have had a number of supportive and inspiring mentors early in my career but I can single out my advisor at Stanford, Robert D. Hess. A particularly distinctive feature of Bob’s work was his focus on family as a context for preparing children to succeed in school. He was very interested in the ways parents motivate and encourage children to do well in school. As a sociologist, he was also committed to looking at the function of macro-structural contexts like social class on micro family processes. All these dimensions continue to be a central touchstone in my own research – the focus on family processes (particularly motivational ones) and education, the cultural framing, and the attention to institutional and structural context. When I started working with Bob, he was interested in conducting a follow-up of his research on parent socialization in Japan and the United States.  In the spring of 1980 we traveled to Japan to meet Bob’s co-investigators, Professors Hiroshi Azuma and Keiko Kashiwagi. In addition to meeting with these senior colleagues in Tokyo, I took time to venture into the countryside and get a sense for small town and rural Japan. The trip was a life-changing experience for me. I have been doing research in Japan ever since.

3. You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development.

 a. Your current project and/or key projects

Over the last 20 years I have studied the conditions that support parents’ confidence in accomplishing their goals using the cultural and personal tools available in their current environment. I typically focus on the construct of parenting self-efficacy, which is a self-evaluation of competence in the parenting role. My choice of this construct is based on the belief that, given adequate support, most parents can identify the resources they need to find a good resolution of the parenting challenges that come their way. To me, this is a more satisfactory route than trying to identify particular parenting behaviors that are related to optimal child development regardless of context. Currently, I am studying the ecocultural factors associated with parenting self-efficacy in a variety of national settings, including the US, Japan, Korea, China, and Turkey. Among other things, my research shows that across diverse settings, women’s sense of parenting competence is deeply affected by the quantity and quality of support that they receive from their spouse or life partner.

b. Contributions of your projects/research to the study of human development

My work contributes to “a person-centered view of cultural psychology” as articulated by Per Gjerde at UC Santa Cruz. My work conceptualizes parents as agentic individuals who draw upon culturally-constructed tools as well as personal beliefs and competencies to address childrearing challenges with the opportunities and constraints of particular eco-cultural settings.

4. Your one wish for the study of human development. If you had just one wish for the study of human development, what would it be?

I would like our field to focus on ways of supporting parents’ capabilities rather than identifying particular parenting behaviors to “fix” or “improve” parents. I am concerned that identifying “optimal” ways to rear children contributes to the phenomenon of intensive parenting, in which parents are made to feel that everything they do has drastic and irreversible effects on their children’s development. In the US, parents are also expected to buffer the effects of low quality childcare and insufficiently funded schools with their own private efforts. This neoliberal focus on personal actions instead of community responsibilities makes it hard for many parents to lead a balanced life.

5. A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing

Hillary was right – raising children takes a village!

About a researcher

Dr. Susan D. Holloway is a professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. A California native, she attended UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz as an undergraduate, and obtained a PhD from the Graduate School of Education at Stanford in 1983. Her research explores the conditions that support parents’ childrearing goals and practices, emotional wellbeing, and parenting self-efficacy.

Taking closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researchers’ Windows～

This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of Michael Cunningham, a professor in the department of Psychology and the undergraduate program in Africana Studies at Tulane University.

What drew you to do work in human development?

I was drawn to the field as a college student by changing my major from Computer Science to Child Development. While I enjoyed the classes and planned to focus on a career in Computer Science and Math, I did not have passion for the field. So, I took a class that required me to do a practicum in an elementary school. My life changed after working in a 4^th grade classroom. I thought I was going to change the world, one classroom at a time. So, I changed my major to Child Development with a focus on Elementary Education. After college I went to grad school and began having more intense research experiences. I realized that I could continue doing research that impacts policies and future research directions as well as train individuals who would work with young people. I was particularly interested in research with African American males. The extant literature was full of examples of psychopathology, antisocial behaviors, delinquency, and school underachievement. Missing from the research was research on the developmental processes that are associated with why some males have challenges and why some males in the same environment do not, and in fact, are very successful. This latter point is especially salient for research examples associated with typical human development for underrepresented populations generally, and African American males specifically.

Did you have any mentor or a researcher who had substantial influence on your path or work? Is there a significant moment or story that capsulizes the nature of that influence on your scholarship or professional journey?

My mentor is Margaret Beale Spencer. I met her when she gave a guest lecture in one of my undergraduate classes. Her lecture was perfectly timed for me as I just finished reading her chapter on Black children and cognitive/affective linkages, which is in an edited volume that she co-edited with Geraldine Kearse Brookins and Walter Allen (Spencer, Brookins, & Allen, 1985, Beginnings: The social and affective development of Black children). After hearing her lecture, I inquired about volunteering for her research project. I starting working with her my last semester in college and subsequently applied to work with her in graduate school. My admiration grew even more in graduate school when I was able to learn from Dr. Spencer in formal and informal contexts. Her research and theorizing is the foundation of how I approach my work. I also got to know her family too. She exemplifies the balance between work and family. Dr. Spencer is great academic, researcher, professional, and mentor. She is equally as good as a spouse, mother, and grandmother. I try to live my life by emulating her. She instilled in me to do research that is scientifically strong, meaningful, and has the potential to impact change in the lives in which the research is based.

You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development.

• Your current project and/or key projects

My current project examines potential buffers to students exposed to challenges. Using mixed methodologies, my research team is exploring how moderators (e.g., prosocial behaviors, racial identity, domain specific social support, etc.) are associated with short- and long term outcomes (academic, psychosocial, and mental health). To date we have collected two waves of data and the team is embarking on including focus group and interview data before a 3^rd wave of data collection begins. The participants are high school students who attend an open enrollment charter school in the south central part of the United States. Over 90% of the participants are African American and approximately 50% reside in single mother headed households. Preliminary findings indicate that there are gender differences in prosocial behaviors, with boys benefiting more from prosocial behaviors than girls. This finding is distinct from the extant literature that does not report gender differences in prosocial behaviors. Our findings highlight that while there are no gender differences in students’ reports of prosocial behaviors, outcomes such as antisocial behaviors are thwarted more for boys who report high prosocial behaviors than girls who report equivalent levels of these behaviors.

• Contributions of your projects/research to the study of human development.

My current and past contributions to the field are mainly associated with understanding gender-specific trajectories in African American adolescents who reside in urban environments. For example, my research on hypermasculine attitudes in adolescent African American males has indicated that negative community experiences has a long term impact on hypermasculine attitudes. This impact is above and beyond the experiences that males have in their home and school environments. By using a human development perspective, the findings suggest that researchers and applied personnel have to simultaneously examine the communities in which males are raised as well as other direct associations. We cannot just focus one context alone. Thus, collaborative relationships between multiple areas (e.g., home and community, school and home, and community and school) are needed to successfully understand human developmental undergirding issues as well as adolescent outcomes.

Your one wish for the study of human development. If you had just one wish for the study of human development, what would it be?

My wish is for a continued focus on typical developmental processes as a core component of our research and translational work. This means including social address variables in which children and adolescents have no control as normative experiences that human have.  I wish that normative development as described in the field include issues associated with racial/ethnic diversity and at the intersections of all aspects of human development (cognitive, psychosocial, and biological). In doing so, we as developmental scientist must emphasize that no one aspect of human development is more or less important than another, but that developmental processes interact with where we live as well as developmental stages throughout the lifespan.

A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing.

Racial and ethnic minority populations deserve good science that is representative of their human developmental experiences.

About a researcher

Dr. Cunningham is a professor in the department of Psychology and the undergraduate program in Africana Studies at Tulane University. He completed an undergraduate degree at Morehouse College, his doctoral studies at Emory University, and a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. As a developmental psychologist, he has a program of research that focuses on racial, ethnic, psychosocial, and socioeconomic processes that affect psychological well-being, adjustment to chronic stressful events, and academic achievement among African American adolescents and their families. He uses mixed methods in his current research project that includes the study of gender-specific patterns of resilience and vulnerability in urban African American participants. He is currently Associate Provost for Graduate Study and Research and has been bestowed the Weiss Presidential Teaching Award.

 

Edited and launched by Yoko Yamamoto & Deborah J. Johnson

SSHD Publicity Committee