Publications & Research
Dr. Chavous leads the Achievement in Context (AIC) Lab, a research group whose members integrate psychological, sociological, and cultural approaches in investigating factors that influence the positive academic, social, and psychological adaptation of Black and racially minoritized youth. A primary focus is on how schools, families, and communities influence the development of youths’ personal identities (for instance, their academic, racial, gender, and social class identities), and how youths’ personal identities relate to how they strive for and attain their academic, social, and other personal goals.
Dr. Chavous and her collaborators are committed to the development of research and scholarship that describes and documents the experiences of racial and ethnic minority youth and that is informed by knowledge of their rich social, cultural, and historical backgrounds. In doing so, we present a picture of youth that acknowledges their vast heterogeneity, their personal strengths and assets, and the unique risk factors they may face as members of their racial/ethnic groups. Equally important is our focus on resources youth draw on – personal characteristics as well as resources from family, community, and culture – that help them thrive, adapt, and be resilient despite risks and challenges they might experience.
What is “Achievement in Context?”
— I think of “achievement” broadly – it can refer to academic development outcomes such as learning and mastery within and across subject areas; academic success outcomes such as school grades, test performance, school graduation and higher education and employment attainment, as well as aspects of achievement motivation, such as youths’ academic self-efficacy and competence beliefs, their educational values, and their academic and occupational aspirations and expectations.
— In addition to academic factors, I think of “achievement” as youth meeting their personal potential in many life areas. So, this view of achievement includes positive social and psychological adjustment, such as healthy identity development, social competence, personal well-being and life satisfaction, positive family and peer relationships, and engagement in pro-social behaviors such as community involvement, civic and political participation, and helping behaviors.
— “Achievement in Context” refers to our philosophy that youth outcomes can be best understood by considering the influences of the multiple contexts in which youth reside. Subsequently, in our team’s work, while we focus most centrally on the roles of schools and educational institutions, we also consider the equally important roles of families (parents, caregivers, siblings, and other family members), peers, and neighborhoods/communities in promoting healthy identities and other positive youth outcomes.
As Co-PI on the NSF-funded “Center for the Study of Black Youth in Context” (CSBYC), I helped establish a center focused on research, training, and community engagement around the positive development of Black youth. (Co-PIs included Drs. Robert Jagers, Carla O’Connor, Stephanie Rowley, and Robert Sellers). The center provides development training, interdisciplinary theory and methods exposures, intergenerational mentoring and networking opportunities, and resources for early career scholars (students, postdoctoral fellows, junior faculty). Our center team also developed a series of studies of racial socialization processes among Black adolescents. In particular, we were interested in the experiences of Black youth from different social class backgrounds. We drew on developmental and community psychology, organizational theory, and sociological theory to examine how youths’ ecological contexts interact with their personal identities to shape their adjustment. For example, Black middle class populations are understudied in social science research; we sought to understand how youth racial socialization experiences may vary across Black families in socioeconomically and demographically diverse communities. The studies utilized a variety of methodological approaches including ethnographies, interviews and focus groups, large scale longitudinal surveys, and daily diary studies. The research has yielded numerous dissertations, theses, conference papers, and empirical manuscripts in social science journals – developed by my student and postdoctoral mentees and other students and junior faculty scholars affiliated with CSBYC, from broadly diverse backgrounds. Thus, the project has contributed to basic science knowledge as well as the advancement of future scientific leaders in the field.
As PI on two NSF-funded projects, “Race & Gender in Context: A Multi-Method Study of Risk and Resilience in College Students’ Pathways,” and “I3 Building Bridges, Creating Community and Wise Mentoring: Building Institutional Capacity to Enhance Diversity in STEM Disciplines” I led research teams that examined different forms of racial and gender stigma that racially and ethnically and minoritized undergraduate and graduate students are likely to experience in predominantly White institutions (e.g., token minority status, interpersonal discrimination, hostile racial and gender climates) and the impacts of these experiences on students’ adjustment, with a primary focus on their academic identity development in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM fields. Academic identity refers to students’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement with STEM and subsequent achievement and persistence in STEM majors and career pathways. We utilized multiple research methods (longitudinal surveys, daily diaries, semi-structured interviews) to explore individual and contextual factors related to within-group variation in Black college students’ academic risk and resilience. Our work highlights the importance of examining experiences reflecting intersections of race and gender (e.g., racialized gender discrimination experienced by women of color), and gender variation in how students draw on their various social identities to help them cope with stigmatizing identity-based experiences.
Drawing on our research on identity and STEM, I also contributed to two National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee reports focused on barriers, opportunities, and equitable pathways for college students in STEM fields:
Black Identity and Achievement. My collaborators and I identified major theoretical and methodological limitations of what we labeled the “Black identity-as-risk perspective” to understanding African American academic achievement (a popular, deficit-based perspective that links a strong connection to Black identity to anti-intellectualism and/or academic disengagement and that doesn’t explain positive motivation, achievement, and academic adaption). We delineated a framework for Black achievement motivation processes, a “Black identity-as-promotive approach,” to help explain positive motivation and achievement outcomes among Black students. This framework recognizes significant challenges that confront Black students but also acknowledges that many are resilient in the face of those challenges. The framework does not take a monolithic view of Black identity nor does it view one type of racial identity as optimal in and of itself. Instead, racial identity is conceptualized as a meaning-making process that affords Black people an opportunity to define their racial membership in such a way that academic success can be seen as valuable despite structural and individual level racial barriers (such as racial discrimination) to academic success. We have conducted many research studies with high school, middle school, and college samples that support this perspective and framework, demonstrating ways Black youth develop strong, positive connections to their racial identities in ways that are compatible with and promote a positive academic identity, motivation, and persistence outcomes. We also innovated methodologies for examining racial identity, including the first use of person-oriented cluster approaches to examine multi-dimensional aspects of racial identity, demonstrating how variation in racial identity cluster profiles explained variation in academic motivation, achievement, and persistence outcomes.