Improving Intergroup Relations Among Youth: Summary of a Research Workshop (2000)

The Workshop on Research to Improve Intergroup Relations Among Youth highlighted the findings of 16 research projects on intergroup relations among youth, each of which received initial funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1996, as part of its research initiative on race and ethnic relations. This appendix, drawn from the principal investigators' own materials, describes each project in more detail.

Project Title: Improving Interpersonal and Intergroup Relations Among Youth: A Study of the Processes and Outcomes of Facing History and Ourselves

Principal Investigator: Dennis J. Barr

Purpose: The research examines intergroup relations among youth in the context of an educational program, Facing History and Ourselves (FHAO), that seeks to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. The two overarching aims of the research were accomplished in two interrelated studies: (a) an outcome study to evaluate whether a classroom-based model of FHAO promotes growth in psychosocial competencies (interpersonal understanding, interpersonal skills, and personal meaning) moral and ethnic identity development, increases in positive civic attitudes and participation, and reductions in fighting behavior and attitudes about racism, and (b) a qualitative case study of an FHAO classroom to gain basic knowledge regarding the development of psychosocial competencies that underlie interpersonal development and intergroup relations. Both studies shared the goal of adapting an existing developmental model for research on intergroup relations.

Methodology: The evaluation/outcome study used a quasi-experimental design involving 409 8th grade students and 9 teachers in 14 FHAO and 8 comparison sections. FHAO units were 10 weeks in duration. Questionnaires and a newly developed writing exercise were administered pre-test (fall) and post-test (spring). One diverse 8th grade FHAO classroom in a transitional urban/suburban neighborhood was chosen for the intensive qualitative case study of students engaging with FHAO and issues of intergroup relations in their own lives. Field notes were taken and pre- and post-interviews with students and the teacher were conducted by a participant-observer.

Key/Major Findings: The outcome study demonstrates the efficacy of the FHAO program in promoting interpersonal and intergroup relations. FHAO students showed increased relationship maturity and decreased fighting behavior, racist attitudes, and insular ethnic identity relative to comparison students. The study highlights the benefits of using a developmental measure of psychosocial competencies to evaluate developmental character education programs that are based on similar assumptions.

The qualitative case study revealed critical incidents in the students'

peer culture, which highlight the importance to early adolescents of inclusion and belonging and avoiding social isolation and victimization. In one incident, breaches of trust in an ethnically diverse, popular girls' group resulted in the ostracism of one of the members. In another incident, a racist remark by an Eastern-European immigrant girl reinforced her low social status and led to intensified social and even physical victimization. These controversial incidents and dynamics within their peer groups were, in many cases, the key points of reference for students as they made sense of the central themes of their FHAO course. Abstract conceptions such as the roles played by bystander, victim, perpetrator, and resister in history, for example, came to life for individual students as they struggled to make sense of and respond to personal and often painful experiences in their peer relationships.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: Both the outcome study and the case study demonstrate that 8th graders are most meaningfully engaged with issues of social justice within their own peer society, suggesting the importance of teaching strategies that encourage connecting FHAO course themes to critical incidents in the students' peer culture that many students are aware of and concerned about. Furthermore, variation in the psychosocial maturity reflected in the students' perspectives on the critical intergroup incidents and the connection of FHAO to such issues suggests the importance of promoting teacher awareness of, and skills in engaging, students who differ from one another, both culturally and developmentally, in relation to intergroup issues raised by the course. This research underscores the value of programs that encourage young people to grapple with the connections between a historical case study of the breakdown of democracy and genocide and their own lives as a means of promoting their active and mature involvement in relation to intergroup issues and problems in their lives. Research on teacher professional development activities, such as those conducted by FHAO, is needed in order to identify those practices most likely to promote the awareness and skills teachers need to sensitively and competently integrate controversial and personally meaningful material within their classrooms.

Contact:

Dennis J. Barr

63 Norfolk Street

Cambridge, MA 02139

617-232-8390 x2203

Email: reedbarr@aol.com

Terry Tollefson

Facing History and Ourselves

16 Hurd Road

Brookline, MA 02146-6919

617-735-1630

Project Title: Intergroup Relations Among Middle School Youth

Principal Investigators: Cindy Carlson and Laura Lein

Purpose: Strengthen our knowledge base of intergroup peer relationship patterns during early adolescence.

Methodology: A comprehensive ecological survey was completed by all students in attendance at two public, ethnically diverse middle schools. In addition to the student survey, ethnographic observations were conducted within the school settings and focus groups were conducted with selected groups of students.

Key/Major Findings:

1. Intergroup attitudes steadily improved across the early adolescent years.

2. School environment influences many aspects of intergroup relations. Cross-race friendships are highly dependent upon the opportunity structure created by racial percentages. Intergroup relations varied depending upon the multicultural climate, racial balance, and use of tracking in the school.

3. Peer affiliations, both clique and crowd membership, also exert a significant influence on intergroup attitudes and behaviors.

4. Significant ethnic differences characterized intergroup attitudes with minority youth expressing less openness to diversity but non-Hispanic white youth having the fewest cross-race best friendships.

5. Regression models found that both individual and peer processes predicted intergroup attitudes.

6. Mediational models found that high self-esteem mediated the relationship between ethnic identity and openness to others, with higher self-esteem associated with more positive other group attitudes regardless of ethnicity.

Programmatic/Policy Implications:

1. Consider carefully racial balance in desegregation patterns; consider the negative impact of within-school segregation patterns created by tracking.

2. Improve multicultural climate of schools regardless of school composition.

3. Consider the important role of peers in influencing intergroup attitudes; target interventions to the peer group.

4. Individual and group interventions directed toward the development of a positive self-image may be important contributors to intergroup relations.

Contact:

Cindy Carlson

Professor

Department of Educational Psychology

University of Texas at Austin

Sanchez Building 504

Austin, TX 78712-1296

512-471-4155 x4

512-471-1288 (fax)

Email: cindy.carlson@mail.utexas.edu

Laura Lein

School of Social Work

Department of Anthropology

University of Texas at Austin

1925 San Jacinto

Austin, TX 78712-1203

512-471-9248

512-471-9514 (fax)

Project Title: Intergroup Understanding, Social Justice, and the “Social Contract” in Diverse Communities of Youth

Principal Investigator: Constance A. Flanagan

Purpose: This project examines adolescents' perceptions of intergroup relations as these intersect with their norms for citizenship. It examines teens' beliefs about justice and opportunity in America and the correlates of those views. We have framed the project as a study of adolescents' views of the “social contract” in America, by which we mean the sets of rights, privileges, and obligations that bind members of our society to one another. The theoretical basis for the study was drawn from the contention that Americans are fundamentally concerned about equality—but it is the form of equality and the nature of a just society that arouse debate.

Methodology: The project involved focus groups and surveys of 12 to 18-year-olds in four communities (three urban and one rural) chosen for their different demographic composition. A total of 1,119 adolescents from African (n = 115), Arab (n = 115), Puerto Rican and Dominican (n = 140), and European (n = 749) backgrounds participated.

Key/Major Findings: Although ethnic identification had no influence, personal experiences of prejudice, whether toward oneself or toward friends or loved ones, were strongly related to adolescents' beliefs that America is an unjust society. But school and community practices made a difference. Youth were more likely to believe that America is a just society if they felt their teachers were fair and would intervene in acts of student intolerance or bullying. In addition, youth were more likely to believe that America is a just society if they felt the police in their community were fair and that the community itself was a caring place. Engaging in community service was positively related to young people's desire to promote intergroup understanding and with their commitments to public interest goals. Among the “ enemy images” adolescents listed as prominent in the media today were Arabs, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, communists, gangs, militia groups, and the American government.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: Our data point to the pivotal role of teachers in promoting a civic ethic. Choices about intervention or nonintervention in acts of intolerance send a message about the ethics of a civil society and about justice in that society. A hands-off policy that allows

some youth to be ostracized or bullied sends the wrong message about the principles that bind us together as people. Opportunities to engage in service to the community should be a normative expectation of children's education; in our data, it was correlated with a desire to promote intergroup understanding and to serve the public or common good. Policy directions toward privatizing public education should be viewed with caution if they further homogenize young people's experience.

The media have an important role in a democracy—of providing accurate information so that the public can make informed choices. There are two implications regarding the media from our data: first, opportunities to discuss current events with adults can help young people see the connections of their lives with the broader society and appears to be implicated in their desire to promote intergroup understanding; second, youth are cognizant of the “enemy images” promulgated in the media and would benefit from opportunities (in school or youth groups) to deconstruct those stereotypes.

Contact:

Constance Flanagan

Associate Professor

Agricultural and Extension Education

Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802-2601

814-863-3824

814-863-4753 (fax)

Email: cflanagan@psu.edu

Project Title: A Tale of Two Towns: Intergroup Relations in Culturally Diverse Classrooms and Communities

Principal Investigator: Michele Foster

Purpose: To explore the effect that attending racially and ethnically mixed classrooms has on intergroup relations among children from diverse backgrounds; to describe the nature of relations between different ethnic groups, and examine the social processes that occur in ethnically diverse classrooms in order to illuminate how these processes lead to specific patterns of intergroup relations.

Methodology: We used ethnographic research methods and techniques of analysis. Systematic participant observation, qualitative interviews—informal, unstructured and semistructured, document analysis, and audiotape recording are the primary data analysis. These data have been supplemented by structured techniques, such as network analysis, designed to chart the social networks within the classroom, and sociometric measures, such as peer nomination in which students choose partners for various academic and social activities. Although the study was focused mainly at the school and classroom level, we also collected data on the macro level—institutional and community forces that affect local classroom social processes, behavior, and interaction through time —in order to understand how the historical, cultural, and sociopolitical factors influenced what we were observing in the classrooms.

Key/Major Findings: As children move into the intermediate grades (4-5), their participation in voluntary intergroup relations declines. This is more the case for girls than boys. Boys have more intergroup contact and this typically revolves around sports and banter and humor around what they consider “gross” topics. In contrast, as girls enter the intermediate grades, the grooming behavior in which they have engaged since the primary grades takes place strictly intragroup. The elite school district we observed was more self-conscious than the working-class district in its attention to organizing activities related to diversity, such as festivals, music concerts, art displays, and prejudice reduction workshops. Despite this attention, in the more elite school district, African American and Latino children were more likely to be in the lowest-achieving groups compared to Asian and Anglo children, and African American children were most likely to be perceived as discipline problems and as creating more challenges around discipline for

their teachers. Teachers felt ill-equipped to deal with the tensions around discipline, with the result that African American children were overrepresented among those suspended and referred to special education. While the challenges around discipline most often concerned African American boys, African American girls also presented challenges, particularly when their teachers were male. African American pupils presented fewer discipline problems in the classrooms of African American teachers. African American parents in the elite district also expressed more dissatisfaction over their children's treatment in schools and less ability to influence the schools' decisions regarding their children.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: Schools need to go beyond superficial displays of diversity. Professional educators need professional development activities that help them (1) engage (including learning to deal with conflict) and interact productively with parents and students from all ethnic backgrounds; (2) to understand and learn how to use their students' family and cultural backgrounds as resources for engagement in the teaching/learning process rather than as excuses for student disengagement, misbehavior, and failure; (3) develop the capacity, dispositions, and instructional strategies to teach students from different ethnic backgrounds well, so that the status inequities related to academic achievement do not reinforce attitudes and exacerbate intergroup tensions; and (4) to learn how to talk about ethnicity, difference, race, racial inequity, and racism in order to help their students engage in conversations about these issues.

Contact:

Michele Foster

25 Standish Court

Crockett, CA 94525-1417

510-787-1962

Email: michelf9@idt.net

Project Title: Different and the Same: A Study of the Impact of a Prejudice-Reduction Video Series on Children

Principal Investigator: Sherryl Browne Graves

Purpose: Do racially and ethnically diverse children exhibit lower levels of prejudice and higher levels of positive intergroup interaction after exposure to a prejudice-reduction video series? Does the nature and amount of prejudice reduction vary with participant characteristics, including race, ethnicity, and gender? How do contextual variables, like school and classroom climate, influence the effect of the video series on children? Do any effects of the video series intervention persist beyond the immediate post-viewing period?

Methodology: The research included quasi-experimental designs in naturalistic settings of classrooms. Data was collected from classroom groupings, and therefore random assignment of subjects to intervention and nonintervention conditions was not possible. In some conditions, teachers received training on the use of the series in the classroom along with the teacher's guide; in other cases, teachers received the teacher's guide and had to prepare on their own. Children were individually administered attitudinal, behavioral, and cognitive measures before and after the video intervention. School and classroom climate was assessed in multiple ways, including interviews and classroom observations. Data was collected on how teachers presented the video series to document the context for the findings.

Key/Major Findings: Different and the Same had an effect on children. First, in general, children exposed to the intervention were more likely to endorse strategies for promoting prejudice reduction and positive intergroup interaction than were children in the control groups. The effect was greatest for changes in knowledge, followed by changes in attitude. The least affected dependent variable was that of behavior. In general, white children were less likely to endorse inclusive strategies, exhibit positive racial attitudes, or engage in positive intergroup interactions than were other groups of children. School and classroom contexts appear to be influential in mediating the effect of the video on particular outcome variables.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: Different and the Same can influence children in different ways. The nature of the effect seemed to vary along a

number of dimensions. Behavior was the least affected domain, except in a case of teacher-intensive support for a particular video message. While children were generally more likely to select more diverse partners on sociometric tasks after viewing, this greater tendency toward inclusion was not reflected in their observed behavior, which raises the question: What type of video or classroom intervention would be required to alter children's actual intergroup interactions? One area of further exploration may be in the ways in which teachers control and direct group interactions. Perhaps, the future analysis of teacher-student classroom interactions will provide additional insights in this area.

A video series designed to reduce prejudice can be effective with young children. The influence of the Different and the Same video series was evident in children and to a lesser extent in their teachers. A video series can affect children, but the nature of the effect varies along a number of dimensions, including interpersonal and contextual dimensions. This study also underscores the added benefits of adult mediated television and video experiences for young children. Adult mediated and extended activities seemed to enhance the influence of Different and the Same on children. This research suggests a need to examine teacher preparation and in-service professional development programs. It also suggests the need to examine the roles of administrative, school district, and state policies regarding the use of video and television in the classroom and the importance of the creation and maintenance of positive intergroup interaction.

Contact:

Sherryl Browne Graves

Educational Foundations and Counseling Programs

Hunter College, CUNY

695 Park Avenue

NewYork, NY 10021

212-772-4710

212-772-4731 (fax)

Project Title: Fostering Positive Intergroup Attitudes in Young Children

Principal Investigator: Phyllis A. Katz

Purpose: The present study assessed the effectiveness of perceptual or cognitive training in lowering young children's (ages 6 to 9) racial biases. The current study had two primary goals: (a) to assess whether such techniques would be effective in reducing prejudice in younger children and, if so, (b) to ascertain which strategies would be most effective.

Methodology: The perceptual training modification strategy had two goals: (a) to increase children's attention to within-race differences and (b) to reduce assumptions that physical similarities or differences imply psychological ones. The cognitive training modification strategy also had two goals: (a) to increase children 's capacity for sorting faces along multiple criteria and (b) to raise their level of cross-race empathy. A pre-post design was employed that utilized four measures. Two of these directly measured children 's attitudes; a third assessed social distance toward same- and other-race children; a fourth interview measure assessed playmate preferences and understanding of race differences. A sample of 142 children (kindergarten through 3rd grade) was drawn from four racially integrated schools in Denver, Colorado. Half were Euro-American and half African-American. Children were randomly assigned to either of the two treatment conditions discussed above (perceptual or cognitive) or to a no-treatment control group that received the pre- and post-tests with no intervention.

Key/Major Findings: Children differed on the pre-tests, prior to the introduction of modification strategies. White children exhibited more bias than black children. These differences were more pronounced on ingroup favoritism (i.e., positive same-race associations) than on negative outgroup attributions. Age interacted with race group, revealing that black children's bias levels increased with age, whereas white children's decreased. White children also exhibited stronger preferences for same-race playmates and used racial cues more readily to judge their similarity and dissimilarity to other children.

The various treatment conditions did affect children's post-test bias levels. Effects were not always consistent across groups or measures, however. The perceptual intervention condition lowered bias levels on both attitude measures relative to the control group. It also affected playmate

choices and racial constancy responses (for whites). The cognitive condition was less consistent. It lowered same-race positive attribution bias, but increased other-race negative attributions.

The findings were complex, but the perceptual training was generally associated with more consistent effects than the cognitive training employed. More fine-grained analyses of children's performance during the training sessions revealed that lower post-test bias scores for the cognitive condition were found for those who exhibited the highest cross-race empathy.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: The present findings demonstrate that the racial attitudes of young children are quite malleable and that a variety of procedures can be used effectively to foster more positive racial attitudes. Increasing perceptual differentiation and reducing children's assumptions that physical similarity is correlated with psychological characteristics resulted in lower bias levels. The modification strategies changed many other aspects of children's race-related behaviors. The relatively simple and straightforward experimental tasks employed to effect such changes could be modified so as to be incorporated by teachers in classroom situations.

Contact:

Phyllis Katz

Institute for Research on Social Problems

520 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO 80302

303-449-7782

303-449-6694 (fax)

Email: katzp@spot.colorado.edu

Project Title: Forging a Multicultural School Environment: An Examination of Intergroup Relations at an Inner-City High School—The P.R.O.P.S. Program

Principal Investigator: Howard Pinderhughes

Purpose: The P.R.O.P.S. Program (People Respecting Other People) was created in 1996 as an innovative project designed to improve intergroup interaction and awareness by building a multicultural community at Mission High School in San Francisco. Mission High has a racially diverse student body: 40 percent Latino, 28 percent Chinese, 16 percent Filipino, 14 percent African-American, and 2 percent white. Despite its incredible diversity, intergroup relations at Mission High School have been characterized by little interaction among groups of different ethnic backgrounds and weekly episodes of conflict and violence between groups. The project is designed to produce a clearer focus on intergroup relations within Mission High School, the development of an action plan for the adoption and development of programs and curricula to increase cross-cultural awareness and interaction, and a reduction in the level of intergroup conflict at the school. What makes the program unique is that it encourages young people themselves to lead the movement for improving intergroup relations.

Methodology: High school students are recruited and trained to conduct survey research and interviews on ethnic and racial attitudes, ethnic and racial identities, and intergroup relations among students at Mission High School. P.R.O.P.S. is also an intervention program designed to increase the school population's awareness of the current state of ethnic and racial attitudes and relations among students at the school. The survey results are presented by P.R.O.P.S. members to the school community through classroom presentations and faculty meetings as a curriculum that encourages discussions on how to improve race relations at the school. In this way, the entire student body participates in the discussion and in developing strategies for improvement. P.R.O.P.S. members will then convene working groups composed of students and faculty to develop a 3-year plan of action to enhance the multicultural environment of the school and improve inter-group relations.

Key/Major Findings: For the majority of students, intergroup relations among students at Mission High School are characterized by coexistence and limited interaction. About one-third of the students at the school cross

cultural lines in their choice of friends. Contact and interaction is affected by immigrant status and language difference, which appear to function as barriers to interaction. One-quarter of students report having encountered racial problems at school. The majority of these problems were name calling, insults, and interpersonal fights. Racial and ethnic attitudes toward other groups appear to indicate tolerance among the vast majority of students. There was little evidence of entrenched negative attitudes toward any group, though African Americans were ranked slightly lower than other racial groups. By far the most tolerant groups of students were the youth of mixed racial or ethnic background and Pacific Islander youth.

These results confirm the observations of the P.R.O.P.S. members of the school's social ecology of intergroup relations. There exist a number of separate communities within Mission High School that are organized along cultural lines. A significant number of students cross these lines in their personal associations. There is no sign of ongoing intergroup tension or conflict. Rather, there is a lack of contact and knowledge of different groups for the majority of students, particularly incoming 9th graders and newly arrived immigrants. It is significant that there is no racial or ethnic group that clearly holds a numerical or status advantage in the school. There are few whites and the diversity of the school diffuses issues of power, control, and privilege. This may change with the new administration, which is developing most of the school's services and culture directed at the Latino students and families. The P.R.O.P.S. members concluded that efforts to improve intergroup relations at Mission High School had great possibilities for success.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: The P.R.O.P.S. program relies on its core group of students to set up a dynamic that will affect the entire school population. Student members of the P.R.O.P.S. Program benefit directly from the training in research and community organizing that they receive. Students are chosen based on a combination of criteria including leadership ability, status and standing among marginalized groups of students within the school community, and marginal academic performance. The school community benefits from the program as well.

The project is based on the premise that the crucial arena for a change in race relations is the community and/or school (as a kind of community), not individual by individual. It is a systemic change at the community level that propels changes in group dynamics. Rather than developing a curriculum geared toward individual attitudinal change, the core goal of the

P.R.O.P.S. program is to develop a methodology that helps people understand the dynamics of their situation and find ways to direct those dynamics toward positive ends. Young people are the best resource for improving intergroup relations among adolescents. Youth-driven and youth-run programs that aim at changing the cultural environment of their school or community have tremendous potential for affecting the attitudes of a large number of youth and changing the context and environment in which they interact into one which facilitates contact and cooperation.

Contact:

Howard Pinderhughes

Assistant Professor

Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences

University of California, San Francisco

Box 0612, N631G

San Francisco, CA 94143

415-502-5074

415-476-6552 (fax)

Email: hpinder@itsa.ucsf.edu

Project Title: Ethnic Identity, Bicultural Self-Efficacy, and Intergroup Conflict and Violence

Principal Investigator: Fernando Soriano

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between psychosocial and cultural factors acting as potential mediators of intercultural group conflict among adolescents. In keeping with Albert Bandura's social cognitive learning model, this project examined the following contexts: (1) group and contextual influences (i.e., group conditions that promote positive intergroup relations); (2) cognitive processes, including developmental processes (i.e., identity and cultural identity formation); and (3) behavioral skills (i.e., social skills for effective interpersonal and intercultural interactions, including bicultural self-efficacy). Key study questions included: To what extent are cultural factors, such as ethnic identity and bicultural self-efficacy, related to intercultural group relations and social problems, such as violence and aggression? If cultural factors are enhanced, will intercultural group conflict be reduced, as well as social problem behaviors, such as violence and aggression?

Methodology: The study population consisted mainly of adolescent males ages 13 to 18 who resided in two northern Californian counties and who attended California “court schools.” Most were wards of the court, on probation and/or resided in restricted residential placements. The northern California counties were selected because they encompassed large culturally diverse populations. This project had both research and intervention components divided into two phases, one for each year of the project. Phase I activities centered on conducting a survey of 481 adolescents representing largely the targeted youth population of concern. The purpose of this survey was to assess and ascertain the relationship between cultural factors (i.e., ethnic identity, bicultural self-efficacy, and acculturation) and outcome measures, such as intercultural group attitudes and behavior, in the hypothesized direction. These data also served as a means of assessing baseline conditions on independent variables, which helped in the development of curriculum for the school-based intervention of focus in Phase II (year two).

In Phase II of the project, 86 adolescents from the same population took part in programmatic activities. A total of 48 youths from 3 schools comprised an experimental group, while 38 were from two comparable

schools, which served as a control group. Youths in the experimental groups were assigned to culturally balanced subgroups (about 15) in classrooms led by a program leader and a trained teacher. These groups took part in a 16-week, 3-component program that addressed: (1) individual enhancement training (including interpersonal relations, communication skills, goal setting, and conflict resolution skill training), (2) cultural training (cultural awareness and sensitivity, bicultural self-efficacy, intercultural group relations, and cultural identity training), and (3) community-bonding training components (through community service projects).

Key/Major Findings: Results from the survey in Phase I indicated a clear relationship between cultural measures and intercultural group relations and social problems, such as violence. That is, the data showed that both negative intercultural group attitudes and self-reported behaviors were inversely related to ethnic identity and bicultural self-efficacy.

Results for the intervention demonstrated a more complex relationship between variables and individuals. The relatively small number of participants in the intervention, plus difficulty in securing a more clearly comparable control group, made it difficult to reveal a clearer relationship between the variables as expected. Even with such difficulty, the results did suggest that the program is efficacious in diminishing intercultural group conflict and in reducing violence and aggression.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: The results of the project pointed to the great need that culturally diverse adolescents have for information that validates their cultural heritage and background. Also evident was their need for enhancing their ethnic identity and for increasing their intercultural communication and relationship skills. This has implications for school curriculum serving culturally diverse students. This was one of the first studies to demonstrate that the increase in ethnic pride and identity does not necessarily lead to intercultural group conflict. The results further validate the importance of training to increase the capacity of adolescents to handle interpersonal conflict challenges both within and outside of school grounds.

Schools should consider increasing the exposure of adolescents to information validating their own cultural backgrounds and those of other cultural groups, while also improving their intercultural communication and relationship skills. While many schools may be multicultural in composition, too many students feel alienated and threatened by culturally different populations. In particular, it is important to consider increasing

organized opportunities for adolescent students to interact and develop relationships with those outside of their cultural groups. More research needs to be encouraged to more carefully examine the relationship between cultural factors, such as ethnic identity and bicultural self-efficacy, and social problems, such as intercultural group relations and social problems among high-risk adolescents (e.g., violence and aggression).

Contact:

Fernando I. Soriano

San Diego State University

8522 Neva Avenue

San Diego, CA 92123

619-495-7703 x3585

619-495-7704 (fax)

Email: fsoriano@sunstroke.sdsu.edu

Project Title: From Intolerance to Understanding: A Study of Intergroup Relations Among High School Youth

Principal Investigator: Hanh Cao Yu

Purpose: The purpose of the study, From Intolerance to Understanding, is to expand knowledge of racial and ethnic borders created by differences in the attitudes and behaviors across students' multiple worlds and identify effective school approaches that foster intergroup understanding and border crossing. The study examined the impact of the school interventions on intergroup relations among high school students. The key research questions were as follows:

1. How do family values, peer norms, and school context influence students ' identity development, border-crossing abilities, and relations with youths of different backgrounds?

2. How do systematic school strategies designed to improve intergroup relations foster border-crossings, increased opportunities to interact, and the identification of commonalties? From the students' perspective, which school strategies are most effective in promoting their ability to relate to youth of different backgrounds?

The study built on the Students' Multiple Worlds (SMW) model, which is a theoretical model of the interrelationships between students' family, peer, and school worlds, examining in particular how meanings and understandings derived from these worlds combine to affect students' engagement with schools and learning. The SMW model directs attention to the nature of boundaries and borders as well as processes of movement among different worlds.

Methodology: This multifaceted three-year research study involves two phases of data collection from 1996 to 1999. Key elements of our approach included:

• Selecting three pairs of matched high schools from urban and suburban districts and conducting 5 rounds of site visits that focus on schools ' and individuals' experiences in the matched schools. School- and student-level issues we examined included the genesis and evolution of the schools' programs, policies, philosophies, and practices as well as factors that influence how students developed their group identities and how they reacted to

the schools' efforts to improve intergroup relationships (72 students interviewed).

• Conducting 4 focus groups with single-race/ethnic groups at each school.

• Conducting a quantitative survey of the class of 2000 in the 6 matched schools, in which we asked about students' attitudes and behavior toward different ethnic groups (approximately 2,300 students were surveyed).

Key/Major Findings: We have found three emerging patterns of how schools are addressing intergroup relations and promoting racial harmony. These different approaches include passive, reactive, and proactive measures to creating conditions for students to explore their ethnic identity and to set the norms and rules of behavior for intergroup interactions. The “passive” school is characterized by lack of widespread acknowledgement that intergroup tensions exist on campus and few, if any, programs are implemented with the expressed purpose of directly promoting intergroup contact. “Reactive” schools are responding to a history of interracial strife and external political pressures exerted by community members to address issues of equity and racial conflict on their campuses. These schools have a litany of multicultural and diversity training programs that have heightened students' awareness of their own ethnic identity and the segregation at their school. Finally, “proactive” schools have engaged in promoting positive intergroup contact simply as an expression of their recognition of the importance of creating a healthy, personalized environment for students to learn and connect with other students and adults.

In our cross-analyses of students' case studies, we discovered distinctive patterns among students as they cross various social settings to form relationships with peers of diverse backgrounds. We use a typology to illustrate four primary patterns.

Typology of Student Intergroup Border Crossing:

• Type I: Heterogeneous peer groups/Border crossings smooth

• Type II: Transitional peer groups/Border crossings managed

• Type III: Homogeneous peer groups/Border crossing resisted

• Type IV: Heterogeneous peer groups/Limited border crossing

Students from each type had influential factors that enhanced or limited their experiences across their family, school, and peer contexts. We

also found that border crossings can only be achieved under certain circumstances, and in some cases, movement across worlds can cause great inner conflict as students reorient themselves in each setting. School structures can greatly determine the kinds of interactions students can be expected to achieve. Students reported that participating in diverse classroom environments and extracurricular activities increased their interaction with different social and ethnic groups.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: Based on an examination of six diverse schools throughout California, it is evident that most schools in the study are no longer maintaining a passive stance toward increasingly diverse student bodies. School leaders, teachers, parents, and students are beginning to challenge traditional policies and practices that lead to inequitable treatment of students of color, and more schools appear to be adopting a reactive or proactive approach to addressing barriers to harmonious intergroup relations.

Policy makers need to understand that there is no one predetermined pathway or set of strategies for schools to follow to address racism and promote positive intergroup interactions. Positive intergroup relations can be achieved through strategies that seek to enhance students identity, development, and learning experiences. While some schools have heightened students' levels of awareness of their ethnic identity and of issues of race to create a more meaningful context for students to interact, school-wide efforts may not be effective unless they take into account students' varying needs and levels of readiness to grapple with issues of intergroup relations, as indicated by the different “types” they represent.

There are also several major implications for intergroup relations program design and policy from the emerging patterns of student border crossings:

• Programs must take into account the diversity of the types of students ' experiences, backgrounds, stages of identity development, and supports available from family, peers, and school. For example:

  • Students of color are often the target of inconsistent tracking and disciplinary policies and general societal discrimination.

  • White students have been conditioned not to speak about race and power dynamics. However, they are experiencing a greater sense of alienation in increasingly diverse learning environments.

• Types IV and II need added support for their identity development

and affirmation of who they are so that they do not feel the need to hide their racial and ethnic selves.

• Type II students need safe spaces to explore common fears, perceptions, and understandings, and to exchange coping strategies.

Contact:

Hanh Cao Yu

Social Policy Research Associates

1330 Broadway, Suite 1426

Oakland, CA 94612

510-763-1499

510-763-1599 (fax)

Email: hanh_cao_yu@spra.com

Project Title: Improving Intergroup Relations Among Youth Through Understanding Cross-Cultural Differences in Basic Value Orientations

Principal Investigator: Patricia Marks Greenfield

Purpose: This project explores the influence of young people's cultural values, as acquired at home, on their relationship with youth from different backgrounds in the context of school sports teams. This project has particular importance because (1) school is a setting in which much intergroup contact occurs; (2) sports teams are one of the few school contexts in which various groups work together as equals for common goals; and (3) there has been a dearth of research on the role of cultural values in intergroup relations among youth.

Methodology: During the year ending June 30, 1998, we completed baseline data collection on intergroup relations on eight multiethnic high school sports teams. All data have been entered into a unified electronic database. Our design includes four basketball and four volleyball teams from two schools, evenly split between boys' and girls' teams. Each team has members of three or four major ethnic groups playing together on the same team: African American, Asian American, Latino, and Euro-American.

A multimethod technique was used to collect the data for this study. That is, the perspectives of both research observers and sports team members were acquired, as was quantitative data from questionnaire responses. Incidents or issues that are described by more than one team member can be used to analyze and understand differing cultural interpretations of the same event. This yields an important database of contrasting cultural interpretations of the same interpersonal issues. The three methods used in this study are ethnographic participant observation, student journals, and assessment of individualistic and collectivistic values.

Key/Major Findings: The study found that the best (statistically significant) prediction concerning roles in a conflict was provided by the participants' collectivism scores in the value assessment. That is, in 78 percent of the conflicts, the team member who had scored the most collectivistic of the pair on the assessment took the collectivistic position in the real-world conflict, while the teammate who had scored as less collectivistic took the individualistic position in the real-world conflict.

We think that collectivism scores may have predicted positions in actual individualism-collectivism conflicts better than individualism scores because there is more variability in collectivistic values in an individualistic society such as the United States: whereas everyone gets exposure to individualistic values, exposure to collectivistic values is more limited to particular subcultures.

We also found that the value scores of the participants in a conflict predicted their roles in that conflict better than their parents ' value scores did. We interpret this to mean that teenagers' behavior in interpersonal situations is not a direct reflection of their parents' values. Their parents' values have been interpreted through the lens of their own personalities, situations, and developmental stage, and this process leads to value transformation, reflected in the teenagers ' own value scores. It was these—specifically the collectivism scores—that best predicted their own value positions in actual conflict situations.

There was an association between ethnicity and value orientation. Most of the time, Asian Americans took the collectivistic position in an intergroup conflict; most of the time, Euro-Americans took the individualistic position. This ethnic patterning was as expected. Latinos, expected to be collectivistic, took individualistic positions less frequently than did Euro-Americans, but they also took collectivistic positions less frequently than did Asian Americans. This latter pattern was not expected; we will be looking to see if it holds in a larger sample of data.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: These multiethnic teams' experiences of conflict and misunderstanding reflect the misunderstandings that occur in society as a whole. The different perspectives that were heard by means of our multivocal methodology have provided us with solid evidence of the players' perceptions of intergroup and interpersonal issues in their own words. The method of multivocal ethnography has been successful in revealing different cultural voices in situations of interpersonal and intergroup conflict.

In Phase 2 of the study, we completed an intervention with two girls ' basketball teams that we had previously studied. We tried to use what we had learned about value-based conflict in Phase I of the project to improve intergroup understanding and harmony within each team. Some preliminary results will be available in the next few months.

Contact:

Patricia Marks Greenfield

Department of Psychology

University of California, Los Angeles

405 Hilgard Avenue

Los Angeles, CA 90095

310-825-7526

310-206-5895 (fax)

Project Title: Immigrant and Native Minority Adolescent Interaction: Miami

Principal Investigator: Alex Stepick

Purpose: The project focused on interethnic relations among native and immigrant minority youth in the Miami metropolitan area of Dade County, Florida, primarily in four high schools with cohorts of youth from particular ethnic groups—African American, Haitian, English-speaking West Indian, Cuban, Nicaraguan, or Mexican. The goal was to understand first the nature of relations among these different native and immigrant minority groups and second to examine what factors in their day-to-day interactions promote or deter positive intergroup relations.

Methodology: The study began when the cohorts entered their first year of high school; they now have graduated, dropped out, or are on the verge of graduation. The research includes three methods: (1) longitudinal participant observation of youth in the schools, their homes, and their communities; (2) intensive interviews (both surveys and open-ended) of the youth, school personnel, parents, and other adults who work with the communities' youth; and (3) focus groups of youths.

Key/Major Findings: The most important findings of this study include:

1. Contemporary immigration has altered interethnic relations in the United States:

   1. Conflict does occur between and among immigrant groups and between immigrants and native-born Americans.

   2. The most common conflict is between newcomers who may not speak American English or know American ways and established residents, including immigrants who have linguistically and culturally assimilated.

   3. Low-income immigrants settling in inner cities display segmentary assimilation to one of America's two racial/ethnic minority groups —African Americans or Latinos—not to generic, mainstream white culture. Immigrant youth do assimilate rapidly—some too rapidly for their parents' tastes. Yet immigrant youth styles are likely to mirror those of the peers with whom they have the greatest contact. Nevertheless, assimilated immigrant youth recognize that they are not fully American and thus identify as a “hyphenated American,” such as Haitian American or Cuban American, rather than simply American or African American or Latino.

2. There is a disjuncture between kids' concerns and adult perceptions of kids' most important problems. Much of the conflict that occurs is rooted in the tensions of American youth peer culture, such as gender relations and friendship cliques. Yet, in multiethnic environments it assumes and often manifests itself as an ethnic conflict.

3. The main tenets of the contact hypothesis remain true, but schools seldom fulfill the hypothesis's prerequisites, particularly that of equal status contact. Also, the debate over multiculturalism misses the mark. Institutions should not promote either multicultural events or “American” cultural. In multicultural environments, institutions should promote both.

   1. Multicultural activities, particularly those that positively highlight marginalized minorities, best address the requirement of effecting equal status.

   2. Activities that distinguish minority groups must be complemented by other activities that require cooperation and thus effect solidarity across all groups.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: The culturally specific events provide minority groups with the opportunity and the material to positively evaluate themselves and thus to feel that they are the equal of the majority population. Conservative critics of multiculturalism assert that it divides the population and undermines cross-group solidarity. This research, however, indicates that specific celebrations of minority culture are a necessary prerequisite for bringing adolescents together on an equal footing. To achieve positive interactions, however, activities that spotlight separate cultures must first be more than symbolic shadows reluctantly performed and second must be complemented by other activities that fulfill the contact hypothesis's requirement of cooperation.

While we continue to examine multiculturalism and equal status, our tentative conclusion is that unity can be accomplished while still promoting multicultural activities. The goal is not, however, easy to achieve. Administrators and teachers must genuinely promote both the multicultural and the unifying activities. Students are especially adept at detecting insincerity. Otherwise, this issue become another example of a disjuncture between adolescents' and adults' interests and perceptions.

Contact:

Alex Stepick

Director, Immigration & Ethnicity Institute

Florida International University

Miami, FL 33199

305-348-2247

305-348-3605 (fax)

Email: stepick@Fiu.edu

Project Title: Improving Intergroup Relations Through Students' Behavioral Journalism

Principal Investigator: Alfred L. McAlister

Purpose: Behavioral journalism influences audiences by presenting peer modeling for cognitive processes that lead to behavior change. To investigate whether students' behavioral journalism can change attitudes related to intergroup hostility, a quasi-experimental research project was carried out among two multicultural Houston high school populations. The technique used student newsletters to promote improved intergroup relations among 91 high school students in two Houston schools.

Methodology: Sharpstown High School was selected as the program school because of its very high level of diversity compared to other schools in the district. Its population is multicultural with no group in the majority. Another of the more diverse schools was selected as a comparison, although it was larger and had a higher proportion of Hispanic students. In the program school, a survey was conducted in early December 1996 and late May 1997. A survey was also conducted in the comparison school in June 1997. Reading questions from printed questionnaires, students answered questions concerning conflict resolution, group relations and other topics. To protect the confidentiality of respondents and avoid the low response rate that would result from requiring signed parental consent, students did not provide identifying information on the surveys.

Key/Major Findings: The differences between intergroup attitudes and intentions in the baseline, follow-up, and comparison groups are generally consistent with the hypothesized effect of vicarious “extended contact” provided through students ' behavioral journalism. Willingness for intergroup affiliation at school was significantly increased, and there is strong evidence for an effect on attitudes toward intermarriage. Perceptions of intergroup similarity were also increased. Effects on superiority beliefs and sympathy for other groups were small and not consistently significant. The campaign evidently was effective in promoting moral engagement by changing beliefs about the acceptability of violence, with changes coming mainly among those with the most aggressive attitudes. Although the peer modeling stories in the newsletters demonstrated skills for intergroup communication, these were not measured. Instruments for assessing selfefficacy for intergroup communication should be included in future stud-

ies of this technique. The reduced intentions for intergroup hostility among students at Sharpstown High School suggest that the cognitive effects were sufficient to achieve a moderate reduction in the likelihood of discriminatory behaviors.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: Despite their shortcomings, the data presented provide evidence that students' behavioral journalism can be used to promote tolerance and prevent intergroup hostility. Further application and testing is clearly warranted. The newsletter approach, with university students distributing stories about how young people successfully cope with diversity, was feasible and well accepted by the high school student audience. We are presently training Sharpstown students to produce and distribute newsletters themselves, with further follow-up and replication in the comparison school. During future years we plan to expand the “Students for Peace” campaign throughout the Houston school district and to other interested communities. Because of its flexibility and convenience for mass application, this method can efficiently reach diverse communities in large populations.

Contact:

Alfred L. McAlister

Behavioral Sciences

University of Texas, School of Public Health

2609 University Avenue

Austin, TX 78705

512-471-5801

512-471-8635 (fax)

Email: alfred.mcalister@ktl.f1atmcimail

Project Title: Improving Interethnic Relations Among Youth: A School-Based Project Involving Teachers, Parents, and Children

Principal Investigators: Beverly Daniel Tatum and Phyllis C. Brown

Purpose: School-based efforts to improve intergroup relations among youth are usually focused directly on the young people themselves, ignoring the potentially critical influence that teachers' and parents' attitudes and actions may have on student behavior. This two-year project investigated the combined effect on young people's intergroup relations of interventions involving teachers, students, and parents in a small Northeastern school district with an increasing school population of color (presently 24 percent). In particular, the project was designed to facilitate the positive development of racial/ethnic identity not only for adolescents, but also for the adult educators who work with them and the parents who hope to guide them through this developmental period.

Methodology: The first component focused on the development of adolescents' racial/ethnic identity as a strategy for improving intergroup relations. Approximately 50 middle school students from six racial/ethnic groups (Latino, African-American, Asian Pacific American, European-American, Jewish, and biracial) were recruited each year to participate in an after-school Cultural Identity Group (CIG) program. The program consisted of weekly small-group discussions held over a 16-week period, first in same-race and later in “blended” groups. The groups provided the opportunity to discuss the impact of race and racism, to explore one's own sense of race and ethnicity and that of others. The impact of the groups was measured with the use of pre- and post-administration of Jean Phinney's Multiethnic Identity Measure, and through the use of interviews with a representative sample (39) of the CIG group participants.

The second component of the intervention consisted of a semester-long professional development course that required participants to examine closely their own sense of ethnic and racial identity and their attitudes toward other groups, as well as develop effective antiracist curricula and educational practices that will be affirming of student identities. It is assumed that teachers must look at their own racial identity in order to be able to support the positive development of their students' racial/ethnic identities. They must also be able to engage in racial dialogue themselves in order to facilitate student conversation.

The course was offered four times over the two-year period, and 83 teachers from the district participated. Data sources for the evaluation of this component included ethnographic observations recorded by an ethnographer, the reflection papers and action plans produced by the participants over the course of the semester, and pre- and post-interviews with a subset (14) of participating educators.

The third component involved a series of parent meetings designed to provide the parents of middle school students with information about adolescent identity development and intergroup relations in the school, to encourage positive intergroup interactions among adults as a way of modeling desirable behavior, and to serve as a way of identifying parent and community resources who might help with the CIG project. Data collection was limited to parent evaluations of the workshop series, which were very positive.

Key/Major Findings: Along with apparent shifts in racial awareness and sense of racial identity (as revealed in interviews and reflection papers), there were also shifts in classroom practice (as revealed in an analysis of the action plans). A total of 56 percent involved efforts to make the curriculum more inclusive of people of color; 30 percent focused on improving relationships between teachers and parents or students of color; and 14 percent involved efforts to change institutional policies and practices, such as tracking and monolingual assessment procedures.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: In order to interrupt the cycle of racism in society, young people need an understanding of how prejudice and racism have operated to divide us from one another. They also need to feel empowered to do something about it. Opportunities to discuss race, ethnicity, and oppression in a safe environment should be available to young people, especially in school.

However, many adults, including educators, are both uncomfortable and unskilled in how to talk about racial issues with children. Many teachers have had limited opportunity to explore these issues as part of their own educational experience, and as a consequence, hesitate to lead discussions about racial tensions in society for fear that they will generate classroom conflict. Unfortunately, when school personnel avoid a proactive examination of racial issues, they may find themselves trying to manage crisis situations as the result of erupting racial tensions. Increasingly, incidents of racial intolerance and hostility at all age levels are being reported in schools.

It should be clear that avoidance of race-related discussions is not the answer. Yet too many teachers are clearly confused about how to proceed.

Our data suggest that young people and adults alike need and benefit from “safe spaces” to explore personal attitudes and to reflect upon their own and others' racial and ethnic identity. Creating such opportunities can have a positive impact on interethnic relations in schools.

Contact:

Beverly Daniel Tatum

Dean of the College

Mount Holyoke College

202 Mary Lyon Hall

South Hadley, MA 01075

413-538-2481

413-538-3059 (fax)

Email: BTatum@MTHolyoke.edu

Project Title: Gender and Race Work in an Urban Magnet School

Principal Investigators: Lois Weis, Michele Fine, and Linda Powell

Purpose: In this project, we seek to understand personal biographies of race/ethnicity and cross-racial relations of youths and adults (gathered in individual and focus group interviews) and to explicate the structural conditions of three interracial communities. Through observation, interviews, and document collection, we attempted to demystify the process by which adults and youths interact in such settings. It is important that we not portray these settings as though they were simply free of adult intervention—to do so would be to erase the powerful presence that adults have in establishing and permitting “safety zones” in which interracial relations can grow and be nourished. Thus, we have chosen sites in which we know that adults are working, across racial and ethnic groups and self-consciously, on creating “free spaces” for youths to come together intellectually, aesthetically, and politically. We conducted interviews and observations in order to understand how such spaces are constructed, secured, sabotaged, resurrected, and maintained over time. Delineating these critical elements allowed us both to theorize about racial identities and cross-racial and ethnic relations among youths, and to develop for practitioners some frameworks within which they, too, can imagine and create such spaces.

Methodology: Michelle Fine conducted research inside a 9th grade classroom within an integrated public school, in which students across racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds come together in a world literature course. The faculty—one African American man and one white woman—collaborate regularly to sustain intellectually and politically rich classes. The focus is on desegregated classrooms and detracking.

Linda Powell conducted research within a professional development setting for urban teachers engaging in “family group” and analyzed individual and group interviews with teachers.

Lois Weis worked with a group of racially mixed 9th and 12th grade girls, who are participating in the program in an arts-based urban magnet school in Buffalo. The program, called My Bottom Line, is an abstinence-based sex education program that wanders through enormously interesting issues regarding body image, sexuality, and gender roles in U.S. society for a full semester. She interviewed young women as to their experiences in this

group as well as broader issues concerning race and gender within the contexts of intergroup relations in the 1990s.

Key/Major Findings:¹ Participant observation and interview data were gathered during spring semester 1997 at a magnet school (grades 5-12) geared toward the arts in Buffalo, New York. The school is highly mixed ethnically and racially, having 45 percent white, 45 percent African American, 8 percent Latino/Latina, 1 percent First Nations People, and 1 percent Asian students.

The officially stated goal of My Bottom Line is “to prevent or delay the onset of sexual activity, build self esteem and increase self sufficiency in young women through an abstinence based, gender specific prevention education program.” Students voluntarily attend the program during study hall, participating one or two times a week. The expressed intent of the group is one of encouraging abstinence among girls who are not yet sexually active. The site, in addition to dealing with issues of sexual abstinence, was intentionally established in order to empower young women, particularly in their relationships with young men. The adults in charge explain that women's bodies must be under the control of women themselves and should not be a site for male control, abuse, or exploitation. In addition, the program provided participants a space within which personal and collective identity formation across racial and ethnic lines potentially takes place. The study assessed the extent to which this space offers a “home” within which social stereotypes are contested and new identities tried on.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: In this program, young women traverse a variety of subjects regarding race, gender, sexuality, and men. Moving through these issues, they begin to form a new collective based on a stronger woman/girl, one who is different in many ways from those left behind emotionally in the neighborhood. It is a collective that surges across racial groups, although not necessarily in terms of intimate friendships. But these young women, nevertheless, share the most intimate pieces of themselves in the group setting, creating a form of friendship that may or may not transcend the bounds of the school, or even the group. They think the group gives them the space they need to think things out—to live life differently than those they feel are destined to failure.

Data suggest that this program offers a powerful space for revising gender and ethnic racial subjectivities as students gain a set of lenses and allies for social critiques. Students “bear secrets,” doing so across racial and ethnic lines, setting the stage for cross-race/cross ethnic interactions around important issues in the future, in spite of the limited purpose under which the group was initially formed.

Contact:

Lois Weis

Organization Administration and Policy

State University of New York, Buffalo

468 Baldy Hall

Buffalo, NY 14260

716-645-6626

716-645-2481 (fax)

Email: Weis@acsu.Buffalo.edu

Project Title: Early Adolescent Development Study

Principal Investigator: Diane Hughes

Purpose: The Early Adolescent Development Study is a two-year shortterm longitudinal study focusing on intergroup relations, school experiences, and psychosocial adjustment among a sample of 991 elementary and middle school youth (531 white, 400 African American, 29 Hispanic, and 31 Asian or Asian American). The study focuses primarily on elaborating developmental and social factors that facilitate or impede positive intergroup friendships during middle childhood. By following students over a two-year period, we were aiming to examine the extent to which there were shifts in children's orientations toward same-race and other-race peers over the course of several ecological transitions, including that from elementary to middle school in 5th grade and that from heterogeneous to formally tracked classrooms in 6th grade.

Methodology: The program was designed to follow longitudinally a relatively large sample of youth attending 3rd through 5th grades in an integrated suburban school district in the Northeast. Several characteristics of the schools and of the district were of particular importance in the design and conceptualization of the study. First, whereas the two middle schools (housing the 5th grade students) were racially balanced, reflecting the overall population of the district (about 50 percent European American, 40 percent African American, and 10 percent children of other ethnic backgrounds) the elementary schools (housing the 3rd and 4th graders) varied in racial composition. Two elementary schools were predominantly (56 percent) African American schools, one elementary school was predominantly (61 percent) European American, and two of the elementary schools were racially balanced. Moreover, whereas school policy dictated heterogeneous ability grouping among 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders, students were tracked within homogeneous classrooms in 6th grade.

Key/Major Findings: With the exception of 3rd grade African American students, a greater proportion of students reported same-race as compared to other-race friendships. In addition, across all grades, white students were more likely to report same-race friends and less likely to report other-race friends than were their African American counterparts. However, whereas white students' friendship patterns were relatively stable across time, African American students showed an increasing tendency toward

same-race peers. For instance, 45 percent of African American 3rd grade students as compared to 70 percent of African American 5th grade students reported that “many” or “all” of their friends were from their racial group. The shift away from other-race friends was less dramatic but significant nevertheless: 45 percent of African American 3rd grade students as compared with 30 percent of African American 5th grade students reported that “all” or “many” of their friends were a different race from themselves. In a school district that is fully integrated, one would expect about equal numbers of students reporting same-race and other-race friendships. Clearly, then, race is an important basis upon which student's friendship choices are made.

Again, findings indicate greater same-race peer preference, and greater stability over time, among white as compared to African American students. Analyses also suggested that the most dramatic shift toward same-race peer relationships over time was evidenced within the subsample of students who were in 3rd grade during year one of the study.

Finally, we examined relationships between parents' reports about their communications to children about race and children 's reports about their peer relationships. Although children are exposed to, and absorb, messages about race from many sources, including teachers, the media, community members, and others, parental attitudes and messages are likely to exert an especially powerful influence on children's attitudes toward their own and other ethnic groups. Parents transmit these attitudes to children intentionally and inadvertently by way of implicit and explicit messages encoded in their ongoing interactions with their children.

Programmatic/Policy Implications: In many ways, the findings regarding children's peer preferences raise more questions than they answer. These findings support findings from other studies regarding the prevalence of same-race peer preferences. In general, student reports about their peer relationships and contacts suggest an overwhelming preference for same-race peers among a substantial majority of youth. Although age-related increases in same-race peer preference were evident in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, these were much less pronounced and nonsignificant when differences in school racial composition were accounted for.

Among African American students, a variety of individual and ecological factors were associated with patterns of peer preference. African American students who identified more strongly with their racial group and actively engaged in information-seeking about race reported more same-race

and fewer other-race friendships. Perceived unfair treatment was also associated with African American and white students' peer preferences, as was their gender. Not surprisingly, parental socialization messages were quite strongly associated with African American students' peer preference patterns.

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect has been the absence of a relationship between proposed predictor variables and peer preference patterns within the subsample of white students. This is undoubtedly due, in part, to the relative lack of variation in these students peer preferences. The overwhelming majority of them reported many same-race and few other-race peer choices. Planned analyses of school structural variables and classroom pedagogical practices as reported by teachers may add additional insight into these phenomena.

Contact:

Diane Hughes

Psychology Department

New York University

6 Washington Place, Rm. 280, 2nd Floor

New York, NY 10003

212-998-7906

212-995-4018 (fax)

Email: Hughes@xp.psych.nyu.edu