Despite increasing interest in improving academic outcomes for students by enhancing mindfulness, there is a paucity of evidence that greater mindfulness is associated with success in school. We measured mindfulness with the short-form Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) in over 2,000 urban students in Grades 5-8. The MAAS had good internal…

To better understand STEM interest development during adolescence in an urban community, we examined how "STEM Interested" youth differed from disinterested youth and how interest changed over time from age 11/12 to 12/13. We surveyed youth to measure interest in four components of STEM, used cluster analysis to categorize youth based on…

Additional research is needed on ways in which urban youth report their civic engagement. Existing research indicates that federal legislation has resulted in reduced instructional time and resources in social studies and civic education in many states, which has led to a civic education opportunity gap that resonates through many urban…

The present study examined the extent to which parent involvement in education was directly and indirectly (via school engagement) related to academic outcomes in an effort to more fully understand the school experiences of urban adolescents. Participants (80% racial/ethnic minority; n = 108) were in grades 6, 7 or 8. In the Fall and subsequent…

Academic cheating within the middle grades has become a prevalent schooling dilemma for teachers and administrators. Among the various contextual and cognitive factors that promote academic cheating is home-school dissonance, which has been shown to predict the phenomenon among high school students. The current study extends this line of research…

The present case study investigated the impact of a short-term summer literacy approach on writing performance and self-perception of writing for young adolescents of low-income families residing in urban housing projects. The approach offered intensive literacy engagement to offset summer achievement loss; assisted ethnic-minority, low…

Background: School-based social-emotional and character development (SECD) programs can influence not only SECD but also academic-related outcomes. This study evaluated the impact of one SECD program, Positive Action (PA), on educational outcomes among low-income, urban youth. Methods: The longitudinal study used a matched-pair, cluster-randomized…

This article examines family, friend, and media influences on competent and problem behaviors in a sample of 1,174 urban minority youth followed over 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Students completed annual surveys at their schools. Each of the contextual factors investigated was significantly associated with concurrent aggression and delinquency as…