In most Western countries, girls outperform boys in academic engagement, scholastic achievement, and school completion. In the current study, researchers assessed the developmental trajectories of European French and North African French boys' (N = 549; M[subscript age] = 11.9 years) perceptions of girls' and boys' ability to succeed in school.…

We examined developmental changes in self-esteem from late childhood to late adolescence in African American girls (N = 124), comparing skin tone groups. Girls completed a measure of self-esteem when they were in Grades 5, 7, 10, and 12, and in Grade 12 their skin tone was rated on a 3-point scale (1 = "Light," 2 = "Medium," 3…

Adolescence is a developmental period when youth are increasingly likely to turn to their peers for support, and it is also a time of increased salience and development of ethnic-racial identity (ERI). Ethnic-racial centrality, a dimension of ERI, could be a predictor in the development of peer support, as youth with a stronger self-concept on the…

For many African Americans, racial identity is an important aspect of their individual identity. We explored developmental change and stability of individual differences in the racial centrality of African American youths and their mothers as well as the relation between maternal and child racial centrality across time. African American youths (N…

Research has suggested mixed results regarding the relations between dimensions of ethnic-racial identity (ERI) and academic outcomes. Furthermore, little scholarship has explored the mechanisms that underlie these relations. In the current study, we investigated the longitudinal relations of 2 dimensions of ERI (embedded achievement, and ethnic…