The present study advances a model of critical civic motivation grounded in expectancy-value theory and highlights diverse manifestations of motivation among marginalized adolescents. The participants were 447 high school youth (85.0% Latinx; 62.9% low-income). Two complementary methodological approaches were employed to examine civic motivation,…

A growing number of school district and community organizations are seeking to address a 'crisis' of Latino male education through the creation of Latino male mentorship programs. Indicative of neoliberal shifts in urban education, these programs often involve public-private partnerships and bring problem-solving, deficit-approaches to youth work.…

States have been given flexibility under No Child Left Behind to create need-driven comprehensive school improvement plans with an approved accountability system, however those unable to show increased student learning will be deemed as failing. Schools labeled as failing require a comprehensive framework for improvement. Research has identified a…

Interpersonal and intergroup contention is endemic to the social environment of California prisons. Data from in-depth interviews (N = 74) with prison inmates highlights a conceptual difference between the status behavior understood as signaling "deference" versus those signaling "respect." "Deference behavior"…

A research project that developed methods for describing, organizing, analyzing, and predicting state education policy activity had as its major focus the way that values affect that policy. Data were drawn from six states: Wisconsin, Illinois, California, Arizona, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. They were chosen to represent ranges of political…