Multiple contexts, multiple methods: a study of academic and cultural identity among children of immigrant parents

Abstract

Multiple methods were used to examine the academic motivation and cultural identity of a sample of college undergraduates. The children of immigrant parents (CIPs, n=52) and the children of non-immigrant parents (non-CIPs, n=42) completed surveys assessing core cultural identity, valuing of cultural accomplishments, academic self-concept, valuing of academics, and feelings of belonging at the university. Survey results revealed that CIP's placed a greater emphasis on their cultural identity than non-CIPs. In addition, core cultural identity was associated with all three of the motivation scales for CIPs, but only with valuing of academics for the non-CIPs. Implicit association tests revealed that CIPs and non-CIPs both associated success with Caucasians more strongly than with Hispanics, a result that was true even for the Hispanic participants in the study. Finally, a sub-group of 11 CIPs were interviewed to gain additional insights regarding the association between cultural identity and academic motivation. The influence of the multiple contexts in which CIPs operate is used to interpret these results.

For a Better Life: The Aspirations of Chinese Immigrants in Parenting

“…Mexican immigrant parents who did not pursue their own high schooling did not have a strong motivation for their children's academic success (Corsnoe & Kalil, 2010). According to Urdan and Munoz (2012), generally speaking, "the academic motivation of the children of immigrant parents depends on a number of factors, [including] the educational and income level of parents, attitudes of the host society and institutions like school toward the immigrant group" (p. 249).…”

“…IMMIGRANT PARENTING For many Chinese, immigration is an experience of resettling that is driven by an important motive: aspiring to a better life, or hoping for an improved existence (Song, 2003;Urdan & Munoz, 2012). From a culture-context paradigm, three factors could explain the implication of a better life for Chinese immigrant parents.…”

The relationship between implicit intergroup attitudes and beliefs

“…However, the stimuli selected for the trustworthy, competent, and social attributes consisted exclusively of positive adjectives (e.g., "sincere," "capable," "warm"), and the stimuli selected for the untrustworthy, incompetent, and unsocial attributes consisted exclusively of negative adjectives (e.g., "deceitful," "incapable," "cold"). In addition to this example, numerous other IATs designed to assess implicit beliefs have used highly evaluatively discrepant attribute categories and stimuli (64)(65)(66). The findings of the present project, and especially studies 1A and 1B (using smart/dumb as the target attributes), caution against interpreting results obtained with such IATs as reflecting contentful implicit beliefs rather than merely differential attribution of positive vs. negative valence to the target groups.…”

Longitudinal relations between South Korean adolescents’ academic self‐efficacy and values in mathematics and English

“…Before concluding that values do not directionally predict expectancies, it is important to note that all the aforementioned studies were conducted in Western settings. As different cultural milieus shape the development of adolescents' academic motivation in unique ways (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006;Urdan & Munoz, 2012; see also expectancy-value theory [Wigfield et al, 2009]), it is critical to replicate cross-lagged analyses with culturally distinct samples. Focusing on South Korean students may particularly help address this concern due to the unique features of the Korean educational systems.…”