Multicultural education in Clinical Psychology Programs and the needs of racial minority trainees.

With more racial minorities entering the field of clinical psychology, the training needs of racial minority students in doctoral programs must be considered. Few studies address training in multicultural education from the perspective of racial minority students despite their increasing presence in the field. This may be due to assumptions educators make based on their level of competency in the area of multiculturalism. Thus, the goal of this exploratory study is to help determine the multicultural training needs of racial minorities enrolled in clinical psychology programs. This exploratory study was quantitative and used snowball sampling to survey racial minority trainees in doctoral programs in clinical psychology. Sixty one participants completed the survey. Results indicated that multicultural/diversity classes are valued by racial minority students and are relevant to them. However, the majority of students do not feel challenged, suggesting that their needs are not being fully met. It is recommended that their unique needs be included in the curriculum for multicultural education.

Acting White Among Black College Students: A Phenomenological Study of Social Constructions of Race

This study was a qualitative examination of Black college students' experiences with the Acting White label. In conducting this study, two gaps in literature were addressed: (1) the lack of literature on Black college students and the acting white label, and (2) lack of attention to a US racial history and current structures which allow a label such as "acting white" to exist. Thus, the purpose of this study was to call attention to the experiences of Black college students as it relates to the acting white label. Additionally, the study calls attention to social constructions that allow the acting white label to exist and to be sustained. Data was collected from 14 Black college students at a predominantly white, private, liberal arts university in the west. Based on responses from students in the study, Black college students do hear that they are acting white. Yet, their reaction to hearing the label does not cause them to underachieve academically, but does have an impact on their social actions. The ways in which Black college students in the study were labeled as acting white was based on academic pursuits, speech patterns, dress, and hobbies. Student reactions to the label ranged from ignoring the label to challenging the accuser. In regards to how the acting white label is sustained, students in the study expressed that they learned what it meant to act white or black from family interactions, social interactions and observations from family and friends, and from media sources. It was concluded that Black college students, despite reactions, do hear the label and that the label seems to be used as a means to attack Black students and their identity.

A Qualitative Study on Successful African American Marriages on How They Create and Repair Attachment Injuries Using Emotional Skillfulness.

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe the meanings that Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Davis attribute to how they have adapted to their marriage and overcame conflict over the years. A purposive sample of this well-known African American married couple, who self-identified as being in a long-term, successful marriage, was used. The subjects of study were married for 56 years. An analysis using Colaizzi's (1978) method revealed 2 themes, with 13 and 2 subthemes respectively. The themes that emerged from the analysis of the formulated meanings were: (1) secrets to a successful marriage; and (2) sources of conflict in marriage. Secrets to a successful marriage included 13 subthemes: (a) egalitarian roles; (b) commitment; (c) forgiveness; (d) communication; (e) love; (f) honesty; (g) understanding the struggles of Black males and females; (h) friendship; (i) religion/ support from God; (j) compromise; (k) beliefs that marriage is a process; (l) emotional availability of spouse; and (m) feelings of security. In addition, the theme sources of conflict in marriage had two subthemes: (a) different decision making styles; and (b) experiences of abandonment. These findings provided insight from this couple's perspective on the secrets to a successful marriage and the ways in which they managed to make their marriage work, in light of the unique challenges that face African American marriages.

Parent-Child Interaction and Children's Self-Concept

This study is designed to investigate the relationships between marital communication, the quality of parents' ability to assist their children in joint problem-solving, and children's independent mastery attempts and perceived competence at problem-solving, and behavioral indicators of self-esteem. Couples' skill at regulating their own and their children's negative affect within the marital and parent-child family subsystems is hypothesized to predict the quality of their assistance, or scaffolding behavior, to their children during joint problem-solving. Further, the quality of parental scaffolding behavior is expected to predict children's independent mastery attempts, levels of perceived competence at problemsolving, and behavioral indicators of self-esteem. Families for the study will be those with children between 3 1/2 to six years of age recruited from subjects participating in a longitudinal study of communication in marriage being conducted at the Denver Center for Marital and Family Studies. Families will participate in three interaction tasks designed to tap parental scaffolding behavior during problemsolving with their children. Children will be administered self-report measures to tap their perceived competence at such problem-solving as those in the interaction tasks and parents will complete a questionnaire tapping the behavioral indicators of their child's self-esteem. Family interaction data will be coded with the use of a microanalytic coding system developed by this study, the Parent-Child Interaction Coding System. Marital communication data at three time points, premaritally, during the transition to parenthood , and concurrently, will be obtained from couples' interactions from the longitudinal study. The clinical significance of this study includes implications for training couples how to effectively regulate negative affect and offer their children sensitive assistance during joint problem-solving.

Applying Positive Psychology in Early Childhood.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a framework for applying positive psychology in elementary classrooms. The target age group is children in grades K-3 (ages 5 to 8) because this age group can benefit the most from an early introduction to strategies that promote positive development (Cowne & Hightower, 1989; White, 1996). The following sections will: (a) introduce constructs of positive psychology; (b) present developmental data on how these constructs can be applied to children ages 5 to 8 years; (c) present ideas for incorporating positive psychology practice into K-3 classrooms; (d) present strategies for incorporating positive psychology with multicultural considerations; and (e) present ideas on how to implement strategies based on positive psychology that are compatible with grade level standards and sociopolitical teaching expectations.

The Keyes to Reclaiming the Racial History Of the Roberts Court

This article advocates for a fundamental re-understanding about the way that the history of race is understood by the current Supreme Court. Represented by the racial rights opinions of Justice John Roberts that celebrate racial progress, the Supreme Court has equivocated and rendered obsolete the historical experiences of people of color in the United States. This jurisprudence has in turn reified the notion of color-blindness, consigning racial discrimination to a distant and discredited past that has little bearing to how race and inequality is experienced today. The racial history of the Roberts Court is centrally informed by the context and circumstances surrounding Brown v. Board of Education. For the Court, Brown symbolizes all that is wrong with the history of race in the United States - legal segregation, explicit racial discord, and vicious and random acts of violence. Though Roberts Court opinions suggest that some of those vestiges still exits, the bulk of its jurisprudence indicate the opposite. With Brown’s basic factual premises as its point of reference, the Court has consistently argued that the nation has made tremendous strides away from the condition of racial bigotry, intolerance, and inequity. The article accordingly argues that the Roberts Court reliance on Brown to understand racial progress is anachronistic. Especially as the nation’s focus for racial inequality turned national in scope, the same binaries in Brown that had long served to explain the history of race relations in the United States (such as Black-White, North-South, and Urban-Rural) were giving way to massive multicultural demographic and geographic transformations in the United States in the years and decades after World War II. All of the familiar tropes so clear in Brown and its progeny could no longer fully describe the current reality of shifting and transforming patterns of race relations in the United States. In order to reclaim the history of race from the Roberts Court, the article assesses a case that more accurately symbolizes the recent history and current status of race relations today: Keyes v. School District No. 1. This was the first Supreme Court case to confront how the binaries of cases like Brown proved of little probative value in addressing how and in what ways race and racial discrimination was changing in the United States. Thus, understanding Keyesand the history it reflects reveals much about how and in what ways the Roberts Court should rethink its conclusions regarding the history of race relations in the United States for the last 60 years.