Robert Crosnoe - Böcker

Written by a team of renowned sociologists with experience in both the field and the classroom, The Art and Science of Social Research offers authoritative, accessible and balanced coverage of the methods used to study the social world. The authors highlight the challenges of investigating the unpredictable topic of human lives while providing insights into what really happens in the field, the laboratory and the survey call centre. A streamlined Second Edition is now accompanied by three new InQuizitive activities and writing tutorials that help students master the building blocks of research and hone key writing skills.

In American high schools, teenagers must navigate complex youth cultures that often prize being 'real' while punishing difference. Adults may view such social turbulence as a timeless, ultimately harmless rite of passage, but changes in American society are intensifying this rite and allowing its effects to cascade into adulthood. Integrating national statistics with interviews and observations from a single school, this book explores this phenomenon. It makes the case that recent macro-level trends, such as economic restructuring and technological change, mean that the social dynamics of high school can disrupt educational trajectories after high school; it looks at teenagers who do not fit in socially at school - including many who are obese or gay - to illustrate this phenomenon; and it crafts recommendations for parents, teachers and policy-makers about how to protect teenagers in trouble. The result is a story of adolescence that hits home with anyone who remembers high school.

The children of Mexican immigrant families are the fastest growing population in American schools today. Education can be the key to a better quality of life, especially for a population that faces breathtakingly high poverty rates and few other opportunities for social mobility. But these children are too frequently considered at risk academically. What more can be done to help them succeed?Mexican Roots, American Schools offers a fresh take on this timely and critically important issue by focusing on the first years of elementary school and the complex interplay of learning with other aspects of children's lives. Its social policy recommendations will be essential reading for educators, policymakers, and parents alike.Based on the first-ever national study of the school readiness of Mexican immigrant children, this book examines how various aspects of their lives—including health, the home environment, and childcare arrangements—help or hurt their academic performance. Drawing a comprehensive picture, it shows that these children start school behind their peers and only fall farther behind over the years. The author forcefully maintains that this situation does not need to continue. Crosnoe outlines which factors make the most difference, and recommends policy initiatives that would help change things. In addressing educational inequality, we need to target the earliest years of school and pre-school programs, offer resource centers and services for students and parents, and consider how health and home inevitably seep their way into the schools.

The children of Mexican immigrant families are the fastest growing population in American schools today. Education can be the key to a better quality of life, especially for a population that faces breathtakingly high poverty rates and few other opportunities for social mobility. But these children are too frequently considered at risk academically. What more can be done to help them succeed?Mexican Roots, American Schools offers a fresh take on this timely and critically important issue by focusing on the first years of elementary school and the complex interplay of learning with other aspects of children's lives. Its social policy recommendations will be essential reading for educators, policymakers, and parents alike.Based on the first-ever national study of the school readiness of Mexican immigrant children, this book examines how various aspects of their lives—including health, the home environment, and childcare arrangements—help or hurt their academic performance. Drawing a comprehensive picture, it shows that these children start school behind their peers and only fall farther behind over the years. The author forcefully maintains that this situation does not need to continue. Crosnoe outlines which factors make the most difference, and recommends policy initiatives that would help change things. In addressing educational inequality, we need to target the earliest years of school and pre-school programs, offer resource centers and services for students and parents, and consider how health and home inevitably seep their way into the schools.

The early childhood field has long understood that targeting the intersection of health and learning is integral to serving children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yet this developmentally informed educational philosophy has been jeopardized by an increased emphasis on standards-based accountability. In this book, the authors explain why healthy learning is good for children, schools, and society and they suggest concrete ways to make it happen. Moving back and forth between national statistics and the intimate voices of parents, teachers, and service providers in a large urban school district, they formulate an action plan for educating the whole child and reducing educational inequities. While the book covers a broad spectrum of American children, special attention is given to the growing population of Mexican immigrant children. Chapters include: Issues to Ponder, Keywords, Take-Home Messages, and Next Questions.

Throughout distressing cultural battles and disputes over child care, each side claims to have the best interests of children at heart. While developmental scientists have concrete evidence for this debate, their message is often lost or muddied by the media. To demonstrate why this problem matters, this book examines the extensive media coverage of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development - a long-running government-funded study that provides the most comprehensive look at the effects of early child care on American children. Analyses of newspaper articles and interviews with scientists and journalists reveal what happens to science in the public sphere and how children's issues can be used to question parents' choices. By shining light on these issues, the authors bring clarity to the enduring child care wars while providing recommendations for how scientists and the media can talk to - rather than past - each other.

Throughout distressing cultural battles and disputes over child care, each side claims to have the best interests of children at heart. While developmental scientists have concrete evidence for this debate, their message is often lost or muddied by the media. To demonstrate why this problem matters, this book examines the extensive media coverage of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development - a long-running government-funded study that provides the most comprehensive look at the effects of early child care on American children. Analyses of newspaper articles and interviews with scientists and journalists reveal what happens to science in the public sphere and how children's issues can be used to question parents' choices. By shining light on these issues, the authors bring clarity to the enduring child care wars while providing recommendations for how scientists and the media can talk to - rather than past - each other.

Beauty has a well-documented impact on labor market outcomes with both legal and policy implications. This monograph investigated whether this stratification is rooted in earlier developmental experiences. Specifically, we explored how high schools' dual roles as contexts of social relations and academic progress contributed to the long-term socioeconomic advantages of being physically attractive. Integrating theories from multiple disciplines, the conceptual model of this study contends that physically attractive youths' greater social integration and lesser social stigma help them accumulate psychosocial resources that support their academic achievement while also selecting them into social activities that distract from good grades. A mixed-methods design, combining statistical analyses of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health and qualitative analyses of a single high school, supported and expanded this model. The data revealed that the benefits of attractiveness flowed through greater social integration but were partially offset by social distractions, especially romantic/sexual partnerships and alcohol-related problems. Interview and ethnographic data further revealed that adolescents themselves understood how physical attractiveness could lead to favorable treatment by teachers and classmates while also enticing youth to emphasize socializing and dating, even when the latter took time from other activities (like studying) and marginalized some classmates. These patterns, in turn, predicted education, work, family, and mental health trajectories in young adulthood. The results of this interdisciplinary, theoretically grounded, mixed methods study suggest that adolescence may be a critical period in stratification by physical appearance and that the underlying developmental phenomena during this period are complex and often internally contradictory. The monograph concludes with discussion of theoretical and policy implications and recommendations for future developmental research.