This study examined the relationship of racial and ethnic socialization and academic achievement in a sample of 218 African American adolescents (grades 9-12; 52% girls) attending a public high school in the northeastern United States. Researchers were particularly interested in whether adolescent gender moderated the relationship between racial and ethnic socialization and academic grades. Results indicated that aspects of ethnic socialization, African American cultural values and African American heritage were linked to adolescent grades. Additionally, adolescent gender was found to moderate the association between these socialization variables and grades. The findings also suggest that socialization provided by paternal caregivers around African American cultural values and African American heritage may have differential effects for academic grades than the socialization messages provided by maternal caregivers. Information generated from this study broadens the understanding of socialization factors that can facilitate positive academic outcomes in African American youth and has practical implications for parents and educators.

This article examines an after-school program entitled Silk City Media Workshop. Briefly, the workshop engages youth in digital storytelling as a means of enhancing both their technology and literacy skills. Transcending these goals, this workshop also provides opportunities for youth to reveal multiple aspects of their unfolding identities as well as the employment of their agency in the process. The article draws on aspects of cultural sociology and concepts of identity and agency to explore one student's digital story. The study of this student's digital story suggests how it both reveals and embodies her identity and agency. Analysis illuminates connections to her histories and interactions between herself and others. Examining the digital story through the explicated framework assists educators in understanding the ways in which students identify themselves and how those identities relate to a set of organized actions that form and re-form over lifetimes, and through collective histories.

The article describes a task-centered, peer-mentoring (TCPM) group initiated by a group of female junior faculty to support one another toward tenure and work/life balance. It describes a qualitative study that investigated the peer-mentoring experiences of the participants and explored the implications and complications of peer-mentoring relationships for women in academia. The article begins by describing the group's formation in the context of literature that highlights challenges faced by untenured female faculty; next, it describes the task-centered group process and offers a theoretical framework based on feminist pedagogy. The results of the study and implications for further research and peer-mentoring practice in higher education are presented.