Olga Kornienko

The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 racial awakening posed challenges to adolescents’ academic functioning. Culturally relevant school supports are one potential source of resilience in the dual pandemic. This study examined whether heterogeneous culturally relevant school support profiles buffered declining grade point average (GPA) trajectories from 2019 to 2021 among sixth- and ninth-grade students in the U.S. Southwest (N = 717; Mage = 13.7; 49.9% girls; 31.8% Hispanic/Latinx, 31.5% Multiethnic, 25.7% White, 11.1% Black/African American, Asian American, American Indian, or AMENA). Ninth-grade students experiencing high general, moderate cultural, & critical support or low general, devoid cultural, & critical support had significantly better GPA trajectories than those experiencing moderate general & cultural, devoid critical support. Among sixth-grade students, no differences emerged. Discussion of these complex patterns focuses on implications for academic resilience after the dual pandemic.

Ethnic‐racial identity (ERI) development reflects the processes through which adolescents learn about their ethnic‐racial background (i.e., exploration) and develop clarity about what it means to them (i.e., resolution). Research on ERI has been critiqued for not examining connections between ERI and broader social beliefs, such as critical consciousness (i.e., individuals' level of reflection about social oppression, motivation to take action against it, and the extent to which they take such action). When examining connections to ERI, research underscores the importance of considering individuals' patterns of exploration and resolution in tandem (i.e., ERI status) rather than analyzing them in isolation. Accordingly, the current study utilized latent profile analysis to examine how ERI status profiles were associated with dimensions of Latine adolescents' critical consciousness. Cross‐sectional data came from Latine adolescents ( n = 338, M _age = 16.30, SD: 1.11; 44% boys, 53% girls, 3% another gender) attending a U.S. southwestern high school. Findings revealed three ERI status profiles: Foreclosed ( n = 132; lower exploration and higher resolution), Diffuse ( n = 59; lower exploration and resolution), and Achieved ( n = 147; higher exploration and resolution). Profiles did not significantly differ in critical reflection. The Achieved profile reported the highest critical motivation, the Diffuse profile reported the lowest, and the Foreclosed profile fell between them. The Achieved profile reported higher critical action than the other two profiles, which did not significantly differ from one another. Findings suggest that among Latine adolescents, engaging in ERI development is connected to feeling more agency to change unjust systems and engaging in more action against such systems, but higher ERI development does not necessarily reflect deeper engagement in questioning those systems (i.e., critical reflection).

Social media plays an integral role in the social lives of adolescents, allowing continuous connection, support, and acceptance (Pew Research Center, 2025). Earlier research focused on screentime, ...

Because educational attainment is associated with well-being in the long term, it is important to understand the developmental processes that enhance academic outcomes during adolescence. Also, although the importance of friends is well documented in adolescence, little is known about how close friends’ characteristics work together with youth’s own characteristics to shape adolescents’ educational trajectories. This study fills an important gap in knowledge by focusing on how middle school students’ academic achievement and externalizing problems are associated with their friends’ achievement and externalizing problems over time, and how these variables predict educational attainment in adulthood. This study innovates by examining developmental cascades involving adolescents’ academic achievement, externalizing problems, and these characteristics in their close friends in the context of random-intercept cross-lagged panel modeling (RI-CLPM), which disentangles within-person changes and between-person differences during the three years of middle school. The sample included 998 middle school students (M_age at recruitment: 12.21 years old; SD = 0.37 years), 42.3% of whom were European Americans, 29.0% African Americans, 6.8% Latinos, 5.2%, Asian Americans, 16.2% youth of other ethnicities, including mixed ethnicity, and 47.3% were female. At the within-person level, only one type of interdomain cascade was corroborated, as youth displaying high levels of externalizing problems reported close friendships with low-achieving friends in the next year. At the between-person level, only the random intercept representing the stability of adolescents’ academic achievement throughout middle school predicted educational attainment in adulthood (average of 28 years old). In essence, this study clarifies that the etiological mechanisms leading up to adult educational attainment involve only adolescents’ own stable academic achievement, and not their externalizing behaviors or friends’ academic achievement and externalizing behaviors.

Increased popular discourse about societal inequities highlights the importance of critical consciousness (CC) as a developmental competency for youth. Peer dialogue has been implicit to theories of CC, but we know little about how critical reflection, action, and sociopolitical efficacy inform interpersonal mechanisms through which social networks are selected in developmentally salient contexts. We used social network analysis methods to explore the role of CC components in how late adolescents cultivated their peer affiliation and friendship networks within a specific context of a college living and learning community. Participants (n = 37; 67.6% female; Mage = 18.18 years, 56.81% White) nominated individuals with whom they have positive interactions (437 nominations at wave 1) and friendships (157 nominations at wave 1) at two waves. At wave 1, participants reported on their CC components, frequency of daily inequities, and sociodemographic information. Stochastic actor‐oriented models were used to model how CC at wave 1 predicted how youth selected peer affiliations and friendships. Sociopolitical efficacy was positively associated with popularity in the affiliation network and activity in the friendship network. Critical action was negatively associated with both popularity and activity in the affiliation network and activity in the friendship network. These results provide new insights into how CC informs the ways young people cultivate their social networks in developmentally salient settings. This work highlights the need to better understand the relational implications of CC.

There is limited knowledge about patterns of adolescents’ experiences of general teacher support and support for critical consciousness and cultural competence development in school settings, which are key experiences proposed to promote academic functioning. Furthermore, less is known about potential developmental and ethnic-racial differences in these patterns. Using a person-centered approach, this study examined culturally relevant school support profiles in a sample of sixth and ninth grade students (N = 717; 49.9% girls) from the U.S. Southwest. Participants were aged 10 to 18 years (M = 13.73; SD = 1.54) and were ethnoracially diverse (31.8% Hispanic/Latinx, 31.5% Multiethnic, 25.7% White, 7.3% Black or African American, 1.4% Asian American or Pacific Islander, 1.4% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 1% Arab, Middle Eastern, or North African). Four culturally relevant school support profiles were identified: (1) low general, devoid cultural & critical support; (2) moderate general, moderate cultural, & devoid critical support; (3) high general, moderate cultural & critical support; and (4) high general, cultural, & critical support. Youth in the high general, cultural, & critical support profile had higher concurrent emotional and behavioral engagement. No significant differences were found between early (6^th grade) and middle adolescent (9^th grade) youth, pointing to the relevance and associations of the identified profiles across development. One significant difference emerged when comparing White and ethnoracially minoritized youth; among White youth, those in the high general, cultural, & critical support and high general, moderate cultural & critical support profiles had higher academic expectations than those in the low general, devoid cultural & critical support profile. The discussion focuses on characterizing heterogeneous and culturally relevant school support profiles, the associations between these profiles and indicators of academic functioning for ethnoracially diverse youth to advance developmental theory and the importance of promoting culturally relevant school support practices to foster developmental competencies among youth.

Ethnic-racial identity (ERI) development is consequential for youth adjustment and includes exploration, resolution, and affect about the meaning of one’s ethnic-racial group membership. Little is known about how identity-relevant experiences, such as ethnic-racial socialization and discrimination in peer relationships and school contexts, catalyze adolescent ERI development. The present study examines how identity-relevant experiences in friend and school contexts (i.e., proportion of same-ethnoracial friends, cultural socialization among friends, friends’ ERI dimensions, friends’ experiences of ethnoracial discrimination, and school promotion of cultural competence and critical consciousness) are associated with ERI development. A multivariate path model with a sample from four southwestern U.S. schools (N = 717; 50.5% girls; M_age = 13.76; 32% Latinx, 31.5% Multiethnic, 25.7% White, 11% other) was used to test these associations. Findings showed that friend and school predictors of ERI did not differ between early and middle adolescents, but significant differences and similarities emerged in some of these associations between ethnoracially minoritized and White youth. Specifically, friend cultural socialization was positively associated with ERI exploration for ethnoracially minoritized youth only, whereas school critical consciousness socialization was positively linked with ERI exploration only for White youth. Friend cultural socialization and friend network’s levels of ERI resolution were positively associated with ERI resolution across both ethnoracial groups. These friend and school socialization associations were documented above and beyond significant contributions of personal ethnoracial discrimination to ERI exploration and negative affect for both ethnoracially minoritized and White youth. These findings expand our understanding of how friend and school socialization mechanisms are associated with adolescent ERI development, which is vital to advancing developmental theory and fostering developmental competences for youth to navigate their multicultural yet socially stratified and inequitable world.

Despite the growing cultural diversity worldwide, there is scarce research on how socialization processes prepare youth to respond to increasing multicultural demands and the degree to which these socialization opportunities inform youth academic functioning. This study used a person-centered approach to identify profiles or niches based on the degree and consistency of multicultural socialization experiences across school, peer, and family settings and to examine the associations between identified niches and markers of academic functioning (i.e., emotional and behavioral academic engagement, academic aspirations and expectations) in a sample of adolescents (N = 717; M_age = 13.73 years). Participants (49.9% girls) were from the U.S. Southwest and represented multiple ethno-racial backgrounds (31.8% Hispanic/Latinx, 31.5% Multiethnic, 25.7% White, 7.3% Black or African American, 1.4% Asian American or Pacific Islander, 1.4% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 1% Arab, Middle Eastern, or North African). Six distinct multicultural socialization niches were identified. Three niches had similar patterns across school-peer-family but ranged in the degree of socialization. The cross-setting similar higher socialization niche (Niche 6) demonstrated greater socialization than the cross-setting similar moderate (Niche 5) and lower socialization (Niche 4) niches, which had moderate and lower socialization, respectively. Three niches demonstrated cross-setting dissimilarity which ranged in the type of cross-setting contrast and the degree of socialization. The cross-setting dissimilar school contrast socialization niche (Niche 3) had greater dissimilarities between socialization opportunities in the school setting compared to the peer and family settings and demonstrated the lowest levels of socialization of all niches. The other two niches, the cross-setting dissimilar peer contrast (Niche 1) and greater peer contrast socialization (Niche 2) niches had larger dissimilarities between socialization opportunities in the peer setting than the school and family settings. In the former, however, the contrast was lower, and socialization ranged between very low to low. In the latter, the contrast was higher and socialization ranged from very low to moderate. Most adolescents were in the cross-setting similar lower socialization niche or in the cross-setting dissimilar niches. Adolescents in the cross-setting similar higher multicultural socialization demonstrated greater emotional and behavioral academic engagement than adolescents in most of the other niches. Adolescents in the cross-setting dissimilar school contrast niches demonstrated lower emotional and behavioral academic engagement and lower academic expectations than adolescents in some of the other niches. The results emphasize the collective role of school, peer, and family multicultural socialization on emotional and behavioral academic engagement.

Despite a robust volume of evidence documenting adverse effects of racial discrimination experiences on adolescent adjustment outcomes, relatively little is known about the relational consequences of racial discrimination experiences for adolescent friendship networks. To address this gap, this study examines how racial discrimination experiences shape and are shaped by friendship network dynamics in early and middle adolescence. The current study’s goals were to explicate whether relational consequences of racial discrimination experiences for friendship network selection differed between interracial and intraracial friendships among Black and Latinx youth, and how these adolescents were influenced by their friends’ racial discrimination experiences. Longitudinal social network analysis was used among a sample of predominantly Latinx and Black middle school students from the southwestern U.S. (n = 1034; 50.1% boys, Mage = 12.1, 13.8% White, 18.6% Black, 53.1% Latinx, 14.4% Other race and multiracial). The results showed that Black and Latinx youth preferred intraracial friends. Above and beyond that, Black youth were more likely to have intraracial friendships when the focal individual reported lower levels of general racial discrimination experiences and higher levels of adult-perpetrated racial discrimination experiences. Black and Latinx adolescents reported increases in general racial discrimination experiences over time, as a function of their friends reporting higher levels of racial discrimination (e.g., peer influence). These findings advance developmental research by showing that racial discrimination experiences are consequential for friendship network dynamics by increasing the likelihood of intraracial friend selection among Black youth and through peer influence processes.

Drawing on a developmental psychopathology perspective and research documenting gender differences in social tasks and structures of friendships, this study uses longitudinal social network analysis (SNA) methods to (a) examine how fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and gender interact to shape friendship dynamics and (b) characterize their distinct roles in how adolescents make new friends, keep existing friends, and become similar to one another over time. Participants were 1,034 sixth through eighth grade students from an ethnically diverse middle school who were assessed in the Fall and Spring of the same academic year. Results showed that girls were more likely to make new friends and maintain existing friendships when they had lower levels of FNE. Conversely, boys were more likely to make new friends and keep existing friends when they had higher levels of FNE. Additionally, girls with low levels of FNE were more likely to maintain friendships with others who also had low FNE levels, whereas boys with high levels of FNE were more likely to maintain friendships with friends who had low levels of FNE. Results also showed significant peer influence effects on FNE such that over time friends became similar to one another on their FNE levels, with no significant gender differences in these processes. The study underscored that FNE appeared to amplify gender differences in how adolescents tend to make and maintain their friendship networks, yet peer influence on FNE levels remained of the same strength for boys and girls. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).