Pollock’s Residency Study is Accepted for Publication in the Journal of Black Psychology
Rebekah Pollock, a doctoral student in the educational psychology Ph.D. program in our department, has her residency study accepted for publication in the Journal of Black Psychology. Pollock’s article is entitled, “Growing but not grown: Adolescent Black girls’ reasoning about a hypothetical and challenging social situation.”
We asked her a couple of questions about her work:
How does this publication help with your research goals and/or interests?
For the Project PREVENT research team, this article is one of a collection of articles that aims to add the voices and perspectives of early adolescent Black girls to the overall body of academic knowledge. For me, this article also represents my first attempt to report a qualitative, exploratory study focused on learning about the lived experiences of adolescents. In the future, I hope to extend this to learn more about lived experiences, social learning and developmental processes.
Summarize your topic for us.
This article reports a study in which early adolescent Black girls were presented with a scenario that could be interpreted as an unsafe social situation and asked how they would respond to the situation. The findings report the themes we found across participants’ responses. They indicated that they would do what it took to maintain their sense of safety, be cautious around unknown, older and popular boys, use assertive and pacifying approaches to respond to the situation, and rely on their friends and family for protection. Finally, we interpreted these themes to indicate that these participants were intent on preserving their safety. Also, they simultaneously exhibited an increased ability to handle interpersonal interactions and expected protection and empathy from adults.
Does this published item relate to anything happening in the news? If so, what?
Within the larger debate surrounding culturally responsive pedagogy, there is a smaller and more subtle discussion surrounding the role of history and context in social and emotional learning. This study and others like it play an important part in adding perspectives and experiences back into the conversation that have previously been left out.
Are there others to credit for the work on the article?
Taylor McGee, Johari Harris, Moriah Kearney, Kate McPhee, Faith Zabek, Joel Meyers and Ann Kruger, my faculty advisor.