School Climate for Diversity

I am interested in how students’ perceptions of how they learn about culture and cross-race interactions at school promote their motivation and achievement. I have developed a framework of school climate for diversity (also known as school racial climate) and two comprehensive measures to assess it at the middle/high school and college level. To obtain the most recent version of the scales by email, please fill out this form.

The subscales in the framework are:

  • Intergroup Interactions
    • Equal status: Amount of fair treatment and equal opportunity at school
    • Quality of interaction: How positive or negative interactions across race are
    • Frequency of interaction: Opportunities to interact and make friends across racial and cultural lines
    • Support for positive interaction: Encouragement from teachers, administrators, and peers about treating others fairly and making friends across race
    • Stereotyping: Perceptions of stereotypes and prejudices held by teachers, administrators, and other students
  • School Ethnic-Racial Socialization
    • Cultural socialization: Opportunities to learn about your own culture
    • Promotion of cultural competence: Opportunities to learn about other cultures
    • Critical consciousness socialization: Teaching about discrimination and inequality in society
    • Mainstream socialization: Opportunities to learn about American culture and values
    • Colorblind socialization: Teaching youth to ignore or devalue the role of race in society

Publications

Byrd, C.M., & Ahn, L.H. (2020). Profiles of ethnic‐racial socialization from family, school, neighborhood, and the Internet: Relations to adolescent outcomes. Journal of Community Psychology,1–22. DOI: 10.1002/jcop.22393. (Full text)

Byrd, C.M., & Hope, E.C. (2020). Black students’ perceptions of school ethnic-racial socialization practices in a predominantly Black school. Journal of Adolescent Research, DOI: 10.1177/0743558419897386. (Full text)

Byrd, C. M. (2019). A measure of school racial socialization and quality of intergroup interactions. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. DOI: 10.1037/cdp0000202 (Full text) [College scale validation]

Byrd, C.M. (2017). The complexity of school racial climate: Reliability and validity of a new measure for secondary students. British Journal of Educational Psychology. DOI:10.1111/bjep.12179 (Full text) [Middle and high school scale validation]

Byrd, C.M. (2016). Does culturally relevant teaching work? An examination from students’ perspectives. Sage Open. DOI: 10.1177/2158244016660744 (Full text)

Byrd, C.M. (2015). The associations of intergroup interactions and school racial socialization with academic motivation. Journal of Educational Research, 108, 10-21. (PDF)

Presentations

School Climate and Culture in the Middle Grades – Remaking Middle Schools Learning Series