Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor, Ph.D.
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Professor of Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education

"Intervening in Adolescents' Ethnic-Racial Identity Development, Promoting Positive Youth Development, and Contributing to a More Global Developmental Science"

Abstract: In societies where the social constructs of race and ethnicity are used to inform and justify a hierarchical structure of power and access to resources, ethnic-racial identity formation becomes an important developmental competency to understand and foster in young people. Furthermore, the developmental period of adolescence provides a unique context within which to understand how age-graded and socio-culturally informed contingencies interact to shape young people’s development. This presentation will explore how school-based interventions such as the Identity Project can promote adolescents’ ethnic-racial identity development and, in turn, their psychosocial adjustment. Findings will be shared from a series of investigations that (a) tested the efficacy of the Identity Project curriculum, (b) examined changes in adolescents’ ethnic-racial identity when their teachers implemented the Identity Project, (c) tested the feasibility of training educators to deliver the curriculum with fidelity, and (d) explored changes in high school teachers’ culturally sustaining pedagogical practices after training for and implementing the Identity Project. Finally, emerging research on the cross-cultural adaptation of the Identity Project will be presented, with attention to how this work may contribute to building a more global developmental science.

Light reception to follow.