Development in the Context of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender

Race, ethnicity, and culture shape developmental processes and outcomes throughout the life course. At Fordham, the faculty empirically explores these influences.

Tiffany Yip conducts research funded by NSF and NICHD that examines how situational and daily-level experiences in diverse contexts culminate over time in the form of ethnic and racial identities among African American, Asian, Latino, and white adolescents and young adults.

Celia Fisher conducts federally-funded research on the moral values and ethical perspectives that individuals from different cultural, sociopolitical, and economic contexts bring to bear on life challenges, and to the health practices and prevention science. Her participatory research projects, which are funded by NIDA NSF, NICHD, NINDS, and the NIH, include marginalized street drug users, urban youth, and ethnically and economically diverse community field workers. With her students, she has developed the widely used Adolescent Discrimination Distress Index.

Nancy Busch conducts research in the area of socialization in Latino families and ethnic differences in parenting, and has developed culturally sensitive parental report and observational measures for the assessment of these constructs with funding from NICHD.

Ann Higgins-D’Alessandro conducts U.S. DOE-funded research that examines the effects of school reform interventions and differential teacher expectations for children with special needs and those in poverty. She is currently writing a book on the development of the self and morality--embedded in cultural, racial, ethnic, work, and economic contexts-- across the second-half of the life span.