| Citation: | Garcia-Reid, P., Reid, R. J., & Peterson, N. A. (2005). School engagement among Latino youth in an urban middle school context: Valuing the role of social support. Education and Urban Society, 37(3), 257-275. |
Annotation:
The purpose of this study is to test a model for predicting school engagement that involves both school environmental variables, as well as social support variables. Researchers defined environmental variables as neighborhood youth behavior, neighborhood safety and school safety. Social support variables included parent support, friend support, teacher support, and neighborhood support. Analyses indicated that school engagement could be predicted directly from teacher support, friend support, and parent support. Neighborhood safety and the behavior of the youth living in the neighborhood were found to predict school engagement indirectly. Self-reported data of individual perceptions of factors related to school engagement were collected from 226 Latino students who were enrolled in a large urban middle school in the northeastern United States. Latino students comprised 78% of the student population at the time of this study and the school was located in a district classified among the 30 poorest in the state. This study suggests that positive social support can lead to more school engagement for Latino youths and may buffer the negative effects of violence in schools and in neighborhoods. Future studies need to employ a more rigorous design, including randomized controlled trials, in order to establish a causal connection between the variables examined. In addition, there is an inherent limitation introduced with self-report survey data in which youth may overreport or underreport certain behaviors.
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