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July 1998 - July 2000
January 2014 - present
August 2003 - December 2013
Publications
Publications (113)
Understanding the experiences of unaccompanied youths in refugee foster care is important to tailor such systems to support the complex needs and desires of these youth. This instrumental case study sought to understand how a cohort of unaccompanied refugee youth experience refugee foster care as they navigate the “in‐betweenness” of adolescence. E...
Discover a groundbreaking perspective on personal and collective flourishing in this transformative book. Unveiling a dynamic synthesis of wellness, fairness, and worthiness, it presents a blueprint for thriving on personal, relational, occupational, systemic, community, and planetary scales. Move beyond the confines of individual well-being; embra...
The report emphasizes the importance of culturally competent mental health services and explores the impact of anti-immigration policies on mental wellbeing. In today’s climate in which immigration is often met with hostility, it is crucial that we, as researchers and mental health professionals, understand the unique challenges faced by immigrants...
Newcomer Latinx immigrant youths in the United States are currently in a syndemic of increased risk of behavioral health concerns, disparities in access to related services, and are disproportionately impacted by the COVID‐19 pandemic. This study used qualitative inquiry to examine the impact that the transition to telehealth had on a school‐based...
Migration of unaccompanied immigrant and refugee youth has increased around the world in the last decade, peaking in 2014 in the United States and in 2015 in Europe. Youth are pushed to migrate without parents or guardians to escape war, persecution, gang violence, and extreme poverty in their country of origin. Youth are vulnerable to violence and...
Teachers have a pivotal role in the acculturation and adjustment of immigrant children. Practices are an important but an insufficiently explored part of teachers’ work in a multicultural classroom. The purpose of the present research was to identify educational practices that elementary school teachers in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, use in...
In today’s multicultural societies, the question of how school adjustment (adapting to the role of being a student) can be promoted for students from ethnic minority backgrounds is of high importance. The ecological approach to acculturation research proposes minority students’ school adjustment is shaped by the surrounding context, and it suggests...
The aim of this research was to identify the educational practices that elementary school teachers use in working with immigrant children for linguistic and academic support purposes. Empirical data were collected through interviews with twenty elementary school teachers. The interviews were analyzed using inductive and deductive content analysis m...
We report on a grounded theory study of late-arriving immigrant youth (LIY) who arrived in the United States at 16–18 years of age and were referred to daytime General Education Diploma (D-GED) programs. These programs provide an alternate path to a high school diploma for youth with insufficient knowledge of English to complete graduation requirem...
Global migration has contributed to greater language diversity in many parts of the world. Many migrants experience language barriers in their adopted countries. Language barriers hinder access to healthcare, including mental health. There exists little research on the extent of communication difficulties during language discordant mental health se...
Research with late-arriving immigrant youth (LIY) requires balancing ethical considerations to ensure protection from harm with the need to study their experiences. LIY are recent newcomers who arrive to the United States as teens, accompanied by a parent or unaccompanied. Late-arriving and unaccompanied immigrant youth are going through typical de...
In this article, we comment on the experience of the Kovler Center Child Trauma Program (KCCTP) following the March 21, 2020, shelter at home order in Chicago due to COVID-19. The KCCTP is a program of Heartland Alliance International that was founded in 2018 to provide community-based mental health and social services to immigrant and refugee yout...
Traumatic or adverse experiences are pervasive among school-aged children and youth. These experiences undermine students’ ability to learn, form relationships, and manage their feelings and behavior. Meanwhile, educators and school-based professionals often remain unaware of the complex needs of their students or how to meet them within the hours...
This research note addresses the current and potential future role of psychologists in the study of international migration. We review ways in which psychologists have contributed to the study of migration, as well as ways in which psychological scholarship could be integrated with work from other social science fields. Broadly, we discuss four maj...
The study examined community influences on acculturation, social integration, and cultural adaptation among elderly Russian-speaking immigrants residing in two communities with different ethnic density. Results revealed direct, indirect, and moderation effects of community. The residents of the dense ethnic community had lower American social suppo...
Educational institutions are an important setting where psychological, pedagogical, sociocultural, and language adaptation of immigrant children occurs. A number of teaching strategies, practices, approaches, and methods have been described in the literature. In the Russian context, such strategies have been called ‘technologies’. The purpose of th...
The present study is embedded in the contextual approach of acculturation research. It examines teachers’ attitudes and behaviors, teachers’ expectations as well as their teaching practices as risk and resource factors in minority students’ school adjustment. The study applies the method of content analysis and uses a deductively developed and indu...
The paper presents results of an exploratory study of teachers’ social attitudes toward ethnic and religious diversity, and variables influencing such attitudes. The study was conducted in Russia and is focused on school teachers in culturally diverse modern societies. Using the social distance scale we sampled 355 school teachers from two Russian...
Premigration trauma and postmigration stressors put refugees at high risk for mental health concerns, including substance use. However, there is limited systematic research on substance use in refugee communities exists. We conducted exploratory qualitative research to examine Bhutanese and Iraqi refugee perspectives related to the use of recreatio...
This article explored the range in teacher expectations held for Somali Bantu refugees using content analysis of one-on-one interviews with teachers who taught Somali Bantu students at an elementary school in Chicago. Analyses revealed the emergence of five categories of expectations: (a) general acculturative expectations around language and knowl...
The purpose of this paper is to write about insights and special considerations for researchers who are, to some degree, “insiders” to the communities they study by expanding on the concept of representational ethics as applied to research in community psychology with diverse and marginalized groups. Representational ethics refers to the ways that...
This paper reports on the findings of a two-year ethnographic study of newly arrived Somali Bantu refugee students in a U.S. elementary school (K-6) in Chicago. These data paint a detailed picture of students' behavioral and academic adjustment to school, and the drivers behind "behavioral incidents" (instances when children's behavior presented a...
In this introduction to the IJIR special issue on refugee youth in academic settings, the editors sought manuscripts that examined both challenges and effective practices in countries of temporary and permanent refugee resettlement. We welcomed diverse methodological approaches and empirical work at all levels and types of education (formal, non-fo...
Most mental health services for trauma-exposed children and adolescents were not originally developed for refugees. Information is needed to help clinicians design services to address the consequences of trauma in refugee populations. We compared trauma exposure, psychological distress, and mental health service utilization among children and adole...
Trusting, productive relationships between traditionally discordant stakeholders—community members and researchers—are critical for successful Community-Based Participatory Research. Practical guidance on processes allowing for partner trust-building and collaborative leadership development in Community-Based Participatory Research literature lacks...
The study investigated underemployment among a sample of Russian-speaking refugee adults in the U.S. resettled in two communities that differ in ethnic density. Community context, acculturation, and their interaction related to underemployment. Descriptively, residents of the dense ethnic community had higher Russian and lower American acculturatio...
Effective communication is essential in mental healthcare, where language often represents the primary means of treatment. In intercultural counseling sessions, communicating with Limited English Proficient (LEP) clients calls for skillful collaboration with language interpreters. However, best practices in medical interpretation may not be equally...
In this paper I describe a community psychology perspective on acculturation and adjustment of immigrants and refugees and suggest that this field of acculturation research has in turn something to offer heuristically as we consider our identity and training for future generations of community psychologists over the next 50 years. I suggest that ho...
This chapter reviews the construct of biculturalism, focusing on individuals with multiple cultural backgrounds. The chapter focuses on biculturalism as a heterogeneous label, and it covers several variants of biculturalism that have been studied. A number of biculturalism-related constructs are discussed, including endorsement of two or more cultu...
Research and practice in the field of acculturation psychology is continually on the rise. Featuring contributions from over fifty leading experts in the field, this handbook compiles and systemizes the current state of the art by exploring the broad international scope of acculturation. The collection introduces readers to the concepts and issues;...
The present study aims at systematically analyzing the findings reported in qualitative research on acculturation and psychological adjustment in the school context. Content analysis was conducted using the deductively developed and inductively enriched system of categories. The results of the study provide insights into youths’ acculturation and t...
Two years ago, when Andre was 10 years old, he was excited about coming to the United States from Haiti. Because he did not speak English initially, he struggled at school and was very isolated, going straight home after school to watch his younger sister while his mom went to work. During the first year, the family joined a Haitian church and got...
Acculturation to the culture of the host society as well as to one's heritage culture have been shown to impact immigrants' adjustment during the years following resettlement. While acculturation has been identified as an important factor in adjustment of Vietnamese immigrants (Birman and Tran in Am J Orthopsychiatr 78(1):109-120. doi: 10.1037/0002...
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Ib9w63wagN2737KwMJ8v/full
The study articulates a contextual approach to research on acculturation of immigrants, suggesting that the relationship between acculturation and adjustment is dependent on the cultural demands of the life domains considered. Specifically, the study investigated the mediating effects of adjustment in occupational and social life domains on the rel...
Community Health Assessment (CHA), an approach to identifying community health needs and assets towards health improvement is of increasing interest as the influence of place on individuals’ health is becoming a more central public health concern. In predominately immigrant neighborhoods current CHA tools and approaches fail to capture the impact o...
Las personas ex-soviéticas que se exiliaron a los EE.UU. tienen una media de edad superior a la de otros grupos de inmigrantes; entre ellas, los adultos que superan los 65 años suponen un gran porcentaje de la población ruso parlante. A pesar de que se conocen los riesgos asociados con la inmigración de personas mayores, los investigadores y agente...
In this chapter we summarize the theories, research, and practices relevant to creating and providing mentoring programs for immigrant and refugee youth. Karcher, Kuperminc, Portwood, Sipe, and Taylor (2006) discuss three aspects of mentoring programs: context (site based vs. field based), goals (instrumental and developmental) and multiple structu...
The United States is increasingly diverse today and this is nowhere more evident than in our public schools. Children arriving as immigrants, as well as those born here to at least one immigrant parent, currently make up nearly one-quarter of all children in the United States. By the year 2025, it is estimated that one-third or more of the students...
There is an increasing need to deliver effective mental health services to refugee children and adolescents across the United States; however, the evidence base needed to guide the design and delivery of services is nascent. We investigated the trauma history profiles, psychopathology, and associated behavioral and functional indicators among war-a...
The United States is increasingly diverse and this is nowhere more evident than in our public schools. Children who arrive as immigrants, as well as those born here to at least one immigrant parent, currently make up nearly one-quarter of all children in the United States. ² By the year 2025, it is estimated that one-third or more of the students i...
Purpose – This chapter discusses the promise of and challenges to providing effective and culturally responsive trauma-focused mental health services to immigrant and refugee youth and their families within school settings.
Design/methodology/approach – This chapter utilizes “practice-based evidence” to outline successes and address the barriers as...
Child culture brokering occurs when immigrant children help their families navigate the new culture and language. The present study develops a model of the child culture broker role that situates it within the family and community economic and acculturative contexts of 328 families from the former Soviet Union. Path analysis was utilized to explore...
This commentary reviews the contributions of the 6 papers to the emerging focus on migration within community psychology. This collection of articles on migration and community represents a growing interest in the field in immigration issues in general, and a community psychology focus on these issues in particular. The papers span a range of issue...
A collaborative study of Cultural Adjustment and Trauma Services (CATS), a comprehensive, school-based mental health program for traumatized immigrant children and adolescents, was conducted to generate practice-based evidence on the service delivery model across two school districts. Program effectiveness was assessed by testing whether client fun...
http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/
Vietnamese immigrants in the United States face acculturation challenges involving the individual, family, and community. Experts suggest that immigrant family members acculturate at different rates resulting in an acculturation gap, which negatively influences family adjustment. In this study we examined the degree and patterns of acculturation di...
The current paper reviews literature on the academic performance of Asian Americans with a critical eye toward understanding the influence of discrimination on this process. Specifically, this study seeks to understand the extent to which researchers have gathered sufficient knowledge to dispel “conventional knowledge” of Asian Americans as model m...
The current paper explores the salience and impact of ethnic and national identities for immigrants that are negotiating more than two cultures. Specifically, we were interested in the ways in which Jewish immigrant adolescents from the former Soviet Union integrate their Russian, Jewish, and American identities, and to what extent identification w...
The purpose of this study was to examine friendship developments of 153 Vietnamese immigrant adolescents who resided in an East Coast metropolitan area of the United States. We examined the influences of school diversity and acculturation on the quantity and quality of cross-and same-race friendships. Surprisingly, students who came from schools th...
Several acculturation theories note the importance of surrounding context, but few studies describe neighborhood influences on immigrant adaptation. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among neighborhood immigrant concentration, acculturation, and alienation for 151 women aged 44-80 from the former Soviet Union who lived in the U...
Background: Cultural alienation, a potential risk factor for depression, may be affected by community influences. Neighborhoods and social networks provide the context for immigrant adjustment to life in a new country. Few studies have examined neighborhood social context in relation to post-migration adjustment or considered gender differences. Th...
Recent attention to closing the research to practice gap reflects a new paradigm in which community partners assume more active roles in intervention research. Funders are shaping this new genre of collaborative research, and yet still require letters of support from investigators documenting access to sites as evidence of feasibility. Defining fea...
1 of every 5 children in the United States is a child of immigrants – either a child who is an immigrant or has at least one immigrant parent. While most children who experience mental health problems have limited access to help, children who have migrated to this country, especially under difficult circumstances, face particular challenges. Provid...
The development of evidence-based mental health interventions for refugees is complicated by the cultural and linguistic diversity of the participants, and the need to balance treatment of past traumatic experiences with ongoing support during the process of acculturation. In an effort to gather “practice-based evidence” from existing mental health...
The purpose of this study was to examine how pre- and postmigration factors affect the psychological distress and adjustment for a community sample of Vietnamese refugees resettled in the United States. The sample included a substantial proportion of ex-political detainees who experienced a particularly large number of traumatic events prior to mig...
This study assesses the impact of parent practices and knowledge of school on school success for a sample of 240 immigrant and nonimmigrant high school students and their parents. Immigrant parents from the former Soviet Union were less knowledgeable about and had less contact with the school, and allowed less autonomy than U.S.-born parents. Some...
The present study investigated the potential mediating effect of adolescents' perceptions of family relationships using a structural equation modeling approach. The sample consisted of 226 immigrant adolescents from the former Soviet Union resettled in a suburban county in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. who were selected at random from the loc...
The article addresses a hypothetical dilemma confronted by an evaluator of a transition from welfare program regarding inclusion of a small immigrant/language minority group in the study. The article advocates for inclusion of diverse groups. Three important aspects of diversity are discussed that have particular relevance to transition from welfar...
Today, 10.6% of children enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade in the U.S. are foreign-born, and 1 in 5 are children of immigrants. Public schools represent the setting where many of the acculturative struggles of immigrant children unfold, having traditionally served as a vehicle of socialization and "assimilation" of immigrants in the U.S....
This study examined the impact of “acculturation gaps” on family adjustment of 115 adolescent refugees from the former Soviet Union and their parents. Acculturation and acculturation gaps were assessed with respect to the American and Russian culture and separately for identity, behavioral, and language competence dimensions of acculturation. Accul...
Studied the effectiveness of a school-based mental health service model, PALS (Positive Attitudes toward Learning in School), focused on increasing initial and ongoing access to services, and promoting improved classroom and home behavior for children referred for Disruptive Behavior Disorder (DBD) from three high poverty urban elementary schools....
This study explored the salience and predictive value of the identity dimension of acculturation among 351 Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union in the United States. Whereas bidirectional acculturation models consider only two identities—ethnic identification with the culture of origin (Russian) and identification as a member of one’s new s...
While a great deal of research has been conducted to understand acculturation and its relationship to adaptation in the new country, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the ways in which the characteristics of the local community impact these processes. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the potential rol...
A differentiated model of acculturation was used to assess the relationship of acculturative styles to school adaptation among a group of 110 refugee adolescents from the former Soviet Union. Acculturation was assessed with respect to both American and Russian cultures and, within each culture, distinguished among language competence, behavior, and...
The ethnic culture of immigrant families is traditionally viewed as a deficit and as an impediment to adjustment to the new society. In contrast, in this chapter the authors present evidence of the psychological and behavioral importance, in this case for Latino youth, of learning the ways both of the U.S. culture and of their own ethnic culture. A...
Two studies were conducted to develop and examine internal consistencies and validate the Abbreviated Multidimensional Acculturation Scale. Study 1 participants were 156 Latino/Latina college students. Findings indicated good internal reliabilities for all 3 subscales. Adequate concurrent validity was established with length of residence in the Uni...
This study explores how acculturation is related to adaptation across different life spheres for 162 Soviet Jewish refugee adolescents in a suburban community in Maryland. Because the different contexts of refugee adolescents' lives vary in acculturative demands, different patterns of acculturation should be related to adaptation in different life...
This study explores how acculturation is related to adaptation across different life spheres for 162 Soviet Jewish refugee adolescents in a suburban community in Maryland. Because the different contexts of refugee adolescents' lives vary in acculturative demands, different patterns of acculturation should be related to adaptation in different life...
In a sample of 146 adolescents, the authors developed and validated a measure of acculturative hassles for Soviet Jewish refugees. They based the measure on an ecological perspective, which focuses on hassles involving person-environment transactions occurring in life domains of school, family, peers, and language. The authors reviewed conceptual a...
This article focuses on the process of acculturation for first-generation Soviet Jewish refugee adolescents and their parents who have resettled in the United States. First, the extent of acculturation to the new and the old culture is assessed independently. Second, acculturation is assessed multidimensionally, including the constructs of language...
The present study assesses the relationship of work status to acculturation and psychological adaptation among 206 refugees from the former Soviet Union who have resettled in the United States. These refugees lived in two different urban areas: the Washington, DC area and the Brighton Beach community in New York. Psychological adaptation was measur...
The present study assesses the relationship of work status to acculturation and psychological adaptation among 206 refugees from the former Soviet Union who have resettled in the United States. These refugees lived in two different urban areas: the Washington, DC area and the Brighton Beach community in New York. Psychological adaptation was measur...
The present study investigated acculturation to the Hispanic and American cultures and self-perceptions of competence among 123 Latino immigrant adolescents. The study tested a contextual model of biculturalism by examining whether different acculturation styles predicted perceived competence in life spheres with different cultural demands. Perceiv...
