Spencer, Margaret Beale

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  • Publication
    Opportunities and Challenges to the Development of Healthy Children and Youth Living in Diverse Communities
    (2013-11-01) Spencer, Margaret Beale; Swanson, Dena Phillips
    The field of developmental psychopathology has seen growth in research focusing on interdisciplinarity and normative developmental processes, including context-linked coping and adaptations. However, there continues to be an uncomfortable and unarticulated perspective to view others as having culture and “the self” as representing the standard. A call for explicit cultural considerations in research is needed to augment the impact of these new and other significant conceptual contributions noted. Sociopolitical influences on social contexts relevant to the different trajectories associated with youths' opportunities and challenges are presented. We focus on macrolevel factors that frame contexts in which individual development occurs. A federal and educational policy is used to illustrate how unexamined cultural traditions and patterns embedded in research and policy impact development. These examples provide insight in presenting issues of vulnerability, particularly for youth, and afford opportunities to present advances and challenges paralleled in the developmental psychopathology field.
  • Publication
    Psychosocial Development in Racially and Ethnically Diverse Youth: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges in the 21st Century
    (2003-08-01) Swanson, Dena Phillips; Spencer, Margaret Beale; Harpalani, Vinay; Dupree, Davido; Noll, Elizabeth; Ginzburg, Sofia; Seaton, Gregory
    As the US population becomes more diverse in the 21st century, researchers face many conceptual and methodological challenges in working with diverse populations. We discuss these issues for racially and ethnically diverse youth, using Spencer’s phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST) as a guiding framework. We present a brief historical background and discuss recurring conceptual flaws in research on diverse youth, presenting PVEST as a corrective to these flaws. We highlight the interaction of race, culture, socioeconomic status, and various contexts of development with identity formation and other salient developmental processes. Challenges in research design and interpretation of data are also covered with regard to both assessment of contexts and developmental processes. We draw upon examples from neighborhood assessments, ethnic identity development, and attachment research to illustrate conceptual and methodological challenges, and we discuss strategies to address these challenges. The policy implications of our analysis are also considered.
  • Publication
    The Development of Coping Skills for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Students: Transitioning From Minority to Majority Environments
    (2013-01-01) McGee, Ebony O; Spencer, Margaret Beale
    Urban Ills: Twenty First Century Complexities of Urban Living in Global Contexts is a collection of original research focused on critical challenges and dilemmas to living in cities. Volume 1 examines both the economic impact of urban life and the social realities of urban living. The editors define the ecology of urban living as the relationship and adjustment of humans to a highly dense, diverse, and complex environment. This approach examines the nexus between the distribution of human groups with reference to material resources and the consequential social, political, economic, and cultural patterns which evolve as a result of the sufficiency or insufficiency of those material resources. They emphasize the most vulnerable populations suffering during and after the recession in the United States and around the world. The chapters seek to explore emerging issues and trends affecting the lives of the poor, minorities, immigrants, women, and children.
  • Publication
    American Identity: Impact of Youths' Differential Experiences in Society on Their Attachment to American Ideals
    (2011-04-21) Spencer, Margaret Beale
    This article examines the problem of national and civic detachment among American youth. Using a developmental theoretical framework that integrates the ecological aspects of development with the phenomenological experiences of the developing individual, I argue that young Americans have difficulty developing an attachment to their identity as Americans due to contradictory experiences had between daily events and communicated perspectives and beliefs about America. The espoused story of America contains historical distortions, which we set as socializing adults and the collective context for youth development. Youth changes require that adults first confront the noted distortions in our own understanding of America before imposing American identity expectations on our youth. In order to do this, I propose that American society needs forums for civil discourse that can occur among groups with shared social experiences, to address these distortions in a safe space before engaging with those who have a different perspective on and experience with American society.
  • Publication
    A Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST): A self-organization perspective in context
    (1997-12-01) Spencer, Margaret Beale; Dupree, Davido; Hartmann, Tracey
    A framework that emphasizes and integrates individuals’ intersubjective experiences with Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (PVEST) is introduced and compared with self-organizational perspectives. Similarities, differences and advantages of each framework are described. In a demonstration of PVEST’s utility, a subset of data from the 3rd year of a longitudinal study (14-to 16-year-old middle adolescent African–Americans) is used for examining an achievement variable: negative learning attitude. Explored separately by gender, a regression model that contained risk, stress, and a reactive coping variable for the prediction of negative learning attitudes was investigated. For boys, stress was an independent stressor across steps independent of the other variables entered; social support was particularly important for males. For girls, not only was stress not important but it was also only the social support variable, perceived unpopularity with peers, that was a significant predictor of girls’ negative learning attitude. Particularly for boys, the findings suggest critically important roles for teachers and peers in the negative learning attitude of midadolescent economically disadvantaged African–American students.
  • Publication
    Racial identity development during childhood
    (2009-01-01) Swanson, Dena Phillips; Cunningham, Michael; Youngblood, Joseph; Spencer, Margaret Beale