Flourishing, Achievement Motivation, & Identity Development among Minoritized Adolescents & Emerging Adults
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I am deeply passionate about understanding the cultural assets families possess when supporting adolescents of color in their educational trajectories. Specifically, I examine how minority parents engage in many different forms of culturally grounded educational support and their relations to adolescents' academic motivation & achievement, racial/ethnic identity, and psychological well-being.
I'm guided by developmental and cultural models that frame minority families as heterogeneous, expert facilitators of children's development. In doing so, I go beyond traditional models of parental involvement and family socialization and examine processes that are culturally specific and ecologically relevant to families of different minority groups.
Core Research Questions
1. How do minoritized families leverage their cultural assets when supporting adolescents in their academic and identity development?
2. What are the optimal conditions under which families can best promote minoritized adolescent development?
3. What does it mean for minoritized adolescents to "flourish" in today's world? How do families support adolescent flourishing?
Flourishing in the Emerging Adulthood Transitions (FEATS)
This new research project includes my first studies at the University of Rochester!
Bridging across situated-expectancy value theory and the literature on racial/ethnic identity and gender identity processes, this research seeks to understand how emerging adults (18-29 years old) integrate and make meaning of their racial/ethnic and gender identities as they relate to their science motivational beliefs. We seek to test the extent to which this "identity-oriented motivational belief system" is distinct and uniquely contributes to students' career development and psychological flourishing above and beyond traditional measures of motivational beliefs and racial/ethnic and gender identity. We also examine the extent to which these integrated beliefs are conjointly supported by multiple socializers in students' lives, including the family system, peers, teachers, and social media.
FAmily Math Involvement for Latinx Youth Study
(FAMILYS)
This project was awarded the National Science Foundation's SBE Postdoctoral Fellowship to Dr. Tulagan.
Leveraging Latinx parents' cultural funds of knowledge and challenging traditional models of parental involvement, this project aims to a) uncover a fuller set of mainstream and culturally grounded socialization strategies that Latinx parents use to help Latinx middle schoolers in math and b) examine the relations between parents' math support and adolescents' math motivational beliefs. We also examine how parents address adolescents' difficulties in math and parents' barriers to math support.
Academic and Talent Socialization of Black Adolescents
This project was awarded the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program and was the focus of Dr. Tulagan's doctoral dissertation.
Using the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study data set, this project examines the ways in which Black mothers promoted the academic and talent development of their adolescent children, as well as prevented and minimized parents' risk concerns.
We also examine patterns of socialization strategies Black mothers use to support adolescents' talent development in domains like academics, sports, arts, and music. We also explore whether these processes differ across adolescent gender, given gender discrepancies in academic and recreational talent development among adolescents.
Updates & Media
New research page for Spencer-funded project: Academic Toll of Online Racial Trauma Exposure on College Students
Co-PI on 2024 Spencer Small Research Grant: Examining the academic toll of online racial trauma exposure on college students at the University of Rochester
CreatED Resource Feature: Taking with your Latino/a Teens about Science at the University of Delaware
SRCD Asian Caucus Member Spotlight: November/December 2022 Spotlight – Nestor Tulagan, PhD
Supporting Parent Support in Math at Math CEO - UC Irvine
PI on NSF SBE Postdoctoral Research Grant/Fellowship: Alumnus receives NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship to research Latinx family influences on math motivation at UC Irvine
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