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Empowering Black and Latinx Boys in Their Postsecondary Journeys: The Role of School Communities

Mar 14, 2024

1 min

Roderick L. Carey

In a new study published in the American Educational Research Journal, Roderick L. Carey, assistant professor in the University of Delaware's College of Education and Human Development, offers a rich, ethnographic case study on how Black and Latinx boys imagine their postsecondary futures.


With attention to the students’ first-person narratives about their school experiences and personal aspirations, Carey shows how their high school—a Mid-Atlantic college preparatory school in the United States—ultimately fails to understand and support their college, career and personal aspirations for life after graduation.




“College is just one facet of a broader interconnected life that adolescents need support in imagining,” said Carey, who teaches and conducts research within CEHD’s Department of Human Development and Family Sciences. “Postsecondary future selves is a concept that folds together three pieces of that broader life—college, career and life condition, or ‘the 3Cs.’ By focusing on one, and ignoring the other two, educators miss the mark.”


Carey is available to talk about this new study as well as the possible solutions to this issue. Her has been recently featured in Technical.ly and WHYY, an NPR affiliate. 


He can be contacted via his profile. 

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Roderick L. Carey

Roderick L. Carey

Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Sciences

Prof. Carey's research serves to make sense of the school experiences of black and Latino adolescent boys and young men in urban contexts.

Teacher EducationPost-Secondary EducationDevelopmental PsychologyAfrican American Education‎Latino Education
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