Expanding Our Views of Marginalized Students' Identities

Significant advances in psychological science have shed insight on how to best support the achievement and well-being of students from a diverse range of backgrounds. This talk covers research on specific factors shaping the experiences and outcomes of students from marginalized communities. Recent studies provide evidence regarding the effects of strengths-based messages about students' marginalized identities. A series of experiments demonstrate the importance of strengths-based messages from various levels of social and contextual forces surrounding students.

Mesmin Destin is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. He is also a fellow of Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research and the inaugural faculty director of Student Access & Enrichment. He completed his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Michigan in 2010. Destin uses experiments and other methods to investigate factors shaping the experiences and outcomes of students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. He received the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution in 2019 and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2021.

The Early Childhood Initiative, sponsored by the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy, seeks to bring together scholars to address early childhood challenges and produce world-class scholarship that will help maximize the potential of all children during their early years.

Please join us for a reception immediately following the talk.

A Zoom option is available.