Culture and Social-Emotional Development

This study explores how Korean newcomer adolescents and their parents make sense of social-emotional expectations at home and in U.S. schools. Through interviews with youth–parent dyads, we examine where these expectations align or differ and how families navigate those differences during the transition to a new educational and cultural environment. The study highlights the knowledge and strengths families bring while considering how schools can better support newcomer students.

Much of our earlier research examined psychological strengths and distress as distinct but related dimensions of student mental health. Studies using complete mental health frameworks investigated the value of assessing psychological strengths alongside indicators of risk and distress (Kim et al., 2014; Moore et al., 2015) and examined how strengths and mental health profiles relate to life satisfaction, quality of life, school connectedness, and subjective well-being (Kim et al., 2017; Kim, Dowdy, et al., 2019; Kim, Furlong, & Dowdy, 2019; Kim & Choe, 2022). Related work with Korean youth distinguished school belonging from loneliness and considered their unique associations with social-emotional health (Kim & Choe, 2024). Together, this scholarship provides a strengths-based foundation for our continuing study of students’ experiences in educational settings.

We are also developing work on school readiness and racial-ethnic socialization across home and school, culturally responsive social-emotional learning in STEM instruction, and tools that support adolescents’ social-emotional reasoning. These efforts are currently in the proposal, partnership-building, or pilot-design stages.