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Abstract. The current study examined factors that may serve as barriers to the success of ethnic minority graduate students by assessing the academic, social, and emotional experiences of approximately 87 ethnic minority and 313 ethnic majority school psychology graduate students. Results indicated that ethnic minority graduate students reported significantly more negative race-related experiences, which were associated with higher levels of emotional distress, than were ethnic majority graduate students. In addition, ethnic minority graduate students reported lower levels of belongingness than did ethnic majority students' and negative race-related experiences were associated with lower perceptions of belongingness across all participants. Belongingness and autonomy were significantly associated with self-reported academic engagement for both ethnic minority and majority students. Discussion focuses on the significance of racial microaggressions and belongingness to graduate students in school psychology programs.
Developing methods to increase the number of ethnic minority school psychologists is critically important to the future of the profession (e.g., Davis, McIntosh, Phelps, & Kehle, 2004; Fagan, 1988). Survey data from the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) for the 2004-2005 school year indicated that only 7.4% of school psychologists identified themselves as belonging to an ethnic minority group (Curtis et al., 2008). This is important because disparities between the ethnicities of school psychologists and the clients they serve may impair their ability to relate to their clients and provide appropriate services (Thompson & Alexander, 2006; Yeh, Eastman, & Cheung, 1994). For these reasons, it is essential for training programs in school psychology to focus more of their efforts on recruiting and retaining ethnic minority students. However, ethnic minority students in school psychology programs often face a number of challenges such as a lack of culturally similar mentors, insufficient undergraduate preparation, limited financial support, and nonoptimal institutional climate (Zhou et al., 2004).
Of the different forms of race-related experiences that may impact the functioning and engagement of ethnic minority graduate students, racial microaggressions may be among the most important. Racial microaggressions are "brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to people of color because they belong to a racial minority group...often unconsciously delivered in the form of subtle snubs, or dismissive looks, gestures, and tones" (Sue et al., 2007, p. 273). Microaggressions were initially described by Pierce (1969) to characterize cross-racial...