Fertile Ground for Sociocultural Responsivity: Schools and Neighborhoods as Promotive and Inhibiting Environments

Schools and neighborhoods shape youth. Explicitly and implicitly, schools and neighborhoods communicate messages about race, ethnicity, culture, and diversity. Sociocultural compositions of neighborhoods and schools impact diverse youths’ experiences. Peers in each of these environments may shape relationships and youth’s behaviors. A diverse school may provide opportunities for intergroup contact, which can promote developmental competencies or undermine optimal development through stress exposures. This chapter will interrogate how power and privilege are enacted in schools and neighborhoods and across peer groups; discuss approaches to measure their racial, ethnic, and cultural compositions; consider other “out-of-home” contexts where time is spent; and provide recommendations for harnessing these settings’ capacities to respond to the needs of minoritized and marginalized youth.