Affirmation exercises shown to close achievement gap for Latino students
26/12/2013 06:44pm | 7137 viewsGeoffrey Cohen's latest research on "stereotype threat" finds that small interventions in a classroom can have big impacts.
The achievement gap in academic performance between academically at-risk minorities and European American students has concerned educators, social scientists, policymakers, parents and students themselves for decades now. It’s a troubling fact that Latino Americans and African Americans, for example, earn lower grades on average than their European American peers, and are much more likely to drop out of high school.
About the Author
Marguerite Rigoglioso, Ph.D., is the founding director of Seven Sisters Mystery School and a scholar/practitioner of the ancient Mediterranean mystery traditions. She is the author of The Cult of Divine Birth in Ancient Greece and Virgin Mother Goddesses of Antiquity, pioneering volumes emerging from her doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies that explore women's shamanic abilities in a (r)evolutionary new light.
She teaches unique and leading-edge courses on the sacred feminine and women's spiritual leadership at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Sofia University (formerly Institute of Transpersonal Psychology), and Dominican University of California.
Her research on female deities and women’s religious leadership in the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond has appeared in anthologies and journals, including Feminist Theology, The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Societies of Peace, She Is Everywhere, Trivia, and the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, where her paper on the cult of Demeter and Persephone in Sicily received an honorable mention for the New Scholar Award. She is also the editor of Where to Publish Articles on
Women’s Studies, Feminist Religious Studies, and Feminist/Womanist Topics 2008.
A speaker at conferences and numerous public venues around the world, in 2009 she delivered a James C. Loeb Classical lecture at Harvard University on her research. She is
also a featured interviewee in the films The Vanishing of the Bees and The Search for Local Honey.
Marguerite combines lifelong study of the religious history of the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond with her own spiritual growth work and intuitional skills, which have been cultivated through years of ceremonial practice as well as intensive study at the Foundation for Spiritual Development in San Rafael, CA. She has been a professional freelance writer for the past 25 years, as well, working for clients such as Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Boston University, and numerous nonprofits, businesses, and authors.