Cultural humility refers to the ability of an individual to maintain an open stance about aspects of another’s cultural identities (Hook et al., 2013). It is a relational construct that has been linked to facilitating better interpersonal relationships between members of differing belief systems (Worthington et al., 2017). Current projects focus on evaluating cultural humility among key stakeholders (e.g., teachers, administrators, school psychologists) with the purpose of developing interventions related to school safety and positive teacher-student relationship quality in schools.

School climate is, "based on patterns of people’s experiences of school life and reflects norms, goals, values, interpersonal relationships, teaching and learning practices, and organizational structures," (National School Climate Council, 2007). Positive school climate has been linked to outcomes such as healthy interpersonal relationships, school connectedness, and dropout prevention (CDC, 2009). Current projects related to school climate focus on boosting school belonging and mattering among children, adolescents, and teachers and reducing cultural concealment by children and adolescents. 

While a wealth of research exists about how to utilize cultural competencies and practice with cultural humility with clients, we are working on projects related to the experiences of psychologists, social workers, counselors, and other helping professionals from minoritized identities as they work with clients from different cultural backgrounds.

Black/African American students have historically been more likely to be suspended or expelled compared to students of other racial/ethnic groups (e.g., Gregory et al., 2010). This pattern of disproportionality continues to this day. Current projects examine the attitudes of school staff around issues such as stereotype threat, engagement-achievement paradox, repercussions of exclusionary discipline, and policy-level actions that could be taken to reduce the damaging effects of unfair discipline practices on Black/African American and other minoritized students.

YPAR is a type of research methodology that includes youth community members of a community of interest as part of a research team alongside other adult community members seeking to bring about change. It is common for other disciplines to have a codebook of research articles for researchers to access. In collaboration with other labs in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Memphis,  the current project involves taking 200 articles and creating a codebook for YPAR.  

Dr. Srisarajivakul supports a number of student-led projects that relate to the general theme of multiculturalism, diversity, and positive psychology in schools. Some of the current student-led projects involve the following topics:

• Teacher mattering

• Cyberbullying of students with intersectional identities

• Self-compassion

• Identity development among minoritized students

• Social-emotional learning