The age old debate. . .

I traveled to the Green Mountain State last weekend for the NEOA conference. I had never been to Vermont, but it was another beautiful rural area. The overall experience of being surrounded by the most passionate, humble, hard working professionals is really tremendous. It is so nice to get their input and feedback. I gave them a lot of practical ideas around fostering resilience in their students and build social capital. Because my classroom at Upward Bound is very theory based, I was able to share many of the activities I use.

A feeling of frustration was prevalent at the confernece though. The DOE has decided to do an empirical study of Upward Bound and its impact on child outcomes. The idea is good, but the implementation has put many UB staff in a comprimising and unethical situation. Any child who gets accepted is put into a lottery system and is either put into the treatment group (UB) or the control (no UB). A stipulation of being in the controlm group (which they are randomly assigned to) is that the participant must agree to never received services from UB in the future. The problem is, the directors are the people who have to tell the kids that they were accepted, but didn't get into the treatment group, and then tell them that they can never reapply or receive any services. This seems unethical.

My presentation seemed to fit into this energy nicely. In my explanation of phenomenology I always emphasize some basic ideas. First, phenomenonlogy is grounded in existential philosophy and the belief is that there is no one truth, in fact there are many. And there are also multiple realities, unique unto each individual. This refute the positivist view point that there is just one truth and one reality for everyone. I do not try to present myself as being biased toward qualitative research (even though I clearly am), but merely emphasize that your method really depends on the questions you are asking. BUT I think they questions we are asking about rural poverty and Upward Bound are best answered from a qualitative perspective.

An English Lesson

In preparation for the conference I am going to, I have taken the plunge into the resilience literature. I was really hesitatnt to do this, because it is such a big area, but getting my feet wet hasn't turned out to be all that bad.

So I have been wondering why some people say "resilience" and others say "resiliency" and I wasn't even sure if one of them was grammatically incorrect. BUT, they really mean two different things. The former, resilience, refers to the dynamic process of adaptaion in the context of adversity. Resiliency, refers to a personal trait or characteristc one has. Ann Masten (1994) encouraged researchers to adhere to these definitions when using the words, to eliminate confusion in research. However, this is a debate in the field. . .is it a trait or a process? One implication with referring to resiliency as a personal characterisitcs is that it might be assumed that some people simply do not "have what it takes" to overcome adversity.

In light of this, I say I believe it is a process and that it is possible to foster resilience in those who are facing or may face adversity in the future. BUT. . .where does my hope construct fit into this? I think Snyder's theory suggests that hope is more of a personal characterisitc, based on the fact that it is cognitive and has the elements of 1) ability to set goals, 2) pathway thinking, and 3) agency thinking.

So I am back at the beginning. . .resilience or resiliency?

Dreamland

Phenomenology emphasizes that the researcher should look to other mediums to learn more about the phenomenon of interest. This means books, poetry, music, movies, paintings, etc. All of these things hellp to illuminate and inform your own personal research.

There are a few movies that I think portray rural poverty and adolescent development very well. I am adding Dreamland to my list. This movie is set in a trailer park in the desert. The girl is spending the summer after her senior year working at a convienence store, taking care of her agrophobic/alcoholic father, she is hanging out with her best friend who has MS and no health coverage, and she is trying to decide if she can get out of there. The movie is right on, I think. And it really captures that idea of not being able to leave. She says "They need me. What am I supposed to do just abandon them?"

Friday Night Lights (the movie) is another one that really captures that idea of the small town and its close knit ties. The heartbreaking part of this movie is that the parents keep telling their children that high school is as good as life gets, and after that there is nothing worth living for.

The third movie I think is worth watching is Country Boys. It is a PBS documentary that follows two high school boys through the years at an alternative school in Apalachia. It is hours and hours long, but the two boys are so real and you see all aspects of their lives and how difficult it is to live in rural poverty.

Upcoming conferences

March 12, 2007
I am currently preparing for two conferences to present this research. I am going to NEOA next week to present the hope stuff I have been working on and I am hoping to get some feedback from the practicioners there who work with these kids everyday. I think their persepectives are invaluable in this process and I am able to really bounce ideas off of them and make changes. The few days I will be spending with them are also great opportunities to ask questions and play around with some ideas.

The second conference is SRCD and that is a more academic conference. I am only doing a poster presentation and it is over my initial findings from last spring. I don't expect that experience to be any more than a resume builder because there are few practicioners there and the sessions are mostly attended by other grad students.

Hope

November 28, 2006
Hope has many dimensions. Some would say it is what one has when all else is lost. What one has when the odds are low. However, others (Snyder) would say that hope is a more deliberate, cognitive process. A process that requires structures and strategies and that is present before all else is lost. Having hope serves as “preventative medicine” for this disadvantaged population, helping them to foresee barriers and challenges that could stand in their way and prevent them from achieving their goals.

Snyder’s Hope Theory details three necessary components to hope. These cognitive elements of this spiritual construct help to delineate how it actually influences one’s outcomes. First, one must have goals. These are plans for the future. Goals can be immediate (short term) or they can be long term. They are one’s wishes for what one will achieve and they can encompass a variety of areas of one’s life. Second, one must employ pathway thinking. Pathway thinking is the ability to see a route to achieving a goal. This is the plan for accomplishing what one sets out to do. Another critical piece of pathway thinking for hopeful people is that they are able to generate multiple pathways to reaching a desired goal and that they are not limited by just one. Finally, there must be agency to achieve one’s goals. This requires the motivation to set out on a delineated pathway and to persevere until a goal is met. Agency is critical to achieving goals, for without it the actual achievement will not occur.

Unfortunately, hope theory is not directly congruent with the findings of this study. What these data suggest is that it may be a combination of both perspectives. Hope, for these rural poor youth, seems to be both cognitive and emotional. Perhaps what is happening is that one must have the cognitive structures that hope theory suggests initially. It is with these cognitive structures, that they are able to see opportunity and take advantage of it. But these alone would not be called “hope” in our everyday world; we might just call it motivation or drive. When faced with challenges, this is when hope becomes that emotional or spiritual construct. One does truly have hope when all else is lost, but without those initial cognitive structures, it may not be what makes him successful. It is the emotional dynamic that makes them engage in more pathway thinking and explore alternative pathways when one does not work out. It is this same emotional dynamic that motivates and gives agency to them to pursue those pathways. Clearly, this sample exemplifies this because they have demonstrated their pathway and agency thinking by taking action to join a program like Upward Bound. This affirms the notion that given an opportunity, they will take advantage of it, driven by the hope that it will help them to reach their goals.

What is it?

November 15, 2006
I am trying to figure out what it is. First, these adolescents, like their other poor counterparts, experience a tremendous amount of stressful life events. There are constant barriers and challenges they are faced with and must navigate an unpredictable world. Second, despite all of the possible negative events in their lives, they have something that keeps them going, something that makes them get up in the morning and go through another day. They are not antisocial, underachieving, or in possession of low aspirations as the current research would suggest. The data analysis process became the discovery of this “thing” and the realization that the “thing” is hope.
I am trying to write a paper that will capture the viseral feeling that my slide show conveys. I want to get that feeling written down. I think it is hope. It has been right there all along. . .the last quote of my slide show it "Hopefully my dreams will keep me going."

NEOA conference

April 6, 2006

Presenting at NEOA was really great. My research was well received and it was good to bring it to people who work with this population on a daily basis. I was hesitant to get on my soap box and say that I think social and emotional development should be an aspect of Upward Bound programs, but I did mention it briefly. At the end a person from SSS at UNH said that she wanted to reaffirm what I said about the importance of social and emotional development and say that it is definitely needed. As someone who works with them when they get to college, she can see that they need it. She said in reference to my findings about their attitudes toward people who have money and not wanting to be defined by their social status that these kids don’t want to be “outed” when they get to college and they are hesitant to create a community of people like them. They can’t see beyond the money issue. She also thought that my finding about peer group membership might be related to the fact that they are planning to get out. They don’t identify with a less desirable group because they want to get out of it and they are caught in the middle.

Interpretive Focus Groups

April 4, 2006

I’ve been thinking about the interpretive focus groups I want to conduct with my data. I am thinking about creative ways to look at the data with a group. The obvious ways are to read a transcript aloud. I am also thinking about showing a photograph and saying “tell me the story that goes with this photo” or something like that. Also asking them to help me figure out the teen pregnancy finding and the peer group finding. I also had the idea to day from a speaker I heard to maybe do a card sort kind of thing where I write words from the interviews and have them sort them into categories. Just another way to talk about classism and other issues. I may try this this summer in class and see how it works before I bring it to the focus groups.

March 30, 2006

I am trying to figure out two of the findings. First, the peer group membership finding. Most of the adolescents say that they are not members of a specific peer group. They describe themselves as floaters. They have friends, just not a specific group. One possible explanation is that kids form low income families tend to have more distance in their familial relationships. I think this is evident in the family stress model. Because of these distant relationships, it is necessary to have more friends in order to create a family. This is seen in gang membership, mostly comprised of low income adolescents who are looking for a family.

The other finding I am trying to figure out is the delaying marriage and family until after a career. From Lisa Dodson’s book it is pretty clear that many of these girls do not see a life beyond high school and therefore do not see having a child as being a potential barrier to their success. Teen pregnancy is also related to low achievement in school and many of the kids are high achievers. What also startled me was that two girls said that an unplanned pregnancy could be a barrier that could prevent them from achieving their goals. They said it as though it was as out of their control as being hit by a car. I think this ties in with the external locus of control that is more common in low income populations. They do not think they have any control over getting pregnant, that it is something that will happen to them.

March 25, 2006

I have been working on my slide show. I am really pleased at how it has all come together. The juxtaposition of the photos of the context they live in with their thoughts about their lives is really striking. I think the most important thing this slide show conveys is the hope and resilience they exhibit. The show makes me cry. I hope it has the same impact on the audience and it conveys the depth of my emotion toward the topic.

Phenomenology

February 27, 2006

I met with D.W. today to talk about Phenomenology and how I can infuse the philosophy into my research. He said that as long as I say that I didn’t set out to use a phenomenological lens, but learned more about it later and it fits with what I did, I can use that as a way to frame my work and bring it to the audience. I think I am going to use the Four lived worlds: temporal, corporeal, spatial, and relational to organize my data. I think there are themes in each of these areas coming out.

Temporal- lived time- the kids talk about their future goals and plans, they also talk about their parents’ childhoods to get at generational poverty and how their lives may or may not be different than their parents’ lives when they are adults.

Spatial- lived space- we talk about isolation, about living in a rural area and how it impacts their ability to see their friends, their yards, their houses, etc.

Relational- we talk about friends, family, community, school and their relationship to each of those systems and how the systems interact with each other. We talk about their relationships with their families and friends, partners, and future children.

Corporeal- we talk about thoughts and feelings, personal qualities they have, fears about the future, etc.

October 8, 2005

“Who are you who will read these words and study these photographs, and through what cause, by what chance, and for what purpose, and by what right do you qualify to, and what will you do about it.” (James Agee Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, p.9)