THE WELL-BEING, PEER CULTURES AND RIGHTS OF CHILDREN
SOCIOLOGICAL STUDIES OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH Series Editor: David A. Kinney (from 1999) Series Editors: David A. Kinney and Katherine Brown Rosier (2004–2010) Series Editors: David A. Kinney and Loretta E. Bass (from 2011) Recent Volumes: Volume 1:
1986 – Patricia A. Adler & Peter Adler, Editors; Nancy Mandell, Associate Editor
Volume 2:
1987 – Patricia A. Adler & Peter Adler, Editors; Nancy Mandell, Associate Editor
Volume 3:
1990 – Patricia A. Adler & Peter Adler, Editors; Nancy Mandell, Guest Editor; Spencer Cahill, Associate Editor
Volume 4:
1991 – Patricia A. Adler & Peter Adler, Editors; Spencer Cahill, Guest Editor
Volume 5:
1993 – Patricia A. Adler & Peter Adler, Series Editors
Volume 6:
1994 – Nancy Mandell, Editor; Elaine Porter, Geoffrey Tesson, & John Lewko, Volume Editors
Volume 7:
1995 – Nancy Mandell, Editor; Anne-Marie Ambert, Volume Editor
Volume 8:
2001 – David A. Kinney, Series Editor
Volume 9:
2003 – David A. Kinney, Series Editor; Katherine Brown Rosier, Guest Editor
Volume 10:
2005 – David A. Kinney & Katherine Brown Rosier, Series Editors; Loretta E. Bass, Guest Editor
Volume 11:
2005 – David A. Kinney & Katherine Brown Rosier, Series Editors
Volume 12:
2008 – David A. Kinney & Katherine Brown Rosier, Series Editors; Jens Qvortrup, Guest Editor
Volume 13:
2010 – David A. Kinney & Katherine Brown Rosier, Series Editors; Heather Beth Johnson, Guest Editor
SOCIOLOGICAL STUDIES OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH VOLUME 14
THE WELL-BEING, PEER CULTURES AND RIGHTS OF CHILDREN EDITED BY
LORETTA E. BASS University of Oklahoma, OK, USA
DAVID A. KINNEY Central Michigan University, MI, USA
United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China
Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2011 Copyright r 2011 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permission service Contact:
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CONTENTS LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
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EDITORIAL BOARD
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SERIES BACKGROUND
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INTRODUCTION: THE WELL-BEING, PEER CULTURES AND RIGHTS OF CHILDREN
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PART I: CHILDREN’S WELL-BEING PRAETORIAN MILITARIZATION AND CHILDREN’S LIFE CHANCES Steve Carlton-Ford
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SCHOOL MOBILITY, SOCIAL CAPITAL, AND EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES OF LATINO FOSTER CARE YOUTH Beatrix F. Perez and Harriett D. Romo
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MATH AND READING ACHIEVEMENT GAPS – NEW INSIGHTS TO OLD PROBLEMS Yingyi Ma
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PART II: CHILDREN AND YOUTH PEER CULTURES FOCUSED: HOW STUDENTS CONSTRUCT ATTENTIVENESS IN FIRST-GRADE CLASSROOMS Noriko Milman
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THE AGE OF LOVE: DATING AND THE DEVELOPMENTAL DISCOURSE IN A MIDDLE SCHOOL SUMMER CAMP Sandi Kawecka Nenga and Lauren A. Apgar
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NEW AVENUES TO SCHOOL EXCLUSION AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION FOR URBAN YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE UK Daniel Briggs
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CONSTRUCTING ALTERNATIVE FEMININITY: THE GENDER IDENTITY OF ‘‘BAD GIRLS’’ IN TAIWAN Yu-Hsuan Lin
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APPLYING THE ‘‘NEW’’ SOCIOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD TO EXPLAIN THE BLACK–WHITE TEST-SCORE GAP Sarah H. Matthews
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PART III: CHILDREN’S RIGHTS WAIVING PARENTAL CONSENT WHEN RESEARCHING AT-RISK YOUTH Timothy Stablein and Steven H. Jacobs
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REMEMBERING THE CHILD PATIENT Renee Hosang
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PARTICIPATION AND PROTECTION OF YOUNGSTERS WITH SERIOUS BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS IN NORWEGIAN CHILD WELFARE SERVICES Ingeborg Marie Helgeland
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Contents
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DO ECE PUBLIC POLICIES CONSIDER YOUNG CHILDREN’S AGENCY? A STUDY IN SA˜O PAULO, BRAZIL Maria Letı´cia Nascimento
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POLITICAL AND LEGAL EFFECTS OF THE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD IN LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES Maria Guiomar da Cunha Frota
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ABOUT THE CO-EDITORS AND AUTHORS
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Lauren A. Apgar
Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
Daniel Briggs
Criminology and Criminal Justice, School of Law, University of East London, London, UK
Steve Carlton-Ford
Department of Sociology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA
Maria Guiomar da Cunha Frota
Belo Horizonte, MG, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
Ingeborg Marie Helgeland
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Child Care and Welfare, Oslo University College, Norway
Renee Hosang
Global and Sociocultural Studies, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA
Steven H. Jacobs
Department of History, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA
Yu-Hsuan Lin
Department of Applied Sociology & Graduate Institute of Sociology of Education, Nanhua University, Taiwan
Yingyi Ma
Department of Sociology, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA ix
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Sarah H. Matthews
Department of Sociology, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA
Noriko Milman
Department of Sociology, University of MassachusettsAmherst, MA, USA
Maria Letı´cia Nascimento
Department of Comparative Education, Faculty of Education Universidade de Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil
Sandi Kawecka Nenga
Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX, USA
Beatrix F. Perez
Bank of America Child and Adolescent Policy Research Institute, University of Texas at San Antonio, TX, USA
Harriett D. Romo
Bank of America Child and Adolescent Policy Research Institute, University of Texas at San Antonio, TX, USA
Timothy Stablein
Department of Sociology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
EDITORIAL BOARD Patricia A. Adler University of Colorado, USA
Sandra L. Hofferth University of Maryland, USA
Peter Adler University of Denver, USA
Barbara Schneider Michigan State University, USA
William A. Corsaro Indiana University, USA
Deanna L. Wilkinson Ohio State University, USA
Donna Eder Indiana University, USA
Alford A. Young University of Michigan, USA
Gary Alan Fine Northwestern University, USA
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SERIES BACKGROUND This series was originally conceived and edited by sociologists Patricia Adler and Peter Adler. The first volume was published in 1986 and the Adlers aptly noted at that time that ‘‘the study of children and child development is empirically and theoretically central to the discipline of sociology.’’ This fact is even more apparent today and is due in part to the efforts of the Adlers, and subsequent series editors, associate and guest editors, and contributors to the volume over the past 25 years. It is important to note that during the same time span, the American Sociological Association developed the Section on Sociology of Children and Youth and the International Sociological Association started the thematic group ‘‘Sociology of Childhood.’’ The series provides an outlet for social scientists whose reports on their work with children or youth may not ‘‘fit’’ in traditional academic journals due to the length of their pieces or for other reasons. Some volumes emphasize specific themes, while others include a range of chapters on diverse topics. Contributions from all methodological and theoretical orientations are welcome and are peerreviewed by the series editor, members of the editorial board, and other researchers. Finally, the volume has a history of publishing work by international scholars and continues to welcome contributions from around the world.
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INTRODUCTION: THE WELL-BEING, PEER CULTURES AND RIGHTS OF CHILDREN Volume 14 of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth (SSCY) is comprised of empirical research and theoretical papers within three areas, namely children’s well-being, children and youth peer cultures, and the rights of children and youth. In this volume, the term ‘‘children’’ is used inclusively to encompass those from infancy through the transition to adulthood. These empirical studies include children’s voices and experiences from four continents and a range of methodological and theoretical orientations. Additionally, a clear connection to social policy is made in many of these studies. Altogether, these studies highlight how structure and culture both limit and enable the life chances of children, how children interpret and construct their social relations and environments, and finally, how children view themselves as well as how others view the rights of children. Part One of this volume, the well-being of children and youth, highlights what shapes the opportunities and constraints at the cross-national level, the family and school levels, and the individual level. Carlton-Ford’s chapter, entitled ‘‘Praetorian Militarization and Children’s Life Chances’’ examines the effect of armed conflict and militarization on the well-being of children cross-nationally, while controlling for potentially interrelated factors that may also influence children’s life chances. Using structural-level, panel data of 175 countries, he uses a fixed-effects model to account for stable country characteristics as well as time-varying characteristics of countries that may also influence the effect of armed conflict and militarization on life chances. He finds that both praetorian militarization and social militarization – specifically during years of internationalized internal armed conflict – increases child mortality, once stable country effects and other variables are controlled. Again looking at children’s well-being and examining children’s experiences in the foster care system in the United States, Perez and Romo use the voices gathered from interviews with 25 Latino youth, ages 18 to 20 years old, to understand how social capital and social networks influenced their earlier placement into foster care and their transitions to independence as young xv
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adults. Their results indicate that as youth experience school mobility, positive contacts with caseworkers, teachers, foster parents, or school-oriented peers allow children in foster care placements to navigate difficult circumstances, and as a result, allowing them to reach higher educational outcomes. Youth in this study described how foster parents, caseworkers, and teachers provided needed support and advocacy to help them to improve academically. When foster care students exhibit problem behaviors, social capital in the form of support networks are critical to mediate problem behaviors and counter negative school experiences by providing positive social support and outlets. While social capital is not a ‘‘cure all’’ in resolving the poor educational attainment of youth in care, Perez and Romo make the case for the import of social capital of Latino foster care youth as a resource that is used to cope with educational experiences and school mobility. Next, Ma with a quantitative analysis examines math and reading achievement as outcome measures of child well-being. Ma’s chapter, ‘‘Math and Reading Achievement Gaps – New Insights to Old Problems,’’ explores what family and school factors affect children’s achievement gaps as they may be patterned by gender, race, and nativity in math and reading scores. A major strength of this chapter is its simultaneous inclusion of parental involvement and the secondary school curriculum structure in her modeling the gaps in children’s math and reading achievement outcomes. Ma is able to model children’s changes in achievement over time by using panel data from the National Education Longitudinal Studies and including three points of observation, eighth, tenth, and twelfth grades. Ma shows that type of parental involvement is important for math and reading achievement outcomes, yet more so for males than for females. Females lead in reading, and this lead remains even when family factors/parental involvement are taken into account. Males lead in math, yet once family and school factors are taken into account, the male lead in math disappears. Further, Ma finds racial disparities in math and reading achievement that are consistent with prior research; white students lead black and Hispanic students at all grade levels in math and reading, and Asian students lead whites in math but not reading achievement. These racial differences exist even after considering family and school factors. Finally, immigrant students have advantages over native students in both math and reading once family factors are included, which speaks to a ‘‘net immigrant advantage.’’ In Part Two of this volume, the first two research papers take a social constructivist perspective and highlight different aspects of children’s and youth’s peer cultures. The first in this section, Milman’s ‘‘FOCUSED: How Students Construct Attentiveness in First-Grade Classrooms’’ builds on prior research suggesting that children’s early childhood experiences lay the
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groundwork for educational trajectories, that in time, shape life chances. Focusing on attentiveness of first-grade children in the American classroom, Milman examines why it is that low-income students of color may be more likely to have ‘‘attentional difficulties’’ and later educational achievement difficulties. She makes use of ethnographic data collected over three school years and maps the social contexts that shape at-risk children’s attentiveness in the first-grade classroom. As she examines how attentiveness is constructed by children in their everyday interactions with others in the school setting, the reader comes to understand how it is that first graders learn how to be attentive to their teachers through a social process involving their first-grade peers. Their peers serve as regulators of what is acceptable or not as norms of the classroom. In this way, children learn how to appear and be focused. First-grade children apply these attentiveness lessons to self and peers, therefore, socializing one another to their classroom norms. Milman finds that these first-grade children are resourceful actors, who use what they understand attentiveness to be as a tool to maneuver around the strict order of the day. In this way, Milman’s chapter allows us also to understand (in)attentiveness. She holds that children, as a classroom peer group, actively learn, regulate, and perform the attention skills that are useful in that context. To this end, she allows us to understand how it is that a first-grade student’s focus is a peer-influenced social process. Similarly to Milman, Nenga and Apgar take a social constructivist approach in their research, ‘‘The Age of Love: Dating and the Developmental Discourse in a Middle School Summer Camp.’’ They use participantobservation methods to collect data from a middle school summer camp in the southern United States and explore how youth, ages 11 to 14 years, construct dating norms while using and eschewing different elements of the developmental discourse. They find that youth borrow the idea of a normative sequence of behaviors arranged by age from the developmental discourse to establish a set of age-appropriate dating norms for all campers, regardless of chronological age. Youth enforced these norms by treating other dating actions as too young or old. By tying this linear trajectory to social age of being in middle school, youth creatively altered the apparently rigid developmental discourse to establish dating norms that matched their own values and concerns. On the one hand, the developmental discourse shapes the norms in this peer culture, on the other, these youth also reshape, resist, and establish their own norms. The next two chapters in this section, by Briggs and Lin, examine how children and youth may be excluded from peer culture on the one hand, and how children protect themselves by actively excluding themselves or act in an
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alternative manner. Briggs’ research, ‘‘New Avenues to School Exclusion and Social Exclusion for Urban Young People in the United Kingdom,’’ examines the experiences of 20 children and youth, 11 to 18 years old. Using labeling perspectives to understand the significance of the social reaction to deviant labels young people receive in school and how they respond as a consequence, Briggs uses interview data to illustrate how ‘‘unofficial’’ exclusionary processes, that these urban young people experience, have implications for their identity, self-worth, and lifestyles, and makes them increasingly vulnerable to crime and victimization. Similarly, Lin’s research, ‘‘Constructing Alternative Femininity: The Gender Identity of ‘Bad Girls’ in Taiwan,’’ uses in-depth interviews and observations to understand how adolescent girls construct an alternative femininity, while also considering the class, ethnic, and racial implications underlying their gender identity construction process. Lin examines why girls show overt oppositional behaviors in school by exploring the gender identities of two adolescent girls in a junior high school who were thought to be ‘‘bad’’ girls by the school faculty. These ‘‘bad’’ girls exhibited behaviors that emphasized both stereotypically masculine and feminine behaviors at the same time. She holds that their construction of gender identity is a more contradictory and complex route than that of the majority of girls. The last paper in this section is Matthews’ research, ‘‘Applying the ‘New’ Sociology of Childhood to Explain the Black–White Test-Score Gap.’’ This chapter uses ethnographic research to explain the black–white test-score gap among early elementary school students. Using perspectives from the ‘new’ sociology of childhood literature, she examines the extent that AfricanAmerican children are affected by social structures in a racially homogenous school setting to explain the gap in educational achievement. Using the actual voices and observations of adults and children in the school setting, her findings suggest that children are oppressed by adults in the school, and that school is a negative experience for children. Similarly to adults in similar circumstances, these children actively confronted these structures, yet they wind up shutting down emotionally in order to protect themselves. Finally, Matthews shows how it is that the unjust treatment of black children in racially homogeneous elementary schools can be understood to be the institutional practice that explains the black–white test-score gap. With five research papers taking a more advocacy approach, Part Three of this volume, focuses on the rights of and on the policies and international laws that may affect children and youth. Stablein and Jacobs in ‘‘Waiving Parental Consent when Researching At-Risk Youth,’’ use the case study method to examine parental consent as a requirement for doing research on at-risk youth. They argue that while parental consent is a part of the process in order
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to protect youth, in some cases this requirement of parental consent may exacerbate problems youth encounter in home environments. As a result, the consent process serves to obstruct research that may well benefit the well-being of youth that it seeks to protect. Their research in this area offers suggestions to revise current federal guidelines and to help researchers and institutional review boards more broadly apply the use of parental consent waivers in cases where abuse or neglect at home are not certain but probable. Again, asserting children’s agency, Hosang-Alleyne’s chapter, ‘‘Remembering the Child Patient,’’ makes three major points. First, it presents the legal context that guides pediatric clinical interactions in the United States. Then, it argues that pediatric care is incomplete if the child patient is not identified as a knowledgeable and serious resource, thereby illustrating the concept called child inclusion. Finally, it recognizes the child patient as a research participant. She uses data gathered in a private clinic and uses a child-centered method in her research, ultimately arguing for the concept of child inclusion. From this research, the concept of child inclusion acknowledges the agency of a child in health care and places the child at the forefront of research. Next, Helgeland examines the balance of participation and protection from the individual child’s perspective in her research, ‘‘Participation and Protection of Youngsters with Serious Behavior Problems in Norwegian Child Welfare Services.’’ She utilizes data from a qualitative reanalysis of interviews from a 15-year longitudinal study of child welfare clients in Norway. Her research adds to our understanding of how to allow children to participate in decisions that affect them on the one hand, while also protecting them on the other. Her study describes how these children experience both participation and protection of public child welfare services at the time they were provided, and later when they reach adulthood. She finds that their opinions as adults did change, and that the earlier protection – generally in the form of a guardianship – was beneficial to them. The last two chapters in this collection deal with children’s rights as they intersect with public policy and come from the South American context. First, Nascimento’s research examines a new policy, the Early Childhood Education (ECE) guideline, which has not been uniformly adopted by early childhood schools in Brazil. Using a pool of noncompliant municipalities, she analyzes why these ECE guidelines were not adopted. While the ECE guideline sets forth a standard for all children’s preparedness, and the new materials are the same for all children, based on the idea of normal development and learning. She finds that there is misunderstanding and therefore misinterpretation of the new ECE policy’s content. She found that some municipalities were unprepared to assume ECE. Nascimento also finds
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that children’s agency is not always considered in the private educational systems, and as a result, children’s play and interaction are not considered as a natural part of early childhood education. Examining public policy on multiple levels, Frota’s research, ‘‘Political and Legal Effects of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Latin American countries,’’ examines the possibilities and limits for implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in Latin American countries. She first explores the monitoring process of the CRC, then examines children’s rights at the national level and as it may be influenced by international pressures, and finally considers the role of regional Inter-American institutions on the processes of child rights violations. She finds that within the UN and its Committees on Human Rights, it is possible to create and monitor conventions through formal reports. Additionally, she discovers that it is possible to incorporate international laws at the national state level, yet punishment of rights’ violations depends on the relationship between domestic and foreign law. Finally, she finds that inter-regional juridical institutions are effective at punishing offenders and compensating victims of rights’ violations guaranteed by international treaties. The Series Editors, David A. Kinney and Loretta E. Bass, believe that this volume highlights major strands of current thinking on children and youth in our world today. The chapters featured within the three focal areas – specifically children’s well-being, peer cultures, and rights – provide a window on children’s lives and suggest new areas of research and understanding. In addition to the content of Volume 14, this volume is important because it signals the stepping down of David A. Kinney in the capacity as lead Series Editor, a position he has filled in a trustworthy and skilled manner since 1999. However, he has kindly agreed to continue as an Editorial Board Member for Volume 15 and thereafter. Hence, it is with sadness and immense gratitude that we announce this to the readership of SSCY. Series Editor’s Note: At the 1998 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco, the late Spencer Cahill and Patti and Peter Adler invited me to become the next Series Editor of Sociological Studies of Child Development. They published the first volume in 1986. I remembered feeling flattered and excited. I took a day or two to ponder their invitation and then accepted as they assured me that I could and would ‘‘keep the volume going.’’ By the following summer I had wrapped up other professional obligations and started work on Volume 8. I signed the contract with the then publisher JAI Press, Inc. and they granted me permission to change the name of the volume to Sociological Studies of Children and Youth. After 12 years of service, I have decided to step down so that I have more time
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to spend with my family. The publications of Volumes 8 through 14 would not have been possible without the able assistance of my Guest Editors (Katherine Brown Rosier, Loretta E. Bass, Jens Qvortrup, and Heather Beth Johnson), Series Co-editors (Katherine (2004–2009), and Loretta (2010–2011)), members of the Editorial Board, outside reviewers, JAI Press, Inc., Anne Marie Davenport at Elsevier Science, and Claire Ferres, Gemma Halder, and Andrew Smith at Emerald Publishing Group Limited. I sincerely thank all of you. I am also very grateful for the editorial assistance of my wife, Nancy J. Herman-Kinney, and father, Thomas L. Kinney. But most importantly, I thank all the authors who submitted their work to the volume; they provide the energy and insight that moves our field forward. The future of the volume is in excellent hands. Loretta is an outstanding editor! I look forward to many more volumes with chapters that significantly enhance our sociological understanding of young people from around the world. I hope that this future work will make a powerful contribution to increasing global equality and justice that all children and youth desire and deserve. I would like to dedicate this volume to the late Spencer Cahill, whose significant contributions to the field will not be forgotten, and to my son, Matthew, ‘‘May your childhood and beyond be brilliant!’’
Loretta E. Bass David A. Kinney Editors
PART I CHILDREN’S WELL-BEING
PRAETORIAN MILITARIZATION AND CHILDREN’S LIFE CHANCES$ Steve Carlton-Ford ABSTRACT Purpose – This chapter examines the impact of armed conflict and three forms of militarization on child mortality rates cross-nationally. Previous theorizing argues that praetorian militaries create conditions particularly adverse to the well-being of civilians, but the effects of praetorian militarization are likely confounded both by economic and social militarization, and by armed conflict, economic development, and political regime. Methodology – This study conducts a cross-national panel study of the impact of armed conflict and militarization on civilian life chances using data from 175 countries with populations 200,000 or larger. Analyses employ a fixed-effects model, which controls for stable country characteristics; the analyses also control for time-varying characteristics of countries that influence the impact of armed conflict and militarization on life chances. Findings – Praetorian militarization appears to increase child mortality, as does social militarization (particularly during years of $
An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association; preliminary analyses for this chapter were presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society.
The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 3–26 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014006
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internationalized internal armed conflict), once stable country effects and other variables are controlled. This chapter is the first to systematically examine the impact of praetorian militarization on social development (indexed by child mortality rates). Keywords: Economic militarization; social militarization; praetorian militarization; armed conflict; child mortality; social development
INTRODUCTION The monopoly of legitimate force over both external and internal enemies defines ‘‘modern’’ states (Weber, 1968). To enforce that monopoly, states must develop and support national militaries, as well as deploy them in armed conflicts. Ideally, the exercise of that monopoly – during peace and conflict alike – should benefit the civilian population. But does it? Does militarization generally promote the life chances of the masses? Or, do particular ways of organizing the military (e.g., praetorian militarization, which involves either direct domination or indirect control of a country’s polity) have particularly adverse effects on the civilian population? Does militarization improve life chances under relatively peaceful conditions? What if nations are under threat or involved in armed conflict; does militarization benefit the masses then? Different theoretical approaches to militarization (discussed in more detail below) propose very different answers. One strand of economic theorizing stresses the potential development benefits of economic militarization (i.e., military spending), implying benefits for the general population. A second strand of theorizing about economic militarization typically contends that militarization diverts government spending away from more productive uses, resulting in poorer economic development; this approach implies that the general population will experience poorer life chances. A third strand of theory emphasizing social militarization (i.e., the proportion of the population in the military) argues just the opposite – that maintaining standing armies enhances both economic growth and the life chances of the masses. Finally, a fourth theoretical approach stressing the organization of the military maintains that praetorian militaries – those that either directly dominate or indirectly control national polities – focus on their own corporate interests, leading to adverse outcomes for the broader society. In short, these
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theorists maintain that in states with praetorian militaries the life chances of the masses should worsen. In contrast to the controversy over the impact of militarization, the adverse impact of armed conflict on life chances is relatively uncontested. Severe armed conflict, whether civil or international, exacts heavy social and economic costs, and is detrimental to life chances; civil war has been characterized as ‘‘development in reverse’’ (Collier et al., 2003). The military, by definition, must be involved in such armed conflicts. Yet, despite decades of theoretical and empirical work considering the impact of militarization and the more recent consideration of the impact of armed conflict, there has been little consideration of the joint impact of militarization and armed conflict on the life chances of the masses. In the next section, I review the four approaches to militarization outlined above, and develop hypotheses concerning relationships with life chances, especially the life chances of children as indexed by child mortality. Then, I review the research on armed conflict, developing both hypotheses and research questions concerning the joint impact of militarization and armed conflict. Finally, I discuss two additional factors – economic development and political regime – that need to be controlled when considering the impact of both militarization and armed conflict. The results of pooled cross-sectional negative binomial regressions for 175 countries indicate adverse effects of both praetorian militarization and social militarization, as well as beneficial effects of economic militarization. These latter effects emerge most strongly once praetorianism has been controlled.
MILITARIZATION AND LIFE CHANCES In order to exercise force, against either external or internal enemies, states must both equip and maintain armed forces – thus necessitating both economic militarization (i.e., military spending) and social militarization (i.e., the maintenance of armed forces). In addition, the military’s influence over the government – via praetorian militarization – presumably affects life chances, since this form of military organization should divert resources and organizational efforts toward the maintenance of the military and away from efforts that benefit the public in general and children in particular.
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ECONOMIC MILITARIZATION Countries must allocate limited budgets among many alternative uses. Initially, theorists argued that in developing nations economic militarization should promote economic development; they maintained that, although most funds were not put to economically productive uses, economic militarization did spillover to benefit the general economy (e.g., Benoit, 1978; Pye, [1962] 1981). Subsequently, theorists of economic militarization argued that the allocation of national funds to the military produces suboptimal economic returns to investment, adversely affecting both national level savings and economic growth (see Deger, 1986). In short, this second group of theorists views economic militarization as a relatively poor use of scarce economic capital (e.g., Benoit, Lubell, & Schuman, 1966) that diverts funds from education and health care, uses of national wealth that should improve the life chances of the masses (e.g., Adeola, 1996; Dixon & Moon, 1986). Research examining the impact of economic militarization on the general economy and on the well-being of the general population has produced mixed results, though the bulk of the evidence suggests a weak negative effect of economic militarization on the well-being of the general public. Early studies of economic militarization sometimes found beneficial effects (Benoit, 1978). Later research found only weak direct beneficial effects on economic growth but with offsetting negative effects on economic activity (e.g., Deger, 1986). Case studies using time series data indicate that when militarization is based on military industry, as in South Africa, the economy suffers (e.g., Birdi & Dunne, 2002). Evidence of any long-term benefit of military spending is weak at best and other research finds virtually no short-term impact of military spending on economic growth (Mintz & Stevenson, 1995). When examining the effect of economic militarization on other national budgets, researchers find that increased military spending appears to result in lower levels of spending on education and health care and a lower quality of life (see Adeola, 1996; Dixon & Moon, 1986; Looney, 1990). Since general economic growth (Pritchett & Summers, 1996), as well as the allocation of government spending to education and health care, improves life chances (Shen & Williamson, 1997, 2001), the spillover of economic militarization should lead to poorer life chances for the general population and for children’s well-being specifically. The impact of economic militarization depends, however, upon what other variables are controlled; typically, many potentially important variables are not controlled. For example (as discussed just below), when social militarization is controlled, economic
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militarization usually has little effect on infant mortality and child mortality. This leads to the first hypothesis. H1. Economic militarization will not affect child mortality once other relevant variables have been controlled.
SOCIAL MILITARIZATION In contrast, theory concerning social militarization argues that the maintenance of armed forces should benefit social and economic development. This approach concedes that military expenditures may have harmful effects, but argues that the maintenance of armed forces – particularly in developing nations – provides an impetus conducive to economic and social development (e.g., Weede, 1993). In order to sustain their militaries, countries must feed, house, educate, train, arm, and move their troops. In short, social militarization requires both social and economic development (Bullock & Firebaugh, 1990; Kick, Nasser, Davis, & Bean, 1990; Kick, Davis, Kiefer, & Burns, 1998) and such development should, at least indirectly, improve the life chances of the masses. Previous research generally supports this approach; social militarization does appear to benefit the masses – resulting, for example, in higher levels of quality of life (Dixon & Moon, 1986), as well as lower child and infant mortality rates (e.g., Bullock & Firebaugh, 1990; Carlton-Ford, Hamill, & Houston, 2000; Carlton-Ford, 2005; Kick et al., 1990). Notably, once social militarization has been directly assessed, economic militarization typically has no effect on life chances. Large-scale studies have not, however, examined the process through which social militarization affects life chances. If previous theory and research were correct, social militarization would improve children’s life chances if militaries were engaged in large enough nation building projects and if relatively large numbers of young adults were educated at levels they would not otherwise attain. This would require conscription of significant proportions of the young adult population who would then be trained in skills that have civilian analogues. Theorists of the military doubt that social militarization actually results in enough nation building and education to produce the effects that researchers find. Armed forces do sometimes contribute directly to social and economic development projects. Egypt’s military has been directly involved in civilian development projects (see Halpern, [1962], 1981; MacDonald, 1997). Indeed, countries such as Pakistan, Thailand, Burma,
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Indonesia, Malaysia, Madagascar, and Bolivia (see Alba, [1962] 1981; Lissak, 1967; Military Technology, 2005, 2006, 2007a, 2007b) all appear to have, at least at one time, had an explicit policy of using armed forces to implement development projects. There are, however, too few such countries to explain a general beneficial effect of social militarization (see MacDonald, 1997). As a result, theorists and analysts of the military argue that the putative beneficial effects of social militarization seem unlikely, at least in most Middle Eastern, North African, and sub-Saharan African countries (Janowitz, 1964; MacDonald, 1997). In short, the apparent beneficial effects of social militarization appear unlikely to hold up under closer scrutiny. This leads to the second hypothesis. H2. Social militarization will increase child mortality once other relevant variables have been controlled.
PRAETORIAN MILITARIZATION A decades-old focus on praetorian militaries suggests that they often adversely affect the population in general and children specifically. Initially, theorists of militarization (see the essays in Johnson, [1962] 1981) were, with some important qualifications (e.g., Janowitz, 1964), guardedly optimistic about the prospects of the countries that were gaining independence from colonial rule. By the mid-1970s, however, theorists of civil–military relations had begun to see the emergence of praetorian militaries as a relatively fixed aspect of many developing nations (see Moskos, 1976). Historically, Latin America has been the location of numerous praetorian militaries that served little defensive purpose and held only a limited policing role (see Andreski, 1968; Perlmutter, 1977). Praetorian militaries have not, however, been limited to Latin America. Indeed, many African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries appear to have militaries that were initially organized on, or soon evolved into, a praetorian model (see Alagappa, 2001; Coleman & Brice, [1962] 1981; Halpern [1962] 1981; MacDonald, 1997). More recently, scholars have argued that, in regions around the globe, formerly praetorian militaries have transformed into post-praetorian militaries (see Millett & Gold-Biss, 1996 for Latin America; Alagappa, 2001 for Asia; Martin, 2003 for francophone Africa). A close examination of these accounts indicates, however, that most of these militaries have transformed from direct praetorian militaries into indirect praetorian militaries. In short, a number of African and Asian militaries remain effectively praetorian (see Alagappa, 2001; Anene, 2000; Beeson, 2008; Camara, 2000; Conteh-Morgan,
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2000; Kalu, 2000; McGowan, 2005, 2006; Ojo, 2006; Saine, 2000, 2008). Thus, despite initial hopes to the contrary, praetorian militaries – militaries that either dominate or control their countries polities – do appear to have become institutionalized as a ‘‘semipermanent and regular feature of third-world societies’’ (Moskos, 1976, p. 69). Praetorian militaries – whether directly dominating the polity or indirectly exerting de facto control – generally exist in countries with weak civil societies and poorly institutionalized democratic political processes (Andreski, 1968, pp. 203–217). In such instances, the military focuses primarily on its own survival and not on the well-being of society as a whole (McGowan, 2005, 2006; Perlmutter, 1969, 1977). Praetorian militaries must also continually guard against coups (see McGowan, 2005, 2006; Perlmutter, 1969, 1977). As a result, theorists expect praetorian militaries to allocate a disproportionate amount of resources to themselves (see Andreski, 1968; Moskos, 1976; Perlmutter, 1969, 1977), exerting a particularly strong drain on developing economies with resulting poor outcomes for the masses. In general, theorists have argued that praetorian militaries have been incapable of solving basic national problems, probably making them worse. Despite theorizing about a particularly adverse impact of praetorian militarization on social and economic development, little research has examined its effect. A limited body of research does suggest an adverse effect of military rule on development, though apparently not simply as a result of higher levels of military spending (e.g., Looney, 1990). In addition, in countries from regions expected to have the highest numbers of praetorian militaries (i.e., Latin America and Africa) both social and economic militarization during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s led to lower levels of social and economic development (Bowman, 2002). This relationship is the opposite of what is found in other world regions, where social militarization generally appears to have led to improved social and economic development. A more direct examination of praetorian militarization on social and economic development is needed, leading to the third hypothesis. H3. Praetorian militarization will be associated with higher rates of child mortality.
ARMED CONFLICT AND MILITARIZATION In the 20 years from 1985 to 2004, the militaries of many countries were involved in some form of major armed conflict – whether international, internal (i.e., civil war), or internationalized internal (a hybrid of the first
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two forms of armed conflict). Such conflicts constitute development in reverse, leading to reduced levels of economic development (Collier et al., 2003), lower levels of food availability, and higher levels of hunger (Jenkins, Scanlan, & Peterson, 2007), reduced education (Lai & Thyne, 2007), impeded health service delivery, poorer public health infrastructures, and higher levels of noncombatant – specifically child – mortality (Carlton-Ford et al., 2000; Carlton-Ford, 2004, 2005; Carlton-Ford & Boop, 2010). During armed conflicts, the military is – presumably – responsible for protecting the state and by implication its people. Such protection involves maintaining social order and maintaining basic public health infrastructures (e.g., safe water, sanitation) – the very infrastructures that armed conflict typically damages or destroys. Yet, we know little about whether militarization either ameliorates or exacerbates the impact of armed conflict on the masses. How might armed conflict and the three different forms of militarization jointly affect children’s life chances? Depending on the pattern of interrelationships, armed conflict and militarization might offset each other (a mediation model), mask each other’s effects (a suppressor model), or intensify each other’s effects (an interaction model). The research and theory related to these possibilities is not well developed. So, rather than specify a research question for each possibility, I will – after discussing several possibilities – close this section with a general research question. Increases in economic militarization might explain some of armed conflict’s adverse impact on children’s life chances. Armed conflict appears to increase military spending (Collier, 2006; Henderson, 2000), and both armed conflict and military spending have an adverse impact on economic development (Collier, 2006). So, to the extent that both armed conflict and economic militarization have a generally adverse effect on life chances, increased militarization might mediate the adverse effect armed conflict has on child mortality. Armed conflict also is associated with increased social militarization (i.e., larger armed forces), and generally larger armed forces are typically associated with improved economic development (e.g., Bullock & Firebaugh, 1990; Carlton-Ford et al., 2000; Carlton-Ford, 2005). So, social militarization and armed conflict could have offsetting effects on life chances – potentially suppressing each other’s effect unless both are considered simultaneously. Although praetorian militaries are coup-prone, there is no indication that they are either more or less likely to be involved in civil wars. If this is in fact the case, then any adverse effects of praetorian militarization would simply add to the adverse effects of civil war.
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Hints in the research suggest, however, that armed conflict and the various forms of militarization may interact in affecting civilians. Although economic militarization generally appears to have a negative effect on life chances, a post hoc examination of countries where economic militarization has a positive effect reveals that they are generally countries with protracted armed conflicts (see Mintz & Stevenson, 1995). Similarly, social militarization might be particularly beneficial in countries with armed conflicts, allowing militaries to better provide security (Roxborough, 2007), coupled with efforts to win over the civilian population (Petraeus, Amos, & Nagl, 2007). This approach suggests that in times of armed conflict social militarization could lead to some protection of the civilian population. In contrast, since measured and carefully targeted responses to insurgency require information that is detailed and difficult to obtain (see Kalyvas, 2004), governments, particularly those with weak militaries (see Herbst, 2004), tend to use overwhelming force as a usually futile tactic to end rebellion (see Herbst, 2004; Kalyvas, 2004; Roxborough, 2007). But larger militaries are not necessarily strong; increases in social militarization during years of armed conflict could have an adverse effect on the general population (e.g., Carlton-Ford, 2010) since new recruits would be poorly trained and perhaps poorly equipped. How would life chances fare if praetorian militaries faced armed conflict? Praetorian militaries tend to be politically unstable, being vulnerable to coups, but when faced with armed conflict would praetorianism favor life chances or not? What little we know about the military effectiveness of different regimes suggests that democratic countries fight more effectively (Reiter & Stam, 1998), and by definition praetorian regimes are not democratic. As a result, praetorian militaries might be less likely to fight efficiently and end the conflict quickly, resulting in poorer life chances for the masses, children in particular. Research question 1 follows from the previous considerations: RQ1. How does armed conflict combine with the different forms of militarization to affect child mortality?
CONTROL VARIABLES The well-being of the civilian population is intimately related to the overall level of economic development. The level of, and increases in, the economic wealth of a nation generally results in a healthier population
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(Pritchett & Summers, 1996), though the process through which economic well-being is translated into health depends on how wealth is allocated. Armed conflict (See Collier, et al., 2003 for the impact of civil war and Stewart, FitzGerald, & Associates, 2001 for a more general analysis) adversely affects the level of economic well-being by driving out all forms of mobile capital and generally retarding economic growth. Since the general economy as well as both economic and social militarization are linked to armed conflict (both military expenditures and military participation tend to increase in times of armed conflict), the impact of economic change must be considered. As with changes in the economy, increased military participation (Bowman, 1996) and armed conflict are both associated with decreases in democratization, and generally democracies are thought to better serve their populations than autocracies or anocracies (though see Ross, 2006). To the extent that democracies allocate resources to their populations in ways that are beneficial, any adverse impact of armed conflict and militarization on the well-being of the population could be the result of decreases in the level of democratization.
METHODS Data Set This study uses the ‘‘War and Children’s Life Chances’’ data set to conduct a cross-national panel study, covering the years from 1985 through 2004, of the impact of armed conflict and militarization on life chances. As described in more detail below, the data set contains information from a variety of sources (e.g., UNICEF, PRIO, World Bank) on 179 countries with populations larger than 200,000. During this time, the Soviet Union dissolved into constituent countries, as did the former Yugoslav Republic and other countries. For these countries, there are only as many country-years of data as the number of years they were in existence. For 11 small, primarily island, countries data is available only since 1996. As a result, the maximum number of country-years is 3,031 (not the apparent maximum of 3,580 [20 179]). Measures Dependent Variable Child Mortality (U5M). I use the under-5 mortality rate – the number of children per thousand births who are expected to die prior to their 5th
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birthday – as an indicator of civilian mortality. The under-5 mortality rate is unlikely to be directly affected by combat, but instead by indirect effects on health (see Reza, Mercy, & Krug, 2001), and has been used in previous research as an indicator of the general well-being of national populations. Data (from 1985 through 2004) are from UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children. Child mortality data are published as counts, affecting the analysis plan (see below). Independent Variables Major Armed Conflict (MAC1, MAC2, MAC3, MAC4). I use version 3 of the Oslo International Peace Research Institute’s (PRIO) data set as the source of information about countries with varying levels and types of armed conflict for the years 1985 through 2004 (Gleditsch, Wallensteen, Eriksson, Sollenberg, & Strand, 2002). During this period there were three types of conflicts: (1) international conflicts, involving at least two states; (2) internal conflicts, involving a state and at least one oppositional nonstate actor; and (3) internationalized internal conflicts, involving a state, an oppositional nonstate actor, and one or more other states. For each type of conflict, each country-year of data was originally coded either as having no conflict (less than 25 battle-related deaths), minor armed conflict (more than 25 but less than 1,000 battle-related deaths over the course of the conflict), intermediate armed conflict (25 or more battlerelated dead in a particular year and 1,000 or more dead over the course of the conflict), or war (1,000 or more battle-related dead in a given year). Analyses (not shown) indicated that intermediate armed conflicts have effects similar in magnitude and direction to those of wars. So, each type of conflict was dichotomized to contrast major armed conflicts (intermediate armed conflicts and war coded ‘‘1’’) to lower levels of conflict (none and minor coded ‘‘0’’). This information was used to create four variables: first, a country-level variable (MAC1), which contrasts countries that never experience a major armed conflict (coded 0) from 1985 through 2004 to those that have some major armed conflict during that time (coded 1); second, individual countryyears of international major armed conflicts (MAC2, e.g., Iran and Iraq in 1985–1988); third, individual country-years of internal major armed conflicts (MAC3, e.g., Liberia 1990–1995); and fourth, individual countryyears of internationalized internal major armed conflicts (MAC4, e.g., Democratic Republic of the Congo 1997–1998). Research indicates that countries at war, but without the war on their soil, may actually benefit economically from war (see Stewart et al., 2001). So, international
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MACs (MAC2) have been coded so that noncontiguous states involved in international wars are categorized as not at war. This applies primarily to states (e.g., the United States) that were involved in the first Gulf War, but were not within range of Iraq’s missile systems. Similarly, internationalized internal MACs (MAC4) have been coded so that geographically distant states are categorized as not at war since there was no possibility of spillover onto their territory. Militarization. The study uses three separate measures of militarization, two of which – military participation and military expenditures – have been examined in previous research. First, I use the World Bank’s measure of military personnel as a percent of the total labor force as the indicator of social militarization (Military-P). As indicated below, I present univariate results in the original metric, but in the bivariate and multivariate analyses below this indicator is a base-10 log. Data on 2,858 cases are available from 1985 through 2004. Second, I use the World Bank’s measure of military expenditures as a percent of gross domestic product (GDP) as the indicator of economic militarization (Military-$). The highest values of military expenditure are found for Kuwait in 1991. As indicated below, I present univariate results in the original metric, but in the bivariate and multivariate analyses below these indicators are base-10 logs; when used in an interaction term the variable is mean centered. Data on 2,090 cases are available from 1988 through 2004. The measure for the third form of militarization – praetorian militarization – is adapted from MacDonald (1997). He argues that, not including Research and Development (R&D) expenditures, military expenditures per troop as a ratio to gross national product (GNP) per capita captures the core idea behind praetorian militaries – their ability to control the political process and protect the corporate interests of the military. Countries with high praetorian scores allocate many times their country’s GNP/c to each troop. This measure is conceptually distinct from the overall share of the country’s economy that the military controls; highly praetorian militaries control a share of the economy that is disproportionate to the size of the military. MacDonald (1997) employed this measure to examine a limited set of countries. I used MacDonald’s raw data on total military expenditures and total number of troops to create a measure of praetorianism that did not exclude R&D expenditures; the parallel measure produced an almost identical (r ¼ .99) ordering of countries. Analyses below use a yearly version of this parallel measure of praetorianism – military expenditures per troop divided by GNP per capita. A base-10 logged version is used in bivariate and multivariate analyses. Data is available for 2,056 cases from 1988 to
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2004. Analyses indicate that this variable is substantially different from other militarization variables or their interactions. Praetorian militarization’s highest correlation is with social militarization (.49); it is less strongly correlated with economic militarization (.22) and virtually uncorrelated with the interaction of social and economic militarization (.08).
Control Variables Regime Type. I use Gleditsch’s (2007) country-year data set that contains the 21-point measure (polity2) of regime type (1985 to 2004, n ¼ 2,864). Regimes are scored 10 if they are totally autocratic and þ10 if they are totally democratic. Countries in the middle range contain a mix of autocratic and democratic characteristics. Economic performance. The measure of economic performance is the GDP per capita, taken from the World Bank. Since both military and nonmilitary expenditures are at issue, the measure of general economic performance has had the military share of GDP removed. As is typical in development research, I use a logged version that normalizes the crossnational income distribution. Data are available from 1988 through 2004 (n ¼ 2,071). An interaction between regime type and economic performance is also included in the final analyses. Time. Time trends (from 1988 through 2004) are controlled by including an explicit indicator of time. This variable is coded ‘‘0’’ for the starting year (1988) and increases by one for each successive year. Analyses that included a quadratic term for time did not yield different conclusions. Country-specific controls. With more than one country-year of data for each country, country-specific effects can be estimated by including dummy variables to represent constant country effects (see analysis plan below). Analyses reported below omit dummy variables for two countries: a country with an under-5 mortality rate at the average for countries with major armed conflict, and a country with an under-5 mortality rate at the average for countries without any major armed conflict. Using this approach, with the country-specific effects estimated, the intercept in the analysis represents the under-5 mortality rate for the average country without major armed conflicts; the effect for the country-level measure of major armed conflict (MAC1) represents the difference between the average under-5 mortality rate for countries without major armed conflicts (the intercept) and the average for countries with major armed conflicts (adjusted for any other variables in the model). Because they are not substantively informative, country-specific effects are not reported in the analyses.
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Analysis Plan Analyses employ a fixed-effects negative binomial panel model with a log link, which is appropriate for count data such as the under-5 mortality rate (see Baltagi, 2008, pp. 226–235; Long, 1997, Chapter 8). This approach to analyzing panel data arrays the information as country-years – a separate record for each country for each year it is represented in the data set. Country-specific effects are estimated using dummy variables without creating problems of multicollinearity (Allison, 1994; Halaby, 2003, 2004); with the inclusion of an explicit variable controlling for time trends, this approach to panel analysis estimates the effects of time-varying characteristics of countries (e.g., economic activity) as well as events (e.g., wars) on change in the dependent variable (see Allison, 1994). Although including all three militarization variables in an equation can result in high variance inflation factors (e.g., the highest VIF – 8.18 – is for social militarization when all of the substantive variables are included), an examination of changes in standard errors does not suggest that multicollinearity presents a problem. Adding praetorianism to models that include the two standard measures of militarization increases their standard errors by only about 50%. In contrast, their coefficients are three times or more as large since the variables are involved in a set of suppressor relationships. Inclusion of the dummy variables for country-specific effects actually reduces the standard errors of other variables. In the analyses below, significance levels are reported for convenience. Since each analysis represents the available population of countries, and not a random sample, the conventional interpretation of significance levels in terms of random sampling error does not apply. The results are estimated assuming correlations based on independent units, but assuming either a first-order autoregressive process or an unstructured correlation matrix yields the same conclusions.
RESULTS All the results reported in Table 1 below are from fixed-effects models; so, all coefficients have been estimated after controlling for constant country characteristics. For all models, the fixed-effects approach is statistically superior to random-effects models as indicated by the much smaller goodness-of-fit measures for the fixed-effects models that are reported near the bottom of the table. When results from random-effects models (which
4.499 .765
Model 2 4.524 .759
Model 3 4.520 .727
Model 4 4.521 .724
Model 5
Model 6
Notes: Fixed country effects are estimated in each fixed effects negative binomial regression model using generalized estimating equations, but since they are not substantively informative they are not shown. The country at the mean level of under-5 mortality for countries without MACs and the country at the mean level of under-5 mortality for countries with MACs are omitted. As a result, the contrast variable MAC1 estimates the difference between the average country without a MAC and the average country with a MAC. Results are robust to alternative specifications of the structure of the working correlation matrix. w pr.10; pr.05; pr.01; pr.001, all tests are two-tailed.
4.459 .475
Model 1
Child Mortality Regressed on Major Armed Conflict, Militarization, Economic Development, and Political Regime.1
4.342 Intercept: Countries with no major armed conflict MAC1: Countries with major armed conflict .777 MAC2: International MAC (country-years) .016 .029 .009 .018 .022 .010 MAC3: Internal MAC (country-years) .011 .035 .024 .029 .024 .027 MAC4: Internationalized internal MAC (country.062 .006 .011 .030 .027 .015 years) Economic militarization ($ as % of GDP) – – .026 .197 .222 .326 Social militarization (Soldiers as % of work force) – – .255w .506 .499 .518 Social militarization by MAC4 – – – .410 .403 .391 Praetorianism ($ per troop/GNP per capita) – – – .209 .213 .247 GDP/c: Economic development – – – – – .254 Polity: Regime (autocratic to democratic) – – – – – .006 .022 GDP/c by polity – – – – – Time .035 .039 .038 .038 .038 .035 N of countries 175 154 154 154 145 145 N of country-years 2,995 2,053 2,053 2,053 1,983 1,983 Goodness-of-fit (QIC) Estimated models 143.0 75.8 75.8 74.9 73.3 69.8 Country effects only 250.8 135.0 135.0 135.0 134.4 134.4 Random effects 3,270.4 2,462.6 2,139.9 1,879.7 1,821.8 482.8
Table 1.
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do not control country characteristics) are pertinent to understanding the results they will be discussed in the text. The first two models show the impact of four measures of major armed conflict (MAC) on child mortality rates. The first model includes the full sample; the second model is restricted to those countries that also have militarization data. Subsequent models (3–6) add militarization variables and controls. The intercept for these models ranges from 4.342 to 4.524, values which when exponentiated indicate that – depending on the controls in the model – countries with no major armed conflict have an average under-5 morality rate between 77 and 92 per thousand. Countries with major armed conflicts have under-5 mortality rates that are significantly and substantially higher. In Model 1, the under-5 mortality rate is about 140 per thousand (e[4.459 þ .475]); in Model 2, the rate is about 198 per thousand. Notably, in neither of these models do specific country-years of major armed conflict add significantly to the under-5 mortality rate. In analyses (not shown) that do not control for constant country characteristics under-5 mortality rates are significantly and substantially higher in countries during specific years of either international or internationalized internal MACs. The lack of impact in the fixed-effects models indicates that the apparent impact of major armed conflict results from other characteristics of the countries with conflict (as argued by Guha-Sapir & Panhuis, 2004). Looking across all the models, we see that country-years of active major armed conflict do not affect the under-5 mortality rate significantly. None of the three militarization variables when added individually to the previous model (analyses not shown) significantly affects child mortality. Model 3 adds the two militarization variables typically used in previous research. The results appear anomalous. Higher levels of social militarization are weakly related to higher levels of under-5 mortality (b ¼ .255), a result that emerges only after controlling for constant country characteristics. As expected based on previous research, prior to controlling for constant country effects (analyses not shown), social militarization resulted in lower levels of under-5 mortality (b ¼ 2.187); in these analyses, economic militarization had little effect on under-5 mortality. Model 4 introduces an interaction of social militarization with internationalized internal conflict and also the measure of praetorianism; both have significant effects. The interaction is the only one that produced a strong and consistently significant effect; in fact, the interaction between social militarization and internationalized armed conflict is strong and statistically significant regardless of which other militarization or
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substantive variables are in the equation.1 Countries that experience major armed conflicts have higher under-5 mortality rates, but specific years of major armed conflict exert little effect. In general, social militarization increases the under-5 mortality rate (b ¼ .506); the increase during years of major internationalized internal conflict is nearly double (.506 þ .410), indicating a particularly adverse effect of increasing social militarization during those years of conflict. Economic militarization does not exert a statistically significant effect. Over and above the effects of the standard measures of militarization, praetorianism pushes under-5 mortality rates even higher (b ¼ .209). If economic militarization is removed (analyses not shown), the adverse effect of praetorianism is not as strong although still significant. Results for Model 5, which are estimated in the smaller set of countries that have economic and polity data, yield an identical conclusion. Model 6 adds a measure of economic development and a measure of the type of regime, as well as their interaction. As before, results for specific years of major armed conflict are very weak; the impact of militarization is little changed by the controls for economic development and polity. Social militarization increases (b ¼ .518) the under-5 mortality rate, particularly during years of major internationalized internal conflict (b ¼ .391). With the additional controls, economic militarization appears to lower under-5 mortality rates (b ¼ .326), as does economic development (b ¼ .254), particularly when higher levels of economic development combine with democratic regimes (b ¼ .022). The results provide answers to the three hypotheses and the one research question that were posed above. First, does economic militarization affect child mortality once other pertinent variables were controlled? Looking across Table 1, we can see that once we consider praetorian militarization, economic militarization begins to show a beneficial effect (consistent with the expectations of early theorists), lowering child mortality. This linear effect increases in strength as economic well-being and political regime are also controlled. Second, we hypothesized that social militarization would adversely affect child mortality once pertinent controls were instituted. The results indicate that contrary to the expectation of development theorists (e.g., Bullock & Firebaugh, 1990), with controls instituted for constant country characteristics via the fixed-effects analysis, social militarization appears to push child mortality rates higher. These results were, however, consistent with the expectations of military theorists who argue that armies typically engage too few individuals at too low a level of training to have the positive effect that the development theorists expected. Rather the results presented above
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support early theorists who argued that social militarization represented a poor use of scarce resources. Third, as expected, the findings indicate that praetorianism also pushes child mortality higher. Militaries that control resources disproportionate to their size and their nation’s economy have higher child mortality rates regardless of whether they are involved in armed conflicts. Finally in response to the research question concerning interactions of armed conflict and militarization, the results indicate that although armed conflict and militarization could combine in a number of different ways, during years of internationalized armed conflict increased social militarization pushes the child mortality rate up much more dramatically than otherwise.
CONCLUSIONS This chapter examines the joint impact of three types of major armed conflict and three forms of militarization on the well-being of civilian populations. The results, based on this more inclusive approach and employing rigorous statistical methodologies, force us to rethink how conflict and militarization affect civilian populations, as indexed by the child mortality rate. Previous research and scholarship has typically found little effect of economic militarization, beneficial effects of social militarization, and have paid little attention to the impact of praetorian militarization on civilian populations. In contrast, scholars and theorists of the military have argued that social militarization should have little effect on the civilian population and that praetorian militarization should adversely affect civilian life. These scholars argue that social militarization engages too few individuals in activities that generally have too little application in civilian life for any beneficial spillover to occur. Instead, praetorian militaries focus so intently on perpetuating their position in society that beneficial activities are foregone. The results reported above support the position of scholars of the military. The major results, obtained using fixed-effect negative binomial panel regressions, indicate that increases in social militarization significantly and substantially increase the child mortality rate (regardless of whether a country engages in major armed conflicts) and that increases in social militarization produce particularly adverse effects during years in which internationalized internal conflicts are active. These effects appear most strongly once praetorian militarization has been controlled, but are always strong and statistically significant. Such increases by definition must involve
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rapidly incorporating new soldiers into existing militaries and attempting to train them for battle. Increasing the size of armies and trying to provide adequate training during times of complex conflicts (such as internationalized internal conflicts) appears to fail to the extent that the military is charged with protecting its most vulnerable citizens – its children. Increasing praetorian militarization (again regardless of engagement in major armed conflict) also consistently increases the child mortality rate. This outcome is entirely consistent with a theoretical argument that praetorian militaries typically focus on self-preservation rather than on the well-being of their civilian populations. Such regimes tend to exist in societies with weakly institutionalized governments and poor economies. The adverse effect of praetorianism is, however, neither simply the result of the type of government nor the level of economic activity. If anything, the effect of praetorianism is stronger once the impact of regime type and economy have both been considered. Consistent with previous research, there appears to be little impact of economic militarization on child mortality rates, although a significant beneficial effect does emerge once all relevant variables (i.e., economic activity, regime type, and their interaction) are controlled. Future research should examine the impact of economic militarization in more detail. In contrast to previous research, years of active major armed conflict appears to have little consistent effect on child mortality. This anomalous result appears for at least three different reasons that are not directly explored in this chapter. First, in models that were not shown, mortality rates were significantly higher during war years, but these differences were substantially reduced when stable country characteristics were controlled. Apparently, the impact of war results from characteristics of countries that were not directly measured, but were statistically controlled through the fixed-effect models. This runs counter to much previous research, but is consistent with a minority position (see Guha-Sapir & Panhuis, 2004), which maintains that the impact of armed conflict is largely related to conditions that exists prior to the conflict. Second, this chapter focuses on the impact of major armed conflict, a category that includes both wars and intermediate armed conflicts which are less severe. Although preliminary analyses indicated that the effects of the two were similar, it may be that combining the two has attenuated the effect found when wars are considered alone (e.g., Carlton-Ford & Boop, 2010). Third, there is some evidence that, at least in terms of the measures available in this data set, the impact of armed conflict decreased somewhat from 1985 to 2004. Results for a shorter time series have found adverse effects of major
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armed conflict and/or war. This suggests that more recent conflicts have exerted a much weaker effect on the general population, ‘‘washing out’’ the general effect of years of civil war. The findings of this study are not, however, the result of statistical flukes since prior to controlling for stable country characteristics our results mirrored those of previous researchers – a beneficial effect of social militarization and no effect for economic militarization. All of the results are robust in the face of numerous statistical and methodological checks. In short, this study indicates that both social militarization and praetorian militarization – direct or indirect control of the government by the military, as indicated by high levels of spending on relatively small militaries – adversely affect civilian populations, especially during times of armed conflict. These effects are consistent with theoretical literatures arguing that militarization drains resources and that social militarization is unlikely to produce the benefits for which early theorists had argued.
NOTE 1. Praetorianism (b ¼ .214) and social militarization (b ¼ .542) have strong adverse effects when the interaction term is not included (analyses not shown). Detailed analyses (not shown) reveal that with constant country characteristics controlled, economic militarization and praetorian militarization tend to suppress each other’s effects; in contrast, the adverse effect of social militarization is always evident in these analyses.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work has been supported by the generous contributions of the Charles Phelps Taft Fund of the University of Cincinnati and the Department of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. Editorial assistance was provided by Marcus Vines. Donielle Boop, Cindy Carlton-Ford, and two anonymous reviewers have contributed to making this a stronger chapter.
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SCHOOL MOBILITY, SOCIAL CAPITAL, AND EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES OF LATINO FOSTER CARE YOUTH Beatrix F. Perez and Harriett D. Romo ABSTRACT Purpose – Mobility of youth in multiple foster care placements contributes to diminished life chances and outcomes. Foster care youth mobility during care results in numerous school changes within one academic year which hinders educational achievement. This qualitative study examines a group of Latino alumni of foster care and their experiences related to housing and education. Methodology – Interviews with 25 young Latino adults ranging in age from 18 to 22 examined foster care placement, transitions to independence, and experiences after foster care. Researchers used a semi-structured interview guide, and tape-recorded interviews transcribed and coded for emergent themes. Findings – Results suggest that as youth experience school mobility, social capital aids in promoting positive educational experiences. This research emphasizes the importance of positive social capital for Latino foster care youth and their educational achievement, evidenced in both The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 27–49 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014007
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adult and peer social networks. Few studies have examined Latino foster care youth experiences, and currently there are no studies that address educational experiences of these youth. Keywords: Latino foster care youth; education; school mobility; social capital; social networks; social support
INTRODUCTION There are over 500,000 foster care children in the United States (Pecora et al., 2006). Children are removed from their homes and placed in foster care when they experience abuse, neglect, or behavioral problems, or when caregivers can no longer care for them as a result of health or economic issues or incarceration (Kortenkamp & Ehrle, 2002). Time in state care may be short term or long term, as some children stay in state care until they emancipate at age 18. During their time in care, children may experience multiple placements (Perry, 2006), moving between foster homes, group homes, or residential treatment facilities. Mobility contributes to inequality in life chances when young people experience diminished social capital as a result of social network disruption and continual losses in relationships with caregivers or peers (Perry, 2006). Children moving among multiple placements may be required to change schools with every placement contributing to academic difficulties (Pecora et al., 2006). As a result, youth in foster care face gaps in educational attainment. Experiences in multiple foster care placements have also been linked to increased behavioral problems that also inhibit academic achievement (Rubin, O’Reilly, Luan, & Localio, 2007). The purpose of this chapter is to address educational experiences of Latino foster care youth, school mobility as a result of placement changes, and the importance of social capital that may contribute to more positive academic experiences. Some researchers suggest an overrepresentation of minority children in the U.S. foster care system (Chipungu & Bent-Goodley, 2004) and estimate that one in five foster care youth in the United States are Latino (Rousseau, 2008). Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States and there have been increases in the number of Latino children entering the foster care system, especially within states with high concentrations of Latinos, such as New York, California, and Texas (Ayo´n & Marcenko,
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2008). Other literature suggests an underrepresentation of Latino children in foster care as a result of culture and linguistic differences that act as barriers to access to the U.S. child welfare system (Lu et al., 2004; Suleiman, 2003). Latino children tend to be placed in care more quickly and stay longer than non-Latino children (Church, Gross, & Baldwin, 2005). Foster care placements may leave youth disconnected from familiar friends, neighborhoods, networks, and culture (Rousseau, 2008). The disconnection and loss of social networks associated with multiple placements and school mobility exacerbate academic difficulties of the already disparate educational outcomes of Latino youth. This study examines the educational experiences of Latino foster care youth in a major southwestern U.S. city with a majority Latino population. We highlight the experiences of Latino foster care youth who experienced multiple placements and numerous school changes. The chapter addresses the importance of social networks as a form of social capital that helped youth cope with school changes and academic difficulties. The analysis uses definitions of social capital employed by theorists Bourdieu (1986) and Coleman (1988) emphasizing the role of networks and relationships in securing resources. The chapter notes current literature on foster care education and the importance of social capital and networks for improving educational outcomes. There have been few studies that have examined Latino foster care youth experiences (Ayo´n & Marcenko, 2008), and currently, there are no studies that address educational experiences of these youth. Moreover, studies addressing the Latino youth educational crisis have ignored Latino foster care youth as a sub-population within Latino educational outcomes. Within the United States, studies examining youth in foster care have been mostly quantitative. Unlike research within the United Kingdom and Australia, which presents numerous qualitative studies of foster care youth (Biehal, Clayden, Stein, & Wade, 1995; Cashmore & Paxman, 2007; Johnson et al., 2009; Stein & Munro, 2008), few U.S. studies have included American youths’ voices (Hyde & Kammerer, 2009). While there have been a multitude of quantitative and qualitative works that have addressed Latino education (Flores-Gonzalez, 2002; Nieto, 2005; Pedraza & Rivera, 2005; Romo & Falbo, 1996; Stanton-Salazar, 2001; Telles & Ortiz, 2008; Valenzuela, 1999), this research has not addressed foster care placement associated with school mobility. This chapter seeks to bridge this gap by qualitatively examining the social capital garnered by Latino foster care youth to cope with educational experiences and episodes of school mobility.
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LITERATURE REVIEW Social Capital Social capital is a concept often used to describe the connections that exist within social networks formed by various groups in society. These social networks are developed through the building of relationships that assist in accumulating various resources. Absence of these relationships hinders the ability to fulfill certain needs of an individual or group. Social capital as a theoretical framework addressing education has developed following the works of James Coleman and Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu refers to social capital as resources acquired as a result of social networks and ‘‘who you know.’’ These networks provide individuals or groups access to knowledge as well as other resources (Monkman, Donald, & Theramene, 2005). Coleman (1988) suggests social capital facilitates action as a result of networks and relationships that are based on shared values. He further emphasized that strong family ties may facilitate the transfer of social and cultural norms from parent to child and provide children with proper norms and standards. Network relationships with shared values may also extend outside the family unit, providing access to additional resources. For example, StantonSalazar (2004) acknowledges that peers produce ‘‘peer social capital’’ as an extension of family circles and as connections to peer groups. These groups may be beneficial in attaining positive academic outcomes when peer connections encourage scholastic achievement. Social capital theory has been used to analyze the educational attainment of at-risk children and youth who are members of marginalized groups including children in low income neighborhoods, racial and ethnic minorities, and impoverished youth (Lareau, 2003). Educational barriers of these academically at-risk populations are often addressed by the ability to activate social capital in the form of social networks to facilitate educational resources that can improve academic achievement. For Latino foster care youth, building relationships or networks with institutional liaisons advances their ability to secure appropriate resources to help them academically. Such institutional connections are important when youth are of low socioeconomic status and experience little upward mobility, as is the case with Latino foster care youth. There are consistent findings suggesting that children benefit from positive relationships with parents, teachers, and peers who provide school supports (Coleman, 1988; Fram & Altshuler, 2009; Lareau, 2003).
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There is also the possibility that negative social networks, especially among peers, can negatively influence values and school outcomes. FloresGonzalez (2002) found that students who identified with a street culture that promoted truancy and nonschool identities often adopted the attitudes and behaviors associated with being a dropout. The literature on segmented assimilation (Portes & Zhou, 1993) likewise has suggested that depending on which groups of peers students assimilate to, youth may acquire anti-school values and behaviors leading to poor school achievement and downward mobility. The use of social capital as a theoretical base has been largely ignored within the literature addressing the educational experiences of foster care youth. Its use is just beginning to surface in the literature. Fram and Altshuler (2009) suggest that social capital theory is useful in examining education because it focuses on the ‘‘value and functioning’’ (p. 5) of the social relationships that influence children’s development. Further, the situations of foster youth are complex because of the disruptions in relationships and networks due to numerous placements. The social capital available to support youth in foster care is contingent upon the ‘‘value of the resources embedded in their social environment, the presence of an adult that negotiates the environment to access resources for them, the quality of adult–child relationships as a conduit for social capital resources to be transferred, and the helping adult’s orientation to educational success’’ (Fram & Altshuler, 2009, p. 11). Resources associated with loss of one relationship must be outweighed by additional resources through new relationships. Cammarota, Moll, Cannella, and Gonzalez (2008) propose that for marginalized youth, such as Latinos, ‘‘cultural bonding’’ facilitates mental and emotional resilience and coping strategies that help students navigate through adversarial situations that otherwise inhibit the building of constructive relationships needed to access institutional resources. In the case of foster care youth, ‘‘cultural bonding’’ includes positive relationships formed with peers, caseworkers, foster parents, educational liaisons, and others who understand the ‘‘culture’’ of foster care.
Educational Gaps The educational difficulties, including low graduation rates and low postsecondary attainment of Latino youth, have been described as the Latino educational crisis (Gandara & Contreras, 2009). Factors contributing to the ‘‘crisis’’ include poverty, lack of social support, unqualified teachers or
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absence of culturally responsive teaching strategies in urban schools, low parental involvement, insufficient school funding, and misdiagnosis or inappropriate placement of Latino youth in special education classes (Nieto & Rivera, 2010). As a result, Latino youth are at a disadvantage from the time they enter formal schooling. Research also suggests higher incidences of mobility among Latino youth (Ream, 2005). For Latino youth in foster care, mobility exacerbates negative educational outcomes and places them at greater risk as a result of placement changes, loss of networks, unfamiliar environments, and the multitude of emotional and psychological issues related to pre-placement and in-placement experiences. As a vulnerable population, Latino youth in foster care are less likely to graduate from high school than other students. They also experience additional academic problems compared to other Latino youth. Youth in foster care have lower academic achievement, weaker cognitive abilities, and in-classroom behavioral problems that lead to suspension (Altshuler, 1997). Foster care youth in general are more likely to be placed in special education classrooms and experience higher grade retention (Zetlin, Weinberg, & Kimm, 2004). When youth experience placement mobility, special education diagnosis and intervention processes are interrupted placing them at further academic peril (Trout, Hagaman, Casey, Reid, & Epstein, 2008). Foster care youth experience curriculum changes, disruption in peer networks, and adjustment to different teaching techniques (Zetlin, Weinberg, & Shea, 2006). Academic outcomes and graduation rates are further hindered by enrollment delays and loss of records and credits as a result of multiple placements. Moreover, school personnel often lack adequate information and training regarding foster care youth residency policies, making it difficult for them to assist foster care students (Kelly, 2000). According to Nun˜ez (2001), it takes approximately four to six months to recover from each school transfer. Wasserman (2001), following a cohort of 11,562, found students with frequent school changes had lower achievement scores than students with no school changes and higher instances of absenteeism correlated with a higher number of school transfers. All foster care youth in the United States experience at least one or two moves per academic year (National Working Group on Foster Care and Education, 2007), but one study found that one-third of foster care youth had experienced five or more school changes (Courtney, Terao, & Bost, 2004). The effects of this mobility may be devastating. Problems are further compounded when foster care children, as a result of abuse and neglect, are developmentally delayed or are emotionally and socially distressed (Fram & Altshuler, 2009).
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Social and behavioral problems as a result of those transfers interfere with classroom instruction and academic performance. Engec (2006) found higher incidences of negative behavior among mobile youth. The Engec study compared differences in academic achievement and school suspensions between mobile students and nonmobile students. As the number of school transfers increased, students’ academic performance scores decreased. Analysis of suspensions yielded similar results with higher incidences of suspension and behavioral problems linked with increased occurrences of mobility. Fantuzzo and Perlman (2007) added to the evidence of negative outcomes and school mobility noting that students with foster care placement history experienced greater behavioral and literacy problems. These students also struggled with poor work habits, social skills, and school adjustment. McMillen, Auslander, Elze, White, and Thompson (2003) examined the educational history of 262 youth in foster care and found that 73% had been suspended, 16% had been expelled, and 29% had records of physically fighting with other students. Foster care youth experiencing multiple placements are more likely to drop out of secondary school at higher numbers than students not living in foster care (Vinnerljung, Oman, & Gunnarson, 2005; Wolanin, 2005; Zetlin et al., 2004), although their dropout rates may be similar to the dropout rates of other at-risk youth (Pecora et al., 2006; Trout et al., 2008). Valenzuela (1999) demonstrated clearly the importance of positive student– teacher relationships for Latino youth in low-achieving high schools. The social capital fostered through these social networks was key to student achievement. When students move from school to school, they lose those important social connections. On top of that, they may not meet academic requirements in the new school. Foster care youth are more likely to isolate themselves as a result of the negative stigma of foster care and are less likely to participate in extracurricular school activities, exacerbating school disengagement (Kortenkamp & Ehrle, 2002). The ability of Latino foster care youth to deal effectively with life event changes, such as movement associated with placements, may be a result of social capital that facilitates positive school experiences. As youth move from placement to placement, they must adjust to the changes in their environments and losses or changes in social networks. The following examples from interviews with Latino foster care youth who have transitioned out of care address how youth deal with academic difficulties and negative school experiences and the social capital, social networks, and relationships that may provide resources to help youth cope with the negative stressors associated with changing school environments.
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METHODS Participants To identify participants in this qualitative study, we collaborated with two social service agencies which manage foster care alumni and are located in a major urban area in Texas comprised of predominately Latino, low-income residents. As youths came into the agency, the caseworkers explained our project and asked if they wanted to participate. In all, one of the authors of this chapter and a research assistant interviewed 25 Latino former foster care youth who had recently aged out of foster care. Participants were between the ages of 18 and 22. Twelve of the participants interviewed were male and 13 were female. Latino youth are a group seldom addressed in the research literature about foster care youth education or Latino education. We used an emerging research design in which the number of participants in a study was not established ahead of time. New participants were added as new dimensions of the research became apparent through earlier interviews (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Rubin & Rubin, 1995). We interviewed sufficient subjects to reflect the range of participants (Seidman, 2006) and stopped at a point of saturation when we began to hear the same information reported and were no longer hearing anything new (Douglas, 1976; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Rubin & Rubin, 1995; Weiss, 1994).
Interview Development and Protocol Interview protocols were approved by the University Institutional Review Board, and all the youth signed consent forms detailing the project prior to being interviewed. The interviews took place over a period of four months and interviews each lasted approximately an hour and a half. The researchers used a semi-structured interview guide developed with the assistance of a former foster care youth who worked as a research assistant on the project. We also conducted an extensive review of literature on foster care youth to help shape our interviews. Questions were broad and open-ended. The interview topics covered experiences in foster care, school mobility, and educational experiences during care. For instance, questions addressed school changes and classroom experiences. Youth were asked how many times they had moved while in care and the number of schools they
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attended, whether they graduated high school, and their plans for postsecondary education.
Procedures The aim of the study was to explore and understand the experiences of foster care youth including school mobility and educational experiences. The taperecorded interviews were transcribed and coded for emergent themes. Four sociology graduate student researchers coded using consensus coding of interview content noting patterns and themes. Team meetings occurred regularly to discuss codes, analyze themes, and validate transcripts (Kvale & Brinkman, 2009). According to Seidman (2006, p. 55), ‘‘the method of indepth, phenomenological interviewing applied to a sample of participants who all experience similar structural and social conditions gives enormous power to the stories of a relatively few participants.’’ Finally, to cross check our fieldwork and interview data, we presented findings to agency personnel who work with foster care youth and particularly those who helped identify participants.
RESULTS Table 1 highlights various themes emerging from the interviews about foster care youth. These themes provide a comprehensive look at the academic issues of foster care youth, loss of social networks, and social capital that assists youth through the many academic difficulties they encounter as a result of mobility.
Academic Dilemmas of Foster Care Youth Participants interviewed described academic problems they encountered when they moved from school to school as a result of placement changes. Some of these school changes occurred within and between urban public schools, charter schools, and facility placement on campus schools which support foster youth experiencing behavioral and emotional problems. Youth reported problems such as changes in curriculum, lack of communication between schools regarding graduation criteria and appropriate classes, loss of records and credits, special education experiences, and
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Table 1.
Emergent Themes from Discussions of School Mobility and Educational Experiences.
Academic dilemmas of foster care youth Placement changes senior year Special education and exemption Curriculum changes and loss of credits Impact of mobility and loss of social networks Separating from negative stigmas Loss of school and peer networks School disengagement Social networks as resources to improve educational experiences School participation and peers as social capital Foster parents, teachers, and caseworkers as social capital
academic lag that caused them to remain educationally behind and hindered the pursuit of higher education. Most disconcerting were the placement changes that happened senior year or just a few months away from graduation. Placement changes senior year. Jacob was living in a foster home in which he had a very good relationship with his foster parents. His situation turned when he was accused of having alcohol in his room, an accusation that he claimed was false. Jacob was preparing to attend a postsecondary institution after graduation but found himself in fear of missing the opportunity. He described his situation: I got kicked out towards the end; my last month before I graduated last year. Got falsely accused of having alcohol in my room y I could have been in another foster home. I choose not to be because I had two more months to graduate and I really couldn’t afford to jump to another school and then end up graduating somewhere else y since I got kicked out, I’ve been struggling really bad.
Instead of agreeing to be moved, Jacob took it upon himself to find a way to stay at his school to avoid a school change. He decided to seek assistance from a friend, ‘‘I went to a friend’s house where they were charging me one hundred dollars a week to sleep on a couch and pay gas for them to take me to school and to work.’’ Instances of alcohol use often occur in the teen years, and parents usually negotiate a punishment less severe than making the youth leave the home, especially with graduation pending. For youth in foster care, however, breaking rules often means court-ordered placement moves. Jacob argued
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that he was not breaking rules, but evidently the relationship with the foster family was a fragile one. Jacob acted independently to find a place to stay and finish school, but his housing situation was precarious. The financial support from the foster care system and his job helped him pay his friend’s family, but this was not a permanent solution. Special education and exemption. Youth reported being academically behind as a result of being placed in special or behavioral classes, being exempt from state standardized testing, being exempt from classes, and not being able to advocate for themselves. Irene described her experiences in special education classrooms and how she remained at a lower level: Some of the classes, she [teacher] would just put worksheets on the side and you would do it on your own. They wouldn’t teach you anything and so that kind of affected it [education]. And then that one [school] y it helped pretty good, but y they don’t really teach you what you need to know. They would teach you below your level, so you never would get to the level where you should be at y That’s why I never learned because they would put me in a low level...
Irene was aware that lack of challenging work and frequent classroom changes impaired her educational achievement. Irene obviously felt she could have worked above her current level but was not given the opportunity. The lack of appropriate instruction acts as a barrier to postsecondary education. Unable to pass college entrance exams, Irene eventually gave up hope of going to college. Receiving minimal instruction in special education classrooms hinders youths’ ability to reach their full academic potential. Special education placement may be a result of misdiagnosis, lack of needed reevaluation, or the result of constant school mobility. Special behavioral classes isolate youth from mainstream classroom instruction and often result in youth being exempt from critical classes or standardized exams. Rachel described how she was placed in special classes and the ways being exempt from mainstream curriculum impacted her education: They put me in these behavior program classes and it was a downfall because I got behind in subjects and I was exempt all the time. It was easier for me to graduate because they exempt me from the [exit exam]. It was pretty bad. I was exempt from math courses all the way from I think it was the eleventh grade. So y I’m still behind y I think I’m behind because I think I would have been all caught up but they put in those classes y I was getting out of science and all those history courses.
Similar to Irene, Rachel understood how special education classes caused her to lag behind academically. Being tracked into lower level classes may
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become an embarrassment to youth, as there is a stigma associated with such placements. For Rachel, this became a point of contention as she began skipping math classes because she was embarrassed, ‘‘y I was skipping math classes, got into fights with a guy at school y It was kind of embarrassing, the math courses they had me in y So I was skipping.’’ The schools often place students who might lower their school’s achievement record in special education classes where their scores are not counted in the schools’ accountability for student scores. Rachel is a good example of how the foster care system fails to act as advocates for youth. She recognized the problems associated with her placements but had little power, authority, or time to negotiate with school officials, ‘‘I was like, ‘Oh what the heck is going on’ but then again, I couldn’t really understand it so I didn’t really talk to a counselor at school y I didn’t have time to stay after school and or [talk] during classes.’’ Curriculum changes and loss of credits. Lisa described how placement changes and school mobility affected her accumulation of credits for graduation. Curriculum changes also impacted her ability to keep up academically: It was kind of hard because they would lose all my credits, and when I went to the next school I would get started up with that school and then I’d have to move to another school maybe a month later and y it was rough moving from school to school to school to school leaving all my friends and then everything because at different schools you learn, they’re on different parts of the book. They’re not all on one chapter, and so I would miss part of the book and then I would have to learn something else I wasn’t learning in my other school.
Transfers of school records created problems for almost all of the students interviewed. Another foster youth, Irene, described how lack of communication between schools during school changes affected her ability to graduate. She had enough credits to graduate but not the right ones. She lacked a particular course. As a result of the two schools failing to communicate the needed requirement, Irene did not graduate. She explained: y there was this one class that you have to take to graduate and I never took it when I left so y When I went to another school y they didn’t know where to put me because I had already had all my credits. I had twenty four credits already. But you had to do this one class and I never did it y
Although, moving from school to school is a stressful endeavor, some youth see academic success as a way to independence. For example, Candy seeking to separate herself from foster care by aging out at 17 desired to
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graduate in three years instead of four. She spent time taking extra courses at night and in the summer in order to reach her goal of early graduation. Candy described her experience with school mobility and graduation requirements: It was very stressful when I bounced to different placements. Different requirements for school would change, and that was my goal, I am going to be a three year graduate regardless. I spent some summers picking up courses. I went to night school picking up courses just to make sure I graduated in three years because different rural area independent school districts have different requirements. I had to meet whatever requirement of the home that I was living at, at the time, in that area to graduate. I had been very stressed and honestly, I wanted to go to school so I can feel like an adult and get to where I wanted to be in the future.
The desire to overcome obstacles impacting credit accumulation and early graduation contributed to Candy ‘‘activating’’ social capital by engaging the different school institutions in order to accumulate the needed resources to finish school by 17. Perceptions of available resources may prompt internal controls that motivate individuals into solving problems.
Impact of Mobility and Loss of Social Networks The loss of social networks such as families, friends, and peers contributes to negative outcomes when youth are removed from their homes and are forced into an unfamiliar environment. They are not only moved into new residences but also introduced to a life of mobility as they move between several placements while in foster care. Youth in care may face stigmas, isolation, and academic disengagement in the school setting. Youth cope with school mobility according to perceptions of available resources, relational support, and social capital. Separating from negative stigmas. Candy described her school experiences and her feelings about the stigma associated with foster care that she encountered in the schools: I guess the biggest thing that I encountered while in care was the stigma of being in foster care. They [people at school] knew you were in foster care. I had a choice to either go into the charter school, where everybody in the placement went to, which was on campus, or go to a public school. I wanted to go to a public school because I knew I would get a better education at a public school. But that’s when you run into a lot of stigmas that people have with foster care. You would find students and sometimes even teachers who really discriminated against you because they had other students from that placement who acted a fool years before and they automatically assumed that you were going to do that too.
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Candy sought a good education and decided to attend a public school in contrast to other foster youth who attended the on-campus charter schools located on placement facilities. The negative stigma associated with foster care further marginalizes students when they are discriminated against not only by students but by teachers as well. Many Latino foster care youth run away from the foster care system once they turn 16 and can legally leave school. They try to return to their biological families to escape the stigma of being in foster care. Candy used her own advocacy to distant herself from the general foster care population and to distinguish herself and prove she was not like other foster care youth who had caused teachers problems. Foster care youth often isolate themselves within the school setting as a result of discrimination by students and teachers. This isolation prompts disengagement which contributes further to academic deficiencies. However, Candy tried to make relationships that helped her to graduate. She actively participated in school clubs. Her membership in the school yearbook and newspaper club provided access to other school functions such as the prom and football games. Candy engaged in student life and excelled in academics as well. Positive peer relationships facilitated needed social capital resources. Loss of school and peer networks. Rachel, in contrast, did not enjoy school because of various school changes that she experienced. She described how she became indifferent to maintaining friend or peer networks as a result. Her main focus became graduation, ‘‘So you had to lose friends, make new friends and you had to keep up with old friends y It was alright. I didn’t really care much about it as long as I graduated.’’ Another foster care alumnus, Felicity, described feelings about school mobility and how she enjoyed school but then eventually refused to make new friends because of the constant movement: y like with a lot of foster kids, especially like me, the way I felt it’s like I went to a new school and it’s like, ‘I’m going to be here so, oh well, it doesn’t matter.’ That’s how I felt. So you wouldn’t make friends and I would just sometimes be there. When I was at a new school I was real quiet and people would come and talk to me and be like, ‘You want to be my friend?’ and I was like, ‘No, not really, I don’t want friends.’ Because they don’t stay there forever, they go away.
School disengagement. Moving to different group homes and residential facilities also means moving to different schools at the new sites. Jonathan, for example, attended on-site schools at a residential facility to deal with behavioral issues. When asked if placement changes had affected his education he stated, ‘‘y That’s where I’ll go and take all my anger and frustration out on people. I’d been in so many foster cares and so many
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schools that I just got used to it after a while. Like it just didn’t matter if I was going to a new school, it didn’t matter. I knew what I’m capable of in school.’’ School for Jonathan was a place for venting anger and releasing frustration. Similar to Jonathan, Junior became desensitized to multiple placements and school mobility: It’s just pretty much like you have the attitude, ‘Well like I don’t care,’ you know. These teachers are only gonna know me for a little bit. y So just have fun and enjoy your three months because you know in another three months you’re going to be going somewhere else. And when you go to another school, the same thing, you just enjoy it. I mean, I didn’t really focus on school. I was just focused on what’s next and where am I going and my life. Pretty much, just stay out of trouble and have funy.
Junior avoided establishing helpful social networks as a strategy to cope with his school mobility. His attitude about his movement between various schools suggests that he had accepted mobility experiences as normal. Mobility impacted his ability to build lasting peer networks or social capital with teachers or other school personnel and contributed to academic problems. Social Networks as Resources to Improve Educational Experiences As described above, when foster care youth move from school to school, they experience changing social networks of caseworkers, foster parents, teachers, and peers. These networks represent both institutional and peer social capital that aid youth through their school experiences. Research has shown that youth in foster care may have successful educational outcomes when they have consistent support from care providers, have consistent peer networks, are involved in extracurricular school activities, and are in stable schools and placements (Altshuler, 2003). These networks act as school mediators for students experiencing instability. School participation and peers as social capital. Carmen described her early school years when she exhibited severe behavioral problems. Carmen’s problems followed her through school. She lived in nine different placements. Throughout Carmen’s school career, she attended charter schools, foster care facility schools, and public schools. Elementary and middle schools were difficult years, ‘‘I was always fighting. I was always suspended, always in ISS [In School Suspension].’’ By the time Carmen reached high school, she was skipping classes, and fighting with classmates. She explained, ‘‘y my first year was rough because there were all these big
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kids around me, and I didn’t know if I should act tough or be sweet and innocent. So I didn’t know what to do.’’ Carmen’s behavior prompted her foster mother to step in and address the problems at school, ‘‘I remember her [foster mom] telling me, ‘If you don’t act good y I will be shipping you right back out.’y so I stopped fighting y never missed school y all perfect attendancey’’ Carmen focused on graduating, ‘‘It was my prayer that I had to get done. I had to graduate.’’ She loved and respected her last foster mother, a person she still referred to as ‘‘mom.’’ Because of their close relationship, Carmen decided to straighten up. Her high school experience became more positive when she began participating in several school activities. She started to enjoy the social networks she established as a result of her participation: I liked high school because no one really judged me in high school. Everyone just kind of did their own thing and they had their own little groups and you had your own friends and that’s what I liked about high school y I did a lot of activities in school. I was a PAL which is a Peer Assistance Leadership Program. I loved that because I worked with kids just like myself but younger. I was also in an association for marketing students. I did a lot of cooking programs because I wanted to be a chef. My friend was in cosmetology, one of my best friends in high school, I worked in her studio doing stuff with her. I did volleyball my first year in high school. I did ROTC for two years. I finally grew up I guess.
These multiple activities opened ways for Carmen to build peer networks. Carmen’s story provides an example of the importance of peers and the social networks school activities provide. Social capital provided through peer and friend connections created emotional and cultural resources that helped Carmen adjust to adverse circumstances and counter isolation in the school setting (Cammarota et al., 2008). Carmen reported being a good student and she eventually graduated. Placement stability as well as participation in school activities provides opportunities for peer networks that may change the students’ perception of school, thus making school a positive place for academic growth. Foster parents, teachers, and caseworkers as social capital. Coleman (1988) noted the importance of social relationships among students, parents, and teachers for positive academic outcomes. He documented how social capital may be built through these social relationships. Foster care students are further disenfranchised by the educational system when there are no parents to advocate on their behalf. They are left with rotating foster parents, educational liaisons, and caseworkers serving several youth at one time. Time constraints and lack of funding contribute to an inability for states as
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guardians to provide the social capital that foster care students need to be academically successful. Melanie illustrates the importance of caring adult relationships and how these networks aid them during times of mobility and adverse circumstances. Melanie had experienced six placements that included group homes, foster homes, and psychiatric facilities. Melanie enjoyed school and described the importance of being in school and the social capital she found there, ‘‘y I needed to be around people. If I stayed by myself, I felt sad, and lonely, and worthless y I just need to be around life.’’ Foster care youth experiencing multiple placements often feel isolated as a result of the continual changes in their environments, and school can provide a supportive refuge. Melanie’s foster parents filled the parental role by assisting her with her schoolwork when her grades were falling, ‘‘When I went into their home I was making F’s y My foster dad would stay up at night with me late just helping me with my schoolwork. I started getting A’s and B’s with his help.’’ Melanie’s foster father provided an important resource assisting her with schoolwork. This assistance helped Melanie perform better academically. Foster parents taking an interest in Melanie’s education became an important form of social capital both in the short term and long term. Coleman (1988) emphasized that strong family ties translate social and cultural norms from parent to child. In this example, social capital in the form of parental involvement and academic mentoring reinforced the importance of academics and learning. Research suggests that significant student–teacher relationships also increase a sense of belonging (Nieto, 2005). When students have caring and ‘‘culturally responsive’’ teachers, they perform better academically (Valenzuela, 1999). Supportive teachers understand the special needs of foster care students. Melanie appreciated the support and encouragement she received from teachers who believed in her: y all my teachers were awesome, they were cool. They wanted to help me. They didn’t want to see me fail. They would tell me, ‘You’re a bright student. You have lots ahead of you. You’re smart. You just need to try a little harder, push yourself, you know.’ They would tell me that I would make it and I did.
It is evident that Melanie had positive relationships with her teachers. Their encouraging words helped her succeed academically. Foster care youth may experience caseworker turnover as well as placement mobility. For youth fortunate enough to keep caseworkers for longer periods of time, these relationships became important as they maintained some form of steady contact with at least one caring adult. This
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was particularly crucial during residential and school changes. Studies suggest that when foster care youth have at least one significant caring adult in their lives, they have better life outcomes (Chamberlain et al., 2004). Melanie’s caseworker was someone she could count on to help navigate her mobility experiences. She described the relationship: She was there in practically everything you can think of. She was there for my school. She was there for placing me in that home. She was there for my grades. She would lecture me that I need to pick up my grades. She was just there. Anytime I would fall down she would pick me up.
Melanie held her caseworker in high regard because the caseworker had been there through placement moves, during times of uncertainty, and through Melanie’s difficult school experiences. Latino youth interviewed described bonding with caseworkers and the close relationships that helped during mobility and adverse times. One caseworker provided ‘‘parental’’ support by attending school functions and assisting with schoolwork, another helped with academics paying out of her own pocket to provide a private tutor. Caseworkers filled the role of supportive parent and provided additional social capital to help with schoolwork for some Latino foster care youth.
DISCUSSION This chapter examined Latino students in the foster care system, their educational outcomes, and the role that social capital and social networks play in these outcomes. The students interviewed with successful educational outcomes had maintained positive contacts with caseworkers, teachers, foster parents, or school-oriented peers, with some even enrolling in postsecondary education. Youth in the foster system face many challenges during their time in care. They experience residential mobility as they transfer between shelters, foster homes, group homes, residential treatment, and psychological facilities. This movement hinders their ability to maintain relationships and results in loss of social capital that contributes to poor academic outcomes (Perry, 2006). This chapter incorporates the notion that social capital refers to resources that are created by virtue of group membership. Stable placements and minimal disruption are important for youth to retain meaningful connections with peers and teachers. These social networks help youth navigate difficult school experiences.
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This study addresses an understudied and vulnerable population – Latino foster care youth. Though much has been written about the Latino educational crisis, Latino foster care youth have been ignored in the existing literature on Latino educational attainment. In addition to the inequities associated with pre-placement and in-placement experiences, research has shown that foster care youth face many challenges once they age out of care at 18 and transition to adulthood (Pecora et al., 2006). Negative outcomes include poverty, homelessness, unemployment, early pregnancy, incarceration, and failure to access or complete postsecondary education. The importance of adequately preparing youth to become independent and fully functioning adults cannot be understated. Moreover, this research has emphasized the importance of positive social capital for Latino foster care youth and their educational achievement, evidenced in both adult and peer social networks. Educational attainment plays a key role in the ability for transitioning youth to become successful individuals. Adequate K-12 preparation and positive social networks provide youth the academic grounding to continue on to higher education. Similar to existing literature on foster care youth education, this research found that Latino youth experienced a variety of problems hindering educational attainment which included completing high school graduation requirements and pursuit of postsecondary education (Kortenkamp & Ehrle, 2002; Trout et al., 2008: Zetlin et al., 2006). School mobility contributed to inconsistencies of classroom instruction, loss in credits, special education tracking, poor assessment or reevaluation, exemption from mainstream classroom instruction and state standardized exams, and school disengagement as a result of loss or changes in social networks. In addition, youth experienced stigmas and discrimination associated with foster care. Although youth in this study described negative school experiences and academic problems as a result of school mobility, this research also found that foster care youth benefited from social capital both academically and in other ways that motivated student school participation and encouraged academic progression. Similar to literature addressing Latino youth education, positive school-oriented social networks play an important role in building social capital to improve educational outcomes (StantonSalazar, 2001; Valenzuela, 1999). Peer networks fostered through school participation contributed to changing perceptions of the school environment that led to better academic experiences. Adult networks were critical for providing advocacy and institutional support for Latino youth. Research suggests that parental involvement is also important for
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educational attainment (Lareau, 2003). Youth perform better academically when they have a parent to advocate on their behalf. For many foster care youth without parents, adult advocacy may be absent or sporadic. Youth in this study described how foster parents, caseworkers, and teachers provided needed support and advocacy to help them improve academically. Along with the multitude of academic struggles Latino youth may experience, foster care youth face negative stigmas and discrimination within the school environment which exacerbates difficulties associated with mobility. As a result, when foster care students exhibit problem behaviors, social capital in the form of support networks are critical to mediate problems and counter negative school experiences by providing positive social support and outlets. Social capital is not a ‘‘cure all’’ for resolving the poor educational attainment of youth in care. This study makes clear the need to examine the social capital garnered by Latino foster care youth as a resource that is used to cope with educational experiences and school mobility. As shown in the interviews conducted in this study, social capital may exist intermittently as placements and schools change, but when available may play a role in mediating academic struggles of youth experiencing social network disruption. We argue that social capital is not constant, but that it may ‘‘ebb and flow’’ along life and location changes. This research underscores the importance of aiding youth in building social networks to improve educational experiences and outcomes, policymakers must continue to address the issue of multiple placements and school changes and work to resolve the frequent mobility of youth in the foster care system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS One of the research assistants was a college student aging out of foster care who identified housing needs as an important issue for foster care alumni. The work that provided the basis for this publication was supported by funding under HSIAC-02-TX-08 with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of University Partnerships. The authors and publisher are solely responsible for the accuracy of the statements and interpretations contained in this publication. Such interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views of the Government.
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MATH AND READING ACHIEVEMENT GAPS – NEW INSIGHTS TO OLD PROBLEMS Yingyi Ma ABSTRACT Purpose – This chapter focuses on the family and school influences on the achievement gaps in math and reading by gender, race, and nativity. Methodology – With the longitudinal data from the National Education Longitudinal Studies, this chapter uses panel data technique to model for the changes of the achievement from the three time points of observation, 8th grade, 10th grade, and 12th grade. This study proposes the concept of ‘‘low-level constrained curriculum’’ to characterize the curriculum structure that leads to the universal low level of course taking among students within the same school. Findings – The analysis shows that this kind of curriculum structure has the most damaging effect on individual students’ math achievement outcomes. For the analysis on parental involvement, the results show that school involvement is more effective than home involvement for math achievement, but not for reading. Domain-specific parental involvement is more
The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 51–74 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014008
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important than general parental involvement for both math and reading. These findings have important theoretical and policy implications. Keywords: Achievement gaps; curriculum structure; parental involvement
INTRODUCTION Math and reading achievement during K-12 have been widely considered to be the key indicators for academic performance and college attendance and attainment in the future. National education initiatives ranging from No Child Left Behind during the George W. Bush Administration to Race to the Top during the current Obama Administration both intend to address the math and reading achievement gaps in the precollege years. Despite the controversy around the effectiveness of those policies, people rarely disagree with the intention and the goal of those policies. The American secondary schools are characterized by the achievement gaps between genders, racial groups, and, more recently, immigrant and native students. The achievement gaps are deeply troubling because research has established that they are closely linked with future life chances, including both education and labor market outcomes (Blau & Duncan, 1967; Kerckhoff, 1996; Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Rosenbaum, 2004). On the other hand, the achievement gaps along gender, race, and nativity lines may also be reinforced by the unequal contexts stratified along the same line in the society (Apple, 1982; Carter, 2005; Jones, 1984; Lee, 2002). Among the various contexts children grow up with, family and school have immense impacts on children’s achievement outcomes. As such, this chapter focuses on the family and school influences on the achievement gaps by gender, race, and nativity. In particular, this chapter examines parental involvement and secondary school curriculum structure as key aspects of family and school influences. With data from the National Education Longitudinal Studies (NELS), this chapter uses panel data technique to model for the changes of the achievement from the three time points of observation, 8th grade, 10th grade, and 12th grade. This study proposes the concept of ‘‘low-level constrained curriculum’’ to characterize the curriculum structure that leads to the universal low level of course taking among students within the same school. The analysis shows that this kind of curriculum structure has the most damaging effect on students’ math achievement outcomes. For the analysis on parental involvement, the results show that school involvement is more effective than home involvement for math achievement, but not for reading. Domain-specific parental involvement
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is more important than general parental involvement for both math and reading. These findings have important theoretical and policy implications.
FAMILY INFLUENCES Previous studies of family influences center on two aspects: family socioeconomic status (SES) and parental involvement. Family SES, often captured by parental status variables such as education, occupation, and income, is found to be consistently influential on children’s achievement outcomes (Featherman & Hauser, 1978; Sewell & Hauser, 1975; Deil-Amen & Turley, 2007; Jencks & Phillips, 1998). However, family background does not directly capture what parents and children specifically do together regarding schoolwork. Given this, the current study looks closely at parental involvement. Adding to the existing literature of parental home and school involvement, this study also differentiates between domain-specific involvement and general involvement. Domain-specific involvement refers to what parents actually do in specific subject fields that are related to children’s achievement outcomes (Ma, 2009). Before proceeding to parental involvement, I first discuss the impacts of family SES. Family SES Studies of family background on children’s education outcomes are quintessential in stratification research. Starting from Blau and Duncan’s landmark work, American Occupational Structure (1967), family SES has been found to be positively associated with general achievement/attainment outcomes and domain-specific achievement, with mathematical achievement most extensively studied (Oakes, 1990; Catsambis, 1994; Pallas & Alexander, 1983; Leahey & Guo, 2001). The rationale is that upper-class parents tend to know more about the education process, and they are better equipped to provide their children advantageous learning environment. For example, they can hire extra tutors for their children to enhance their mastery of certain subjects (Lareau, 2002). Empirical studies focus more on math than reading. Education scholars have argued and found that mathematical learning is particularly responsive to school experiences and there is a closer alignment between teaching and testing in mathematics than other subjects (Murnane, 1975; Gamoran, 1987). Explanations for this match include a more standardized secondary curriculum in math than in other subjects, heavy reliance on a modest number of widely used textbooks, and traditional training of math teachers
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(Romberg, 1992). On the other hand, a child may pick up reading from more varied sources than math. Family may provide disparate learning environment for reading-related knowledge acquisition, by offering access to resources such as books and magazines to enhance reading competence, and by communicating between parent and children that over time could help children accumulate vocabulary. As such, this study hypothesizes that family SES has a larger influence on reading achievement outcomes than math. However influential family SES may be, it does not capture the family dynamics that affect children’s behavior and achievement (Kalmijn,1994). Considering this, I discuss parental involvement, representing the concrete actions of parents in affecting their children’s education. I first discuss the home-based and school-based parental involvement established in the literature, then focus on the distinction between general and domain-specific parental involvement, which is less developed in the literature.
Parental involvement Parental involvement has garnered close scholarly attention in the past two decades, especially after Coleman conceptualized parental involvement as a sort of ‘‘family social capital’’ to actualize existing family human capital (Coleman & Hoffer, 1987; Coleman, 1988). Coleman argues that if parents do not spend time with their children, and are not actively involved with their children’s education, then parents’ own human capital becomes irrelevant to their children’s development. Home Involvement and School Involvement Parental involvement at home normally refers to parent–child discussion, parents checking up children’s homework, restricting children’s TV time, and monitoring children’s social activity, etc. Parental involvement at school includes parents attending parent–teacher association (PTA) conferences, parental participation in school volunteer activities, etc. Studies of home involvement find that parental involvement boosts children’s education outcomes (Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994; Lareau, 2002). Still, some research examines both home involvement and school involvement and intends to assess the relative importance of the two. For example, Steinberg (1992) finds that the type of parental involvement that makes a real difference is that which actually draws the parent into the school physically – attending school programs, teacher conferences, and ‘‘back to school’’ nights. The types of involvement that parents practice most often – checking over homework,
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encouraging children to do better, overseeing children’s learning from home – have not been found to be useful once a child has entered secondary school. Steinberg (1992) argues that ‘‘showing up at school programs on a regular basis takes a great deal of more effort than helping out at home, and this effort could send a strong message about how important school is to them, and by extension, how important it should be to their child’’ (p. 126). Certainly, parents from different racial–ethnic backgrounds have differential access to school resources and, therefore, are involved in school activities to the varying extent. For example, Stanton-Salazar (1997) found that Latino parents lack such resources. He argues that Latino parents have fewer opportunities to enter into relationships with other parents and institutional agent, such as teachers and counselors. He identified parental distrust of the school and cultural barriers (e.g., discrimination against parents who lacked English fluency) as forces that discourage parental participation in their children’s schoolwork. General Involvement and Domain-Specific Involvement The conventional indicators of parental involvement largely pertain to general educational processes, without domain-specific considerations. For example, studies usually examine how much parent and child discuss their education, but do not ask what they discuss about, whether there is any emphasis on any particular subject for parents and their children (e.g., McNeal, 1999). However, in practice, parental involvement and encouragement often is subject specific. According to Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (1997), parents choose to involve in their children’s education in various forms and formats, which will influence the particular skill and knowledge children develop. For example, some parents choose to help with their children’s math homework, and others try to cultivate their children’s music or arts interests. Parents signal differential degree of importance for various subjects, and sometimes they actualize their preferences/biases by enrolling children in out-of-school classes, such as art class or computer class. This could help their children gain a competitive edge on those particular subjects. Note that the conceptualization of conventional parental involvement does not exclude domain-specific involvement. For example, parent–child discussion may be not only about general learning and schooling but also particular subjects. Also, if parents have substantive knowledge or advanced training in a subject, when they check up homework, they could essentially tutor their children to solve specific problems, rather than just disciplining them. Therefore, it would be useful to empirically test the role of domainspecific involvement for children’s achievement outcomes.
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SCHOOL CURRICULUM STRUCTURE In what follows, I first discuss the two contrasting curriculum structure in American high schools: comprehensive vs. constrained curriculum. Then, I introduce a new category of ‘‘low-level constrained curriculum’’ and discuss its potential significance in understanding the achievement gaps. Comprehensive versus Constrained Curriculum According to Lee, Smith, and Croninger (1997), any high school’s curriculum reflects a formal codification of choices about what knowledge is deemed both worthy of transmission to younger generations and within the capacity of its students to master. From this definition, high school curriculum is, by and of itself, a school choice. As long as this is a decision or choice on the school part, there must be large variations among different schools in their curriculum structure. Some may be oriented toward a relatively demanding curriculum at a given grade level and, therefore, offer higher-level courses, such as calculus in 10th grade; others may be oriented toward a less demanding curriculum and offer more lower level courses. The variation in curriculum structure also manifests in that some schools may require all, or most, of the students at a given grade level take similar courses, whereas other schools may relax that requirement and allow students to take different courses based on their abilities and interests. This could result in vastly different learning opportunities for students within the same school. This distinction between school curriculum structures reflects deep philosophical divides regarding what secondary schools should achieve in educating their students with various intellectual and social attributes. The distinction has been reflected in the label of the ‘‘comprehensive curriculum’’ and ‘‘constrained curriculum’’ (Lee et al., 1997; Raudenbush & Willms, 1995). Under the comprehensive approach, schools instruct different knowledge to different groups of students, based on their abilities and interests. Therefore, the comprehensive curriculum offers a diversifying approach to address the existing variations in student body. The constrained curriculum, on the other hand, offers a single set of academic coursework for all students within schools. This approach, while acknowledging differences within the student body, gives precedence to the commonality of academic pursuit among all students. In other words, constrained curriculum reflects the belief that while there are differences in intellectual and social attributes among students, there are common academic requirements for all the students at a given grade level, and certain knowledge should be taught and mastered by all the students within the same school.
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These two approaches largely arise from the debate over what form the public high school curriculum should take, for most of the 20th century. The debate was settled in favor of the comprehensive curriculum. And the rationale is that, by providing a wide array of options, ‘‘high schools would serve democracy by offering usable studies to everyone, rather than dwelling on academic abstractions that would interest only a few’’ (Powell, Farrar, & Cohen, 1985, p. 260). Under comprehensive curriculum structure, schools may have both high-end and low-end courses available for students to take, and, therefore, students’ variation in course taking within the same school could be quite large. Under constrained curriculum, students are provided with similar sets of coursework, so the variation among students is small. Since constrained curriculum encourages all the students to take academic courses, the average of students’ course taking may be higher than that of students in schools with comprehensive curriculum structure. What is the implication on the individual students’ achievement and course taking patterns? This study expects that the high-end course offering may stimulate students to take those advanced courses and have a higher achievement, whereas the low-end or remedial courses may inadvertently offer opportunities for students to make slow or little progress. Low-Level Constrained Curriculum The education research literature has focused extensively on the disadvantaged schools that severely restricted students’ opportunities to access knowledge (for an overview, see Oakes, 1990). In those schools, course offerings are concentrated on the low-end subjects or remedial courses, to the extent that students do not have much room to explore but de facto end up with a similar set of courses of study at lower levels. However, the type of curriculum structure in those schools cannot be located within the picture of current scholarly discussion on curriculum structure, that is, the binary divide between comprehensive and constrained curriculum. It is certainly not comprehensive curriculum, as diverse set of courses are not available; it does not belong to conventional category of constrained curriculum, which includes a narrow set of rigorous academic courses. As such, we need to differentiate the narrow set of low-level curriculum structure from the narrow set of rigorous high-level curriculum structure. ‘‘Low-level constrained curriculum’’ is prevalent in disadvantaged schools with high minority student concentration, where students do not have much exposure to challenging courses and take few advanced courses, and the variation of course taking among students within the same school is small. Students there may get good grades by their schools’ standards, yet have
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little competitive advantage compared to students attending other schools. More importantly, students from schools of ‘‘low-level constrained curriculum’’ are put at a severe disadvantage for postsecondary schooling.
DATA AND SAMPLE Data in this chapter come from the public-use National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS: 88–92), collected by National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The NELS is based on a nationally representative sample of high school students. The 1988 8th grade cohort was followed at two-year intervals as the students passed through high school and entered the postsecondary education. Therefore, it has rich precollege information, including both students’ academic preparation and parental involvement during secondary school years. In what follows, I elaborate the particular analytical sample in this study. NELS: 88–92 provides measures of math and reading standardized achievement score for three time points: 8th grade, 10th grade, and 12th grade. The final analytical samples for mathematical and reading achievement are subject to three conditions. First, the sample includes all students who identify themselves with one of the four major racial–ethnic groups: nonHispanic white, non-Hispanic black, Hispanics, and Asian, which is necessary for the examination of racial–ethnic achievement gap. Second, the sample excludes schools of fewer than five students, in order to provide a statistically valid estimate for the school-aggregate measure, such as school curriculum structure. Third, the sample includes only students with non-missing mathematic achievement score for the analysis of math achievement. Similarly, the analytical sample for reading achievement includes only students with non-missing reading achievement scores. With these restrictions, the final number of observations for mathematical achievement is 44,998, with 17,720 unique individual students, and the corresponding sample for reading achievement is 45,011, with 17,721 unique individual students.
MEASUREMENTS Dependent Variable: Achievement Mathematics and Reading Achievements They are continuous variables measuring standard achievement tests for students at 8th grade, 10th grade, and 12th grade. Therefore, they are time
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varying at three time periods. In multivariate analysis, they are normalized with the mean being 0 and standard deviation 1. Independent Variables: Demographics Sex: 1 refers to male, female as the reference group. Race: Black, Hispanic, and Asian are three dummy variables to indicate individual student’s race, and white is the reference group. Immigrant Student: Immigrant student is defined as both the child and at least one of the child’s parents born outside the United States.
Independent Variables: Curriculum Structure School Mean, Highest Mathematics Course Taken until 10th Grade This is a school aggregate from individual student course taking information, created as within-school average of student-level measure. This measure represents the average highest mathematics course taken for students at each school. School Standard Deviation, Highest Mathematics Course Taken up until 10th Grade This is created as within-school standard deviation of highest math courses taken by individual students. This measure represents the variability of how far students go in math pipeline at each school. Low-end Courses: Number of Mathematics Courses Offered Below Algebra This is from school-reported curriculum offerings in 10th grade, constructed as the sum of six dummy-coded courses: General Mathematics I, General Mathematics II, Business Mathematics, Consumer Mathematics, Remedial Math, and Pre-Algebra. The sum of these six dummy variables represents how much math coursework below algebra schools is offered in 10th grade, which indicates the low-end math course offering for each school. Low-Level Constrained Curriculum This concept is operationalized as a school-level variable indicating that the school is characterized by a low level of the variation in students’ course taking, in conjunction with a low level of course offering. The former is measured as below the average of the variation in course taking, and the latter is measured as above the average of the low-end courses being offered.
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Calculus Offering This is also a school level variable, constructed as a dummy variable indicating whether a school offers calculus either as a regular course or an Advance Placement (AP) course in 10th grade. This variable represents the high-end math course offering for each school. School Mean, Sum of Reading-Related Courses Taken in 10th grade This is a school aggregate from individual student course taking information, created as within-school average of the student-level measure. This measure represents the average number of reading-related courses taken for students at each school. School Standard Deviation, Sum of Reading-Related Courses Taken in 10th grade This is created as within-school standard deviation of the average of reading-related courses taken by individual students up until 10th grade. This measure represents the variability of students’ course taking in readingrelated subjects for each school. There is no course offering information for reading-related courses from public-released school survey in NELS data. Therefore, this study will not be able to gauge the course offering impact on students’ achievement for reading-related subjects. School Sector: School choice on curriculum structure is related to school sector. Cross-sector research has established that Catholic schools tend to have high-level constrained curriculum structure, and other private schools usually are more likely to provide advanced course offerings than public schools (Bryk, Lee, & Holland, 1993; Coleman, Hoffer, & Kilgore, 1982; Lee, Chow-Hoy, Burkam, Geverdt, & Smerdon, 1998). Two dummy variables from school file: Catholic and non-Catholic private, indicating whether schools are Catholic or private. Other schools are public schools.
Independent Variables: Family Background Family SES Family SES is a composite measure created by NELS. It consists of both parents’ years of education, the SEI score of their occupations, and annual family income, which are equally weighted. The scale is normalized so that the sample has a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. If single parent, then only one parent information is taken into account.
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Parental Expectation for Children’s Education This is measured by a dummy variable indicating whether parents expect their children to attend college. Independent Variables: Parental Involvement General and Domain-Specific Parental Involvement For general involvement, I rely on four measures. One is parent–child discussion. Parents were asked how often they discussed seven schoolrelated topics with their children at 8th grade, including school course selection, school activities, things studied in class, grades, preparation for the ACT/SAT test, going to college, and job possibilities after high school. Responses for each item were coded 0 ¼ never, 1 ¼ sometimes, and 2 ¼ often. Combining all seven items gives a possible range from 0 to 14 with higher score representing higher level of parent–child discussion. The second measure pertains to how often parents monitor their children’s life. This measure is obtained when children are in 8th grade. Parents were asked how often parents check children’s homework, how often parents require chores done, how often parents limit time watching TV, and how often parents limit children’s time going out with friends. Responses for each item were coded 0 ¼ never/rarely, 1 ¼ sometimes, and 2 ¼ often. Combining all four items gives a possible range from 0 to 8 with higher score indicating more frequent monitoring. The third and fourth measures pertain to involvement in school activities and they are participation in parent–teacher organization and school volunteer activities. Respondents were asked whether or not they belong to parent–teacher organization, attend parent–teacher meetings, take part in parent–teacher activities, and act as a volunteer in the school. To capture domain-specific parental involvement, it is ideal to have access to a history of parenting activities or parent–child interactions in various domains. But constrained by survey data, I have to utilize the limited information NELS provides. I create a series of dummy variables indicating whether students were sent to art class, history class, or computer class after school at 8th grade, and the parallel information is not available at other grade levels. Analytical Strategy Since the achievement variables in this study are time varying, I examined how the achievement in math and reading changes during the time periods
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NELS has covered, namely, 8th grade, 10th grade, and 12th grade. I used panel data technique to investigate these questions. In what follows, I elaborate on the panel data methods used for achievement analysis. Theoretically, some unobserved individual characteristics, such as innate ability, might operate in the process leading to change in achievement. In order to test whether these unmeasured individual characteristics, the so-called individual heterogeneity matter in the model for students’ achievement, I compare ordinary least square (OLS) model with random-effect (RE) model. OLS assumes that the large number of factors not being measured can be appropriately summarized by the error term. The error term is a random variable, assumed not to be correlated with any existing independent variables in the model. In addition, the errors are assumed independently and identically distributed (IID), which may be violated because of the three repeated measures of achievement in this study. As the data are essentially of two levels (personyear), we can decompose the error term into two parts: one part represents factors peculiar to person-time unit; the other part reflects individual-specific factors that do not vary much over time, such as one’s innate ability. While OLS models treat the errors as IID, RE models decompose the errors (Cheng, 2003). For example, student’s innate ability is an unmeasured individual attribute in this study and is a constant from 8th grade to 12th grade. OLS models ignore that innate ability is the same for the three repeated measures for each individual and that violates the IID assumption, whereas RE models explicitly specify an individual-specific error term. These two model specifications will lead to different estimates in the standard error of coefficients. In the event that unobserved individual heterogeneity is present, OLS model will have incorrect estimates of standard errors. Let yit be math achievement for student i in wave t (t ¼ 1, 2, 3), Zi observed individual characteristics such as race and gender, Fit is a vector of family-level variables including family background and parental involvement, Sit is a vector of school-level variables including school curriculum characteristics and school sectors. The OLS model is yit ¼ a þ b0 Fit þ d0 Sit þ l0 Zi þ eit As elaborated above, OLS model does not include unobserved individual heterogeneity as part of its random component, whereas RE model does. Let ai indicate unobserved individual characteristics such as individual innate ability. The RE model specification is yit ¼ b0 Fit þ d0 Sit þ l0 Zi þ ðai þ eit Þ
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The null hypothesis is that the variance of ai is zero, and I will use a w2 test to examine the existence of the RE. Next, the question is whether to treat ai as fixed effect (FE) or RE. For this purpose, I will compare RE model against FE model. FE model treats unobserved individual attributes as fixed, rather than random variables, thus allows ai correlating with the explanatory variables in the model. In the presence of the correlation between the unobserved individual attributes with the covariates in the model, estimates from RE model are biased. Only FE model can produce unbiased estimates. FE model relies on the variance over time within each individual (within-variance); short panel data may conceivably produce small within-variance, which leads FE estimates unreliable. The data in this study covers three waves (8th grade, 10th grade, and 12th grade). Therefore, I will examine the within-variance for the time-varying variables before I settle on FE model for analysis. If the variance is too small, the FE estimator would be unreliable and largely insignificant. I will have to impose the assumption of orthogonality, that is, unobserved individual heterogeneity independent of explanatory variables, and resort to random-effect model.
RESULTS In the sections below, I present descriptive and multivariate results of this study. Descriptive Results Table 1 presents the mean differences in achievement by gender, race, and nativity. Mean differences are measured using the d-statistic (Cohen, 1977). The d-statistic is defined as the mean achievement score for one group minus the other group, divided by the pooled within-group standard deviation. Take gender differences, for example, the d-statistic measured mean gender differences, defined as the mean achievement score for females minus the mean achievement score for males, divided by the pooled within-gender standard deviation. Therefore, a positive value of d indicates a female advantage, and a negative value of d indicates a male advantage in average achievement. In general, the absolute values of d around 0.20, 0.50, and 0.80 indicate small, medium, and large differences in magnitude, respectively (Cohen, 1977). The same logic applies to mean race differences and mean nativity differences. Using this criterion, we can see that on average, female students outperform male students in reading, whereas male students outperform female students in
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Table 1.
Mean Achievement Differences by Gender, Race, and Nativity. 8th Grade
10th Grade
12th Grade
Math Female–male Asian–white Hispanic–white Black–white Immigrant–native N
0.058 0.003 0.594 0.772 0.091 23,648
0.035 0.263 0.705 0.899 0.135 17,723
0.094 0.309 0.716 0.900 0.145 14,183
Reading Female–male Asian–white Hispanic–white Black–white Immigrant–native N
0.185 0.051 0.654 0.755 0.117 23,643
0.183 0.008 0.632 0.717 0.016 17,760
0.204 0.003 0.563 0.772 0.004 14,176
po0.05, po0.01, po0.001 (two-tailed test), for the hypotheses that there is no mean difference between groups under comparison. Data Source: NELS: 88–92.
math. We should notice that the male lead in math is quite negligible, and the female advantage in reading (0.204) is larger, yet should still be interpreted as a small difference according to Cohen’s criterion. Racial differences are more notable. Whites outperform Hispanic students and black students noticeably, in both math and reading. The black–white gap, in particular, is quite large at all grade levels and for both subjects. Asian students lead white students in math, and almost no Asian–white difference can be seen in reading. It is worth noting that Asian lead in math happens not only in 8th grade but also in 10th grade, and that trend continues in 12th grade. In terms of nativity difference, immigrant students have small advantages in math over native students across the three grade levels. For reading, immigrant students fall a bit short at 8th grade and 10th grade, but the gap is almost nonexistent by 12th grade.
Multivariate Results Determining Whether Random Effects Exist As elaborated in the section of analytical strategy, I first compare the static OLS model with the static RE model to test whether there is systematic RE
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of unmeasured individual characteristics that affect the achievement outcomes. I use Breusch and Pagan Lagrangian multiplier test to detect the existence of REs. The test results are Test: Var(u) ¼ 0 (hypothesis: the variance of unmeasured individual characteristics is zero) w2 (1) ¼ 25371.81 Prob4w2 ¼ 0:0000 The statistical test shows that the null hypothesis can be rejected; therefore, our model needs to take into account of the unmeasured individual heterogeneity. OLS model is not sufficient for the analysis. Determining Whether Fixed-Effect Model is Feasible The next question is whether to treat this individual heterogeneity as RE or FE. But before I proceeded, I examined the within-variation of the timevarying variables in the model. The within-variation refers to the variation across time for each individual, whereas between-variation refers to that variation among individual students. Fixed-effect model differencing estimates are dependent on within-variation. Hence, there should be enough within-variation before we can be confident in using fixed-effect model. The appendix shows within-variance for each time-varying variable and the ratio of within-variance over total variance. From the table, we can see that within-variance is very small, universally less than 15% of the overall variance. So the major source of the variance in this data is betweenvariation. This restriction makes it unrealistic to utilize fixed-effect model, whose differencing estimator is dependent on sufficient within-variation. The same rationale underlies the infeasibility of using dynamic model. Therefore, I settled on static random-effect model as the final model for achievement analysis. Tables 2 and 3 present the static RE model for mathematical and reading achievement analysis. Our descriptive results for achievement find that gender gap is small and opposite in direction in math and reading. The multivariate analysis of the math achievement confirms the male lead in math and female lead in reading. However, after taking into account family and school variables, the male advantage in math disappears, while the female reading scores remain higher than the males. Racial disparities still exist, albeit reduced, after taking into account of family and school factors. Blacks and Hispanics students are disadvantaged in math and reading achievement, as compared to whites, whereas Asians lead whites in math
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Table 2.
Static Random Effect Model on Math Achievement (N ¼ 44,998). Static RE Incremental Models
Demographic variables Male Asian Hispanic Black Immigrant
Family variables Family SES Computer at home Expectation for college Participation in PTA Parents as school volunteers Parent–child discussion Parental monitoring Children sent to computer class
School variables Catholic school Private school Average math course taking SD of math course taking Low-end courses Low constrained curriculum Calculus
po0.001, po0.01, po0.05. Data Source: NELS: 88–92.
I
II
III
0.044 (0.014) 0.268 (0.031) 0.659 (0.021) 0.817 (0.023) 0.075 (0.033)
0.028 (0.012) 0.224 (0.027) 0.302 (0.019) 0.578 (0.021) 0.131 (0.029)
0.023 (0.012) 0.229 (0.027) 0.284 (0.019) 0.566 (0.020) 0.123 (0.028)
0.384 (0.009) 0.235 (0.015) 0.390 (0.014) 0.018 (0.006) 0.052 (0.018) 0.005 (0.002) 0.003 (0.003) 0.159 (0.021)
0.326 (0.009) 0.211 (0.015) 0.366 (0.013) 0.015 (0.006) 0.027 (0.017) 0.006 (0.002) 0.001 (0.003) 0.163 (0.021) 0.036 (0.016) 0.113 (0.019) 0.266 (0.012) 0.008 (0.015) 0.002 (0.003) 0.17 (0.001) 0.022 (0.013)
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Table 3.
Random Effect Model on Reading Achievement (N ¼ 45,011). Static RE Incremental Models
Demographic variables Male Asian Hispanic Black Immigrant Family variables Family SES Computer at home Expectation for college Participation in PTA Parents as school volunteers Parent–child discussion Parental monitoring Children sent to art class Children sent to history class School variables Catholic school Private school Average reading course taking SD of reading course taking po0.001, po0.01, po0.05.
Data Source: NELS: 88–92.
I
II
III
0.207 (0.014) 0.022 (0.030) 0.603 (0.021) 0.697 (0.023) 0.019 (0.033)
0.214 (0.012) 0.062 (0.027) 0.277 (0.019) 0.482 (0.021) 0.069 (0.029)
0.213 (0.012) 0.049 (0.027) 0.262 (0.019) 0.471 (0.021) 0.070 (0.029)
0.359 (0.009) 0.180 (0.015) 0.359 (0.014) 0.019 (0.006) 0.037 (0.018) 0.009 (0.002) 0.015 (0.003) 0.176 (0.024) 0.074 (0.033)
0.332 (0.009) 0.175 (0.015) 0.346 (0.014) 0.014 (0.006) 0.006 (0.018) 0.010 (0.002) 0.017 (0.003) 0.162 (0.024) 0.072 (0.033) 0.057 (0.008) 0.211 (0.020) 0.144 (0.019) 0.077 (0.012)
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achievement, but not in reading. After taking into account of family factors, immigrant students have advantages over native students in both math and reading. This could be considered as ‘‘net immigrant advantage,’’ which is worth noting, as our descriptive analysis shows that immigrant students lag behind their native counterparts in reading. Reading depends more on language and culture competency than math, and this study shows that after taking into account of family factors, immigrant advantages in reading emerges. Family SES has almost the same influences on math and reading achievement, and the influence is quite strong and positive. The finding does not support the earlier hypothesis that family SES may have a larger influence on reading than on math, based on the rationale that math instruction is largely conducted within school, whereas reading may be more sensitive to home resources. Following Steinberg (1992), I separated parental involvement into home and school involvement and the results support Steinberg’s prediction that school involvement is more influential than home involvement only for math, but not for reading. This may be due to the fact that math learning is more contingent upon school instruction, and parental involvement in school is more effective for math than for reading. In addition, Tables 2 and 3 also show that general parental involvement, including home and school involvement, are not as significant as domain-specific involvement. I use the mean and the standard deviation of course taking and low-level and high-level course offering as the proxy measures for the curriculum structure. The results show that low-end courses and the variation of the course taking within the same school have a significant dampening effect on math achievement of individual students of that school. But more importantly, the low-end courses coupled with low variation of the course taking within the same course have the largest negative effect on math achievement of individual students of that school. This provides evidence for the validity of the concept of ‘‘low-level constrained curriculum’’ and its negative influences on math achievement.
CONCLUSION This chapter examines gender, race, and nativity achievement gaps in math and reading tests and how family and school influence these achievement outcomes. In what follows, I discuss how the findings contribute to the existing literature and their possible implications for social and educational policies aiming to
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increase levels of parity in terms of academic achievement between different social groups defined by gender, race, and nativity.
Achievement Gaps Much research has been conducted to examine gender and/or racial gaps in mathematical achievement; however, few studies examine these math outcomes in conjunction with reading ability. In this chapter, I have addressed this gap in the literature. Results from this research provide further evidence to support previous findings that males score higher than females in math and adds the finding that females score higher than males in reading. However, after family and school factors are taken into account, the male advantage in math disappears, but females’ still score higher than males in reading. In short, the male advantage in math disappears, while the female advantage in reading remains. Previous studies have overwhelmingly focused on the math achievement gap and highlighted the female disadvantage (Benbow & Stanley, 1980; Catsambis, 1994; Leahey & Guo, 2001). Perhaps equally important, if not more so, is the achievement gap in reading and we need to pay more attention to the male disadvantage in this regard. Recent studies on postsecondary education have found the so-called female advantage, in that females have a higher college attendance and graduation rate than males (Buchmann & DiPrete, 2006; Buchmann, DiPrete, & McDaniel, 2008). Though this is beyond the scope of the current study, it would be interesting for future studies to examine whether the female advantage in reading before college contributes to their success during college. Racial disparities in achievement are notable and consistent with other studies, yet the focus of this study on both math and reading achievement and across the three grade levels provides new details of the achievement gap. While white students lead black and Hispanic students at all grade levels and for both math and reading achievement, Asian students lead white students in math outcomes, but not in reading. Interestingly, Asian lead in math emerged not from the 8th grade but from the 10th grade and then continues onto the 12th grade. Asian students’ math advantage during high school, coupled with their lack of advantage in reading, may be associated with their tendency toward math-intensive college majors later, which are often not as dependent on language and culture as other majors such as English and history (Ma, 2010). This is understandable that considerable Asian students are recent immigrants (Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, Waters, & Holdaway, 2008), whose lack
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of familiarity with language and culture may be barriers for their achievement outcomes in reading, but not in math.
Policy Implications – The Role of Parental Involvement and School Curriculum Structure This study focuses on parental involvement in the examination of family influences on students’ achievement outcomes. Drawing from previous work (Steinberg, 1992), this study dissects parental involvement into home and school involvement, and it further expands the conceptualization of parental involvement and distinguishes between general parental involvement and domain-specific parental involvement. The results show that school involvement is more effective than home involvement only for math, but not for reading. This may be due to the fact that the knowledge acquisition of math often takes place in school settings, while reading can happen through various outlets, including family. Hence, math achievement may be more contingent upon school instructions than reading. Therefore, parental involvement in school should be encouraged particularly to boost math achievement. This study also finds that domain-specific parental involvement is more important than general involvement in influencing math and reading achievement, respectively. Therefore, to boost domain-specific achievement such as math and reading, domain-specific parental involvement should be emphasized and encouraged. In addition, this chapter focuses on school curriculum structure. Specifically, I propose the concept of ‘‘low-level constrained curriculum’’ to characterize the curriculum structure that leads to the universal low level of course taking among students within the same school. Previous research already documents that minority students are concentrated in those schools with few intellectually stimulating courses available. This chapter has provided empirical evidence to show that this kind of curriculum structure has the most damaging effect on students’ math achievement outcomes. As math courses are more sequenced than reading-related courses, the low-level curriculum structure is examined only in the analysis of math achievement outcomes. The analysis on curriculum structure has significant policy implications. American secondary schools are quintessentially diverse in the missions, curriculum structures, student bodies, and so on. The diversity of curriculum structure manifests in the so-called comprehensive curriculum as opposed to constrained curriculum. However, researchers have consistently documented the strength of constrained curriculum over comprehensive
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curriculum in boosting individual students’ achievement. In other words, little variations of the course taking in the same school serve to promote individual students’ achievement generally. However, what this study has highlighted is the low-level constrained curriculum, which has been found to undermine, not benefit students’ achievement outcomes. Policy makers in school reforms could fruitfully focus on reducing the ‘‘low-level constrained curriculum structure’’ of those schools that many minority students find themselves in, as an attempt to address achievement gaps. I also have some cautionary notes with regard to the above findings, which can be possible outlets for future research. First, I examined a dynamic model for achievement analysis, yet due to the small withinvariation in the dataset, the model could not be implemented using the current data. But this does not foreclose the substantive viability of dynamic model for achievement. Theoretically, the achievement process during the precollege years should be dynamic, in that one’s previous achievement affects current achievement. Hence, with the sufficient within-variation that is often brought about by longitudinal panels of data, it is worthwhile to explore the dynamic model analysis of achievement. Second, despite the highlight of domain-specific parental involvement and its great significance for children’s precollege outcomes in this chapter, the measures for domain-specific parental involvement in the current study are not ideal. In practice, much richer information can be garnered from parent– child discussion on specific subjects, the detailed extracurricular activities parents send their child to, or even explicit parental attitudes toward different subjects and the pathways they actualize their attitudes in their concrete parenting activities. Previous research underscores the importance of general parental involvement in child’s education outcomes, and this leads to research which collects information regarding the intensity/frequency of parenting activities in children’s general education processes. This study shows how great the impact that parental involvement can have on children’s education outcomes in specific domain/subject areas. Future survey research needs to take this central finding into account and develop more comprehensive and meaningful measures of specific aspects of parental involvement in their children’s education to increase our understanding of this important dynamic.
REFERENCES Apple, M. (1982). Cultural and economical reproduction in education. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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Benbow, C. P., & Stanley, J. C. (1980). Sex differences in mathematical ability: Fact or artifact? Science, 210, 1262–1264. Blau, P. M., & Duncan, O. D. (1967). The American occupational structure. New York: Wiley. Bryk, A. S., Lee, V. E., & Holland, P. B. (1993). Catholic schools for the common good. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Buchmann, C., & DiPrete, T. A. (2006). The growing female advantage in college completion: The role of parental resources and academic achievement. American Sociological Review, 71, 515–541. Buchmann, C., DiPrete, T. A., & McDaniel, A. (2008). Gender inequalities in education. Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 319–337. Carter, P. L. (2005). Keepin’ it real: School success beyond black and white. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Catsambis, S. (1994). The path to math: Gender and racial-ethnic differences in mathematics participation from middle school to high school. Sociology of Education, 67(2), 199–215. Cheng, H. (2003). The analysis of panel data. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cohen, J. (1977). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (revised ed.). New York: Academic Press. Coleman, J. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95–S120. Coleman, J. S., & Hoffer, T. (1987). Public and private high schools: The impact of communities. New York: Basic Books. Coleman, J. S., Hoffer, T., & Kilgore, S. B. (1982). High school achievement: Public, catholic and private schools compared. New York: Basic Books. Deil-Amen, R., & Turley, R. (2007). A review of the transition to college literature in sociology. Teachers College Record, 109, 2324–2366. Featherman, D. L., & Hauser, R. M. (1978). Opportunity and change. New York: Academic. Gamoran, A. (1987). The stratification of high school learning opportunities. Sociology of Education, 60, 135–155. Grolnick, W., & Slowiaczek, M. (1994). Parents’ involvement in children’s schooling: A multidimensional conceptualization and motivational model. Child Development, 64, 237–252. Hoover-Dempsey, K., & Sandler, H. M. (1997). Why do parents become involved in their children’s education? Review of Educational Research, 67(1), 2–42. Jencks, C., & Phillips, M. (1998). The black-white test score gap. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. Jones, L. V. (1984). White-black achievement differences: The narrowing gap. American Psychologist, 39, 1207–1213. Kalmijn, M. (1994). Mother’s occupational status and children’s schooling. American Sociological Review, 59, 257–275. Kasinitz, P., Mollenkopf, J. H., Waters, M. C., & Holdaway, J. (2008). Inheriting the city: The children of immigrants come of age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kerckhoff, A. C. (1996). Generating social stratification: Toward a new research agenda. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Lareau, A. (2002). Invisible inequality: Social class and child rearing in black families and white families. American Sociological Review, 67, 747–776. Leahey, E., & Guo, G. (2001). Gender differences in mathematical trajectories. Social Forces, 80, 713–732.
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Lee, V. E. (2002). Inequality at the starting gate: Social background differences in achievement as children begin school. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. Lee, V. E., Chow-Hoy, T. K., Burkam, D. T., Geverdt, D., & Smerdon, B. A. (1998). Sector differences in high school course taking: A private school or catholic school effect? Sociology of Education, 71, 314–335. Lee, V. E., Smith, J. B., & Croninger, R. G. (1997). How high school organization influences the equitable distribution of learning in mathematics and science. Sociology of Education, 70(2), 128–150. Ma, Y. (2009). Family SES, parental involvement and college major choices. Sociological Perspectives, 52(2), 210–234. Ma, Y. (2010). Model minority, model for whom? An investigation of Asian American students in science/engineering. AAPI Nexus Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Policy, Practice & Community, 8(1), 43–73. McNeal, R. (1999). Parental involvement as social capital: Differential effectiveness on science achievement, truancy and dropping out. Social Forces, 78(1), 117–144. Murnane, R. (1975). The impact of school resources on inner city children. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Oakes, J. (1990). Opportunities, achievement, and choice: Women and minority students in science and mathematics. Review of Research in Education, 16, 153–222. Pallas, A. M., & Alexander, K. L. (1983). Sex differences in quantitative SAT performance: New evidence on the differential course taking hypothesis. American Educational Research Journal, 20, 165–182. Powell, A. G., Farrar, E., & Cohen, D. K. (1985). The shopping mall high school: Winners and losers in the educational marketplace. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Raudenbush, S. W., & Willms, J. D. (1995). The estimation of school effects. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 20(4), 307–335. Romberg, T. A. (1992). Problematic features of the school mathematics curriculum. In: P.W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum (pp. 749–788). New York: Macmillan. Rosenbaum, J. E. (2004). Beyond college for all: Career paths for the forgotten half. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Sewell, W. H., & Hauser, R. M. (1975). Education, occupation and earnings: Achievement in the early career. New York: Academic. Stanton-Salazar, R. (1997). A social capital framework for understanding the socialization of racial minority children and youth. Harvard Education Review, 67, 1–40. Steinberg, L. (1992). Beyond the classroom: Why school reform has failed and what parents need to do. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
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APPENDIX: VARIANCE COMPONENTS FOR TIMEVARYING ACHIEVEMENT VARIABLES
Math achievement
Reading achievement
Overall Between Within Overall Between Within
Variance
Within/Overall
0.999 0.949 0.073 0.998 0.899 0.125
– 0.073 – – 0.125
PART II CHILDREN AND YOUTH PEER CULTURES
FOCUSED: HOW STUDENTS CONSTRUCT ATTENTIVENESS IN FIRST-GRADE CLASSROOMS Noriko Milman ABSTRACT Purpose – Studies suggest that children’s experiences during first grade help establish educational trajectories that eventually shape their life chances. Research also indicates that student attentiveness in the classroom is integral to learning and later academic achievement, with low-income students of color running a greater risk of ‘‘attentional difficulties.’’ Methodology – Joining these two bodies of work, I map the social conditions that shape attentiveness in the first-grade classrooms of ‘‘atrisk’’ students. Using ethnographic data collected over three school years, I examine how children actively construct attentiveness during their everyday interactions at school. Findings – First graders sustain attention but often onto their own autoinvolvements and mutual engagements, focal concerns teachers consider ‘‘distractions.’’ By learning the moment-by-moment variations of what to
The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 77–107 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014009
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pay attention to and how ‘‘attentiveness’’ looks, children navigate the social ropes of schooling. Young students apply these lessons to self and peers, regulating attentiveness and socializing one another to the norms of their classroom. They are also resourceful actors who skillfully use their understandings of attentiveness to maneuver around the strict order of the day. Schoolchildren multitask, conceal other focal concerns, and give the impression of attentiveness, all of which influence what behaviors get detected as ‘‘(in)attentive.’’ Keywords: Student attentiveness; elementary school; peer culture; socialization
INTRODUCTION Empirically rigorous research shows that student success during the early school years influences life chances in tangible ways. Studies also indicate that classroom attentiveness contributes to early school success, with lowincome students of color running a greater risk of ‘‘attentional difficulties.’’ Taken together, these bodies of work suggest that if we want to understand why some students fare better later in life, we should turn our sights to how students pay attention during their early school years. While scholars have made many compelling associations between attentiveness and school success, they do not capture how student attentiveness is flexible, situationally contingent, and subject to interpretation by classroom members. In short, they miss how ‘‘paying attention’’ involves interactional skills that unfold in the classroom. The current study contributes to previous scholarship by using a naturalistic approach and treating attentiveness as a dynamic social process. Specifically, I explore how first graders influence attentiveness in their classrooms. For instance, I look into how – and onto what targets – students sustain focus. My data show how young children engage in autoinvolvements and mutual engagements, instead of their teacher’s intended project. First graders also learn important lessons about paying attention – what it looks like and appropriate targets on which to focus. By regulating attentive behaviors onto assigned tasks, students demonstrate that they subscribe to and actively enforce the knowledge they’ve gained from these lessons. In short, they are accountable to – and reinforce – the attentiveness norms that govern their classroom. However, these norms do not go
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uncontested. Young students use what they know about attentiveness to skillfully maneuver around the disciplinary radar of their teacher and peers. By multitasking, concealing other focal concerns, and giving the impression of attentiveness, they influence what behaviors get detected as ‘‘(in)attentive.’’ In all, this chapter reveals that, rather than simply ‘‘having’’ attentiveness, kids actively learn, enforce, and use attention skills.
THE IMPORTANCE OF FIRST GRADE Studies indicate that children’s performance during first grade influences schooling outcomes (cf. Alexander, Entwisle, & Dauber, 1993; Dauber, Alexander, & Entwisle, 1996; Ensminger & Slusarcick, 1992; Entwisle, Alexander, & Olson, 1997, 2005; Entwisle & Hayduk, 1988; Kerckhoff 1993; Pallas, Entwisle, Alexander, & Weinstein, 1990). Early academic skills can influence students’ later school success because learning is cumulative; scholastic skills acquired early in the schooling process are prerequisites for those acquired later (DiPrete & Eirich, 2006; Entwisle & Alexander, 1999; Juel, 1988). Researchers have also found that academic success hinges on early classroom social adjustment (Birch & Ladd, 1997; Entwisle & Alexander, 1999; Entwisle & Hayduk, 1988; Jennings & DiPrete, 2010; Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999; Ladd & Burgess, 1999; Lynch & Cicchetti, 1997; Pianta, Steinberg, & Rollins, 1995). Given the development of both academic and social skills during early schooling, researchers regard these years – particularly first grade – as ‘‘the critical period’’ (Entwisle & Alexander, 1989).
ATTENTION MATTERS Several studies link early school success to how students pay attention in the classroom (Attwell, Orpet, & Meyers, 1967; Ladd et al., 1999; Lambert & Nicoll, 1977; Wentzel, 1991). Student attentiveness is the one ‘‘noncognitive’’ skill that consistently influences academic achievement (Barriga et al., 2002; Duncan et al., 2007; Hinshaw, 1992; Konold & Pianta, 2005; Ladd et al., 1999; Trzesniewski, Moffitt, Caspi, Taylor, & Maughan, 2006). Children with attentional problems demonstrate lower academic performance, even when controlling for other influential variables, like IQ and early academic skills (Alexander et al., 1993; Duckworth & Seligman, 2005; Duncan et al., 2007; Howse, Lange, Farran, & Boyles, 2003; McClelland,
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Morrison, & Holmes, 2000; Swift & Spivack, 1969; Yen, Konold, & McDermott, 2004). Given the important relationship between attention skills and academic achievement, scholars have investigated the causes of attentional problems among children. The majority of this research treats attentiveness as an intrinsic characteristic of the child, part of her/his temperament (see Bates, 1989; Rothbart & Bates, 1998; Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981). Psychologists, as well as laypeople, often refer to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as an explanation for a child’s ‘‘attentional problems.’’ Recognized by the American Psychiatric Association (2000) as a ‘‘mental disorder’’ and listed in the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV TR), the symptoms of ADHD ‘‘have shown a robust inverse relationship with achievement’’ (Barriga et al., 2002, p. 233; Faraone et al., 1993). In fact, a host of epidemiological reports claim that ‘‘among kindergarten and grade schoolchildren, inattention and hyperactivity are the most consistent correlates of underachievement’’ (Hinshaw, 1992, p. 133; Hinshaw, Morrison, Carte, & Cornsweet, 1987; Lambert & Sandoval, 1980; Szatmari, Boyle, & Offord, 1989). This is particularly alarming given that according to the DSM-IV TR, ADHD affects 3–5% of all school-age children (American Psychiatric Association, 2000, p. 84). Studies have also pointed to a connection between attentiveness and ascribed characteristics, such as gender (Olson, Sameroff, Kerr, Lopez, & Wellman, 2005, p. 41; Kochanska, Murray, & Harlan, 2000), socioeconomic status (Howse et al., 2003, p. 154; Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, & Aber, 1997; Raver, 2002), and ethnicity (Hinshaw, 1992, p. 147; Chavajay & Rogoff, 1999; Correa-Chavez, Rogoff, & Arauz, 2005; Gersten, 1996; Moll, Estrada, Diaz, & Lopes, 1980; Ramos, 2005; Rogoff, Mistry, Goncu, & Mosier, 1993). Teachers often perceive minority and low-income students as less attentive than their White, middle-class counterparts (Downey & Pribesh, 2004; Farkas & Wallin, 2002; West, Denton, & Reaney, 2001), which may influence teacher assessments of student academic potential (Alexander et al., 1993; Keogh, 1986; Pallas, Entwisle, Alexander, & Cadigan, 1987). Scholars have also examined features of the school context that affect student attention. For example, studies show there is a connection between attentiveness and peer relationships; a sense of belonging among classmates encourages kids to engage in classroom activities (Ladd et al., 1999). A good deal of research focuses on teachers. Studies have charted some of the classroom management strategies that educators use to ensure that student behaviors better align with their goals (see Brint, Contreras, & Matthews, 2001; Rogoff, Paradise, Arauz, Correa-Chavez, & Angelillo, 2003). This
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scholarship suggests that students remain more on-task when class lessons are culturally relevant (see Howard, 2001; Ramos, 2005) and accessible (see August & Hakuta, 1997; Gersten, 1996; Ramos, 2005; Thompson, Vaughn, Hickman-Davis, & Kouzekanani, 2003). Teachers also use lessons that directly teach attentiveness and other ‘‘character’’ skills (e.g., Masten & Coatworth, 1998; Thernstrom & Thernstrom, 2003; Tough, 2006; Wang, Hartel, & Walberg, 1994). Not surprisingly, kids with good attention skills receive more positive teacher evaluations (Alexander et al., 1993; Alexander, Entwisle, & Thompson, 1987; Keogh, 1986; Pallas et al., 1987). While prior studies have made impressive contributions to scholarship, especially by linking attentiveness to academic achievement, the majority treat attentiveness as an indicator of another classroom outcome or process, thus missing how classroom members actually define and make sense of the practice. Psychological studies tend to isolate attentiveness as something inherent in the individual child and independent of external conditions. Sociologists link attentiveness and school context, but they, like psychologists, use set criteria and thus have a very static idea of attentiveness. For example, most rely on surveying teachers and other relevant adults (cf. Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, 2000; Normandeau & Guay, 1998), asking questions like: ‘‘Does the child concentrate on one thing at a time?’’ or ‘‘Is the child easily distracted from her/his work?’’ Some researchers use classroom observations, but base data collection on only a handful of classroom visits and/or video footage (see Correa-Chavez et al., 2005; Felmlee & Eder, 1983; Felmlee, Eder, & Tsui, 1985), which limits scope both temporally and spatially. Moreover, those employing these qualitative methods usually code their data using a predetermined list of ratings. In all of these ways, other studies assume definitions a priori and treat attention as a stable, one-dimensional characteristic.
HOW CHILDREN SHAPE THE SCHOOLING PROCESS While still considered a primary site of socialization and discipline (among many, see Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Coleman & Hoffer, 1987; Dewey, [1902] 1974; Dreeben, 1968; Durkheim, [1925] 1961; Foucault, 1977; Waller, [1932] 1961), school sites are also a contested terrain, a setting where members may uphold but also challenge social control, hegemonic structures, and dominant discourse (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1991; MacLeod, 1995; McLaren,
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1997). Interactionist, phenomenological, and other microfocused approaches reveal that school organization is precarious, dependent on the ‘‘meanings, negotiations, and strategies of individual actors’’ (Tyler, 1985, p. 62; Greenfield, 1980). A growing body of work reveals that young children understand and wield some power in the schooling process (see Adler & Adler, 1998; Chin & Phillips, 2004; Corsaro, 1990; Ferguson, 2000; Frankenberg, Robinson, & Delahooke, 2000; Orellana, Thorne, Chee, & Lam, 2001; Thorne, 1993). Despite the crowded environments and intense physical activity present in elementary schools, Thorne (1993) discovered ‘‘much more order in the chaos’’ (p. 15). Not only are kids competent and organized (see Corsaro, 2003; Eder & Corsaro, 1999; Goodwin, 1990) but also clever enough to manipulate adults (see Chin & Phillips, 2004; Speier, 1973; Waksler, 1986). Making ‘‘secondary adjustments’’ (Goffman, 1963a; Riseborough, 1993), students in the primary grades innovatively ‘‘work the system,’’ maneuvering within and challenging adult structures of power (Corsaro, 1997; Corsaro & Eder, 1990; Corsaro & Molinari, 2005; Thorne, 1993).
CURRENT STUDY This study does not contest the well-founded claim that student attentiveness abilities vary from one child to the next. It does not contest medical research showing the sometimes-devastating effects of ADHD on a child’s ability to learn. But it does contest the implicit claim that a child’s level of attentiveness is uniform across the day and completely independent of the social organization of classroom activities. What is perceived as a child’s ‘‘attentiveness,’’ this study shows, varies depending on the social dynamics of the classroom; it waxes and wanes by what behaviors students and teachers identify as ‘‘attentive’’ or ‘‘inattentive’’ during particular classroom activities. This study differs from previous work on attention in schools because of my goal in capturing the rich array of everyday lived-experiences of students in school.1 To do this, I adopt a grounded, naturalistic approach to the research. In contrast to previous research on student (in)attention, I focus on attentiveness as a phenomenon in and of itself, rather than as a determinant of another outcome. Instead of focusing solely on kids’ characteristics and treating attentiveness as something a child ‘‘has,’’ I approach paying attention as a social process, a constructed way of being. So, whereas prior studies emphasize student backgrounds, I highlight the
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interactional foreground. Rather than assuming definitions a priori, my research captures local understandings of attentiveness and how these understandings are part of a longer, fluctuating, and more nuanced classroom narrative. By treating attentiveness as a dynamic social process, I can answer a set of important, typically unexplored questions about young children and classroom attentiveness: What – besides the teacher’s activity – sustains student attention? What lessons do schoolchildren learn about attentiveness? What keeps them focused on the teacher’s intended target? How do first graders enforce attentiveness in their own classrooms? And how do students use attention to maneuver around the disciplinary radar? In sum, how do first graders actively shape what comes to be defined and regulated as ‘‘attentiveness’’ in classrooms?
Setting The site of my study is Southland Elementary School,2 located in an urban region of Los Angeles County. At the time of this study, about two-thirds (72%) of Southland students were Latino and the remaining third (27%) were African American (California Department of Education, 2007). Notably, nearly all of the children (97%) qualified for subsidized school lunch (ibid.).3 A kindergarten through fifth grade school, Southland Elementary served about 60 of the first graders who reside in this city. I chose to conduct my ethnographic work in the three first-grade classrooms at the school, each with one teacher and 20 students. The racial and class demographics of the first graders mirrored the demographics of the school population. According to the first-grade teachers, the school counselor, and school nurse, records indicated that no first-grade students took medication for ADHD, though teachers later identified one child whom they felt ‘‘needed to be tested.’’
Data Collection and Analysis In order to capture the subjective realities of students and teachers, how they understood their experiences, and the categories they used to order them, I employed the technique of participant observation. A typical day of fieldwork entailed that I sit beside kids on the carpet, skip rope on the playground, and share tater tots in the cafeteria. In other words, I tried to
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immerse myself as much as possible in first-grade culture. For 11 years, I was a fixture at the school, initially as a first-grade teacher and then later as a graduate student visiting and conducting research. This included a pilot study conducted during the 2005–2006 school year, during which I visited the site for three to four hours a day, three days a week, almost every week of each semester. During the entire 2006–2007 academic year, I attended school with another cohort of first graders, visiting three times a week, varying the days. To ensure that I followed students’ daily routines on a stable basis, I allocated roughly three to six hours a day to each class. I followed up in the 2007–2008 school year with a new cohort of first graders. I visited the school for the entire day, every day during the fall, then tapered off to occasional visits during the winter and spring. The bulk of the data appearing in this chapter is from 2006 to 2007. I supplemented my fieldnotes with other types of data. Throughout the course of the school day, I informally asked teachers and students openended questions, especially after particularly revealing events. Adapting surveys and interview protocols of other studies (Alexander et al., 1987; Duncan et al., 2007; Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, 2000; Normandeau & Guay, 1998; Willis & Brophy, 1974), I issued surveys to teachers to gauge their definitions of attentive/inattentive behaviors; I made sure to be mindful of these criteria during my own observations. The surveys also included a portion in which teachers ranked the students in their class by perceived attentiveness abilities. I followed up the surveys with open-ended, semistructured interviews with teachers. I asked teachers to describe ‘‘attentive’’ and ‘‘inattentive’’ conduct in more detail. Additionally, I inquired about their ‘‘most attentive’’ and ‘‘most inattentive’’ students, requesting that teachers detail specific examples in order to contextualize their responses. The ways in which teachers framed attentiveness, as well as their identification of particularly ‘‘inattentive’’ students, provided an important backdrop to peer interactions. My observations – both in the classroom and on the playground – indicated that peers were often quick to point out classmates who did not ‘‘pay attention.’’ I used the qualitative software program ATLAS/ti to code fieldnotes and interview transcriptions. I developed dozens of codes while analyzing fieldnotes. For example, I identified the actors involved in each passage in order to track patterned behaviors of – and reactions to – particular students. I also coded type of classroom activity (whole-group, small-group, individual), spatial arrangement (on the carpet, at desks, in Learning Centers), and subject areas (language arts, math, science, social studies, ‘‘free time’’). I used both open coding and then later focused coding
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techniques (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995) when coding behavior and interaction. I coded some exchanges as ‘‘getting along’’ and others as ‘‘conflict.’’ I was particularly intrigued by the way students used labels inspired by ascribed characteristics (‘‘girl,’’ ‘‘boy,’’ ‘‘black’’) and more general character evaluations (‘‘friend,’’ ‘‘good,’’ ‘‘bad’’). Throughout this project, the primary focus was attentiveness, but from the outset I tried not to presume definitions. This meant that I looked at how teachers and students invoked, used, and negotiated attentiveness throughout the school day, across spaces, and in different types of interactions. Because of its simple retrieval and comparison features, computer-assisted analysis facilitated identifying attentiveness patterns and the consolidation of data into analytically relevant clusters.4
Being a Grown-Up Student in an Elementary School As a person trying to study attentiveness in classrooms, I often wondered how my presence was a distraction to students and teachers. There were obvious signs, as when I would add short jottings in my notepad and students inquired, ‘‘What are you writing?’’ or when referring to certain incidents, teachers would insist, ‘‘Put that in your notes!’’ In many ways, I influenced the setting I was studying.5 I often contemplated my own social statuses vis-a-vis the members of the Southland Elementary community. Known by students and teachers as ‘‘Ms. Milman,’’ perhaps more than any of my statuses, the most influential were my roles as a ‘‘grown-up,’’ former first-grade teacher, and mentor at the school site. On more than one occasion, teachers requested that I ‘‘take over’’ a classroom while they attended a meeting or made a quick trip to the restroom. Not surprisingly, students often regarded me as an authority figure. In the classroom, I was a stand-in tutor. On the playground, they would often ‘‘tell’’ on a peer, expecting me to mediate. I tried to counteract grown-up privileges and distance myself from adults on campus. To get closer to the students, I, like many other social scientists who have worked with children, disclosed the purpose of my presence.6 On a daily basis, I’d publicly proclaim that I was ‘‘not the teacher’’ and instead, referred to myself as a student whose ‘‘homework’’ was to figure out how first graders learn. Many of them expressed shock after finding out that I, like them, were ‘‘a student’’ – in the ‘‘22nd grade.’’ To show allegiance to kids, on some occasions, I found myself, like other ethnographers, complicit
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with their illicit activities (e.g., Corsaro, 2003; Fine, 1987; Mandell, 1988; Thorne, 1993). Many signs indicated that these strategies were successful, for on several occasions kids regarded me as a fellow student, or at least a different type of adult. By the end of the school year, Martin proclaimed that I was his ‘‘second-best friend,’’ one notch below his cousin. Kids felt comfortable telling me what to do as when Calvin who sat next to me on the carpet, tapped my arm and, with eyes directed toward Ms. Agu, urged me to stop jotting while warning, ‘‘You’re gonna get in trouble.’’ Students invited me to play games, like tic-tac-toe, tag, and catch. They also challenged conventional child-adult boundaries when I was the butt of their pranks, as when Claudia pretended to flip me off with her middle finger, only to reveal that she had stuck up her index finger. As a grown-up student, doing fieldwork at an elementary school had its challenges, but I tried to approach the site with a sense of discovery. Doing so cultivated my curiosity – and respect – for the students and teachers who spent so much time there. While there is no way to guarantee that my understandings of participants’ social worlds reflect the way they would render them, throughout the research process I have tried to stay selfreflective, revisiting the idea that the school site was a ‘‘cultural borderlands’’ (Ellis, 1995) and that I owed it to the Southland community to locate myself, as narrator, in the space.
Focusing away from the teacher’s lesson It is commonly understood that young children struggle to pay attention. Adults insist that, as one educator put it, ‘‘little kids have short attention spans.’’ My observations reveal that, contrary to popular belief, first graders do pay attention, even if not to the teacher’s intended target. This begs the question: What other classroom stimuli capture first graders’ focus?
Auto-Involvements The act of focusing is often a solitary feat. Goffman (1963b) referred to ‘‘self-directed,’’ ‘‘self-absorbing’’ acts as ‘‘auto-involvements’’ (pp. 64–65). In classrooms, ‘‘auto-involvers’’ discover alternative uses for everyday objects, including materials distributed by the teacher. This was the case for Rudy, a first grader who transformed a yellow highlighter marker into an
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ad hoc shaver during his teacher’s read-along. Amaka also used instructional supplies during auto-involvements, taking her paper decodable book and flipping it in the air, as if tossing a pizza. And Umar enjoyed tapping the hard cover of his textbook, as if it were a drumhead. Indeed, students find alternative uses for all types of school supplies – pencils, pencil boxes, erasers, crayons, markers, papers, and books – in their experiments of sight, sound, and touch. Teachers do their best to try to curb students’ auto-involved projects by limiting the objects they distribute; however, kids often make something out of seemingly nothing, transforming debris left behind – scraps of paper, lint, and loose staples – into objects of curiosity. Activities taking place on the carpet, where teachers read stories to students who sit ‘‘pretzel style,’’ are particularly open to these kinds of auto-involvements. In the following example, a student tinkered with a discarded paperclip on the rug when his teacher noticed and refocused him onto her lesson. We transfer to the carpet and I sit beside Donnie. After a minute or two, the student finds a paper clip on the floor. He unfolds it and begins using the end tip to pick at the sole of his shoe. Abruptly stopping her own vocabulary lesson, Ms. Harvey scolds, ‘‘Focus, Donnie!’’ The boy does not look up and continues to pick away at the rubber grooves. ‘‘Pay attention, Donnie!’’ the teacher repeats, this time leaning in closer. With wide eyes, Donnie looks up and, though still holding the broken paperclip, rests the object by his side.
Though the paperclip captured Donnie’s attention, Ms. Harvey did not honor the object of his curiosity and redirected him away from it. The teacher’s insistence to ‘‘pay attention’’ and the boy’s behavioral shift reveal a dual recognition; they both recognized that his visual focus should have been on the teacher, not on his shoe or paperclip. In instances like these, teachers provide impromptu lessons demonstrating that some targets legitimately warrant attention, while others do not; in effect, they establish a hierarchy of focal concerns. While teachers see inanimate objects as a source of distraction, autoinvolvers also focus on their bodies in the face of a teacher’s presentation of a lesson. This particular example shows a student’s creative ability to attend to an activity other than the assigned task: The children sit on the carpet and Ms. Agu faces them, sitting in a chair. She discusses currency, trying to identify and explain some of the imagery on each of the paper bills y Calvin, seated next to me, lifts his pant leg and uses his fingernail as a writing utensil and his dry skin as a canvas. His eyes focus on the various patterns and pictures he etches.
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While Ms. Agu intended for her students to attend to her math lesson, Calvin instead displayed focal attention to his self-initiated art project. Imaginatively transforming his bare leg into a canvas for drawings, the boy’s project was quiet and captivating. Examples like these highlight the challenges teachers face as they can neither foresee nor prevent students from initiating auto-involvements. Mutual Engagements While auto-involvements are very solitary, students also collectively cultivate attentiveness away from the teacher’s intended target. In mutual engagements, a pair or group of students shares a focal concern. For instance, in some cases students become engrossed in disputes that begin outside of the classroom and then spill over into classroom lessons. On rare and especially dramatic occasions, hostile engagements do not merely involve just a pair or small group, but capture the attention of the entire class. Such was the case after a seemingly volatile lunch period. As I gather my things at the back counter, drama unfolds. Gabriel raises his hand and tells Ms. Agu that, during lunch recess, he was splattered with ketchup. The teacher raises an eyebrow y In response, the boy rises and turns so that the back of his shirt is displayed. Indeed, it is reveals stains of splattered ketchup. Gabriel explains that Paul and Mateo were also affected. The teacher asks each of these boys to rise from their seats. Though not as extreme as Gabriel, they too are marked with streaks of ketchup. How did this happen? Ms. Agu questions. She is bombarded with a flood of responses. Only one person at a time, she exclaims. Gabriel, stand up, she orders, You tell me who did this. Without saying anything, he points to Lisa and then Ariel. You two stand up! the teacher demands y Both girls slowly rise, their gaze downward, chins to chests. Explain what happened, Ms. Agu asks Ariel. ‘‘I know!’’ Jeffrey yells out. ‘‘Me, too!’’ cries Calvin from across the room. You two ‘‘pull your card,’’ the teacher responds adding, I only asked for one person to tell me. Slowly and with small breaths that interrupt the flow of her words, Ariel explains y Even though you didn’t do it [on purpose], you still need to apologize, the teacher explains. The girl nods her head slightly and then makes her way to Gabriel, then Mateo, and then Paul. With each boy, she looks downward and with a frown, mumbles, ‘‘Sorry.’’ Seemingly satisfied, the teacher instructs all involved to sit down.
In this way, the lunchroom drama captivated nearly all of the students and even their teacher, derailing her from her after-lunch lesson instructional time. Lesson-derailing conflicts also begin within first-grade classrooms, absorbing students to the point that they no longer attend to the teacher’s intended target.7 Given the organization of the classroom and the limited
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availability of resources, teachers require that students share them. Having not necessarily consented to this arrangement, as well as having to share with classmates they do not even regard as ‘‘friends,’’ students recurrently argue over use, as demonstrated in the following excerpt: Meanwhile, Margo and Adrian sit at the back table. The girl selects her color and then hands the box to her partner. As he looks through the box, Margo looks at her color, shakes her head, and attempts to snatch the box back. He pulls the box toward his body. ‘‘Give it!’’ she scowls at him, aggressively taking it from the boy. Ms. Larios makes her way over to them and intervenes. She grabs the box and returns it to Adrian. ‘‘You wait until he’s done and don’t yell at him!’’ the teacher warns the girl as she walks away. Margo sits with her arms folded across her chest. The boy selects his color and then slides the box toward his partner once more. She snatches it up, rolls her eyes at him and whispers, ‘‘I hate you.’’
Here Adrian and Margo mutually engaged each other with particular disdain, both claiming a sense of ownership over the crayon box that Ms. Larios expected them to share. Thus, instead of coloring and following along with the lesson, they struggled over the object, finally driving the teacher to intervene. Even after the teacher exited the scene, the pair, particularly Margo, continued with the conflict, indicating that perhaps more than crayons were in dispute. Conflict was also evident in how students were particularly preoccupied by the feeling of being ‘‘wronged.’’ For example, when Amaka turned her head and accidentally swiped Anthony’s face with her braids, the boy immediately demanded an apology. When Amaka did not deliver one to Anthony’s satisfaction, he interrupted the teacher’s lesson and shouted, ‘‘Oww! Ms. Agu!’’ The girl immediately countered, ‘‘I said ‘sorry’!’’ ‘‘He didn’t hear you, say it again,’’ the teacher responded. Amaka turned to the boy and sighed, ‘‘Sorry, Anthony.’’ The sequence of events reveals that the boy was not actually hurt, but that he expected his classmate to attend to proper classroom etiquette, instead of their teacher’s lesson. Not all mutual engagements are hostile; students also use peaceful, more collaborative means to cultivate each other’s focus away from the teacher’s intended target. For instance, students are eager to cater to the needs of their classmates, as when Kobey shifted her focus away from her journal writing in order to attend to Martin, who complained of a headache. Insisting that the classroom ‘‘is not a playground’’ or that class time is not ‘‘play-time,’’ teachers often dismiss children’s collaborations as frivolous distractions. During a science lesson, a group of girls engaged in an impromptu guessing exercise. Emily clutched both hands and, with two fists pointing upward, presented Clara with a choice. Clara selected Emily’s left
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hand and the girl revealed a plastic pink diamond inside. After both girls giggled over the discovery, Ms. Agu moved Clara to another location on the rug while stating, ‘‘Recess is over.’’ Though regarded as mere ‘‘play,’’ these types of interactions are quite elaborate achievements that generate the unflinching focus of those involved.8 Collaborations of shared, nonlesson centered focus sometimes spread across a large group of students. I refer to this process as ‘‘contagion.’’ Contagion occurred one afternoon when Ayana performed an attentiongrabbing behavior that eventually engrossed – and inspired – nearly the entire class. [The students return from recess and, as per Ms. Agu’s instructions, sit at their desks and listen to classical music before commencing with the next activity. They have been sitting for approximately 30 seconds.] At this point, Ayana quickly rises from her seat, sweeps around, grabs a pencil and whispers, ‘‘Claudia! Claudia!’’ Claudia perks up and turns toward Ayana. The latter quickly hands the pencil to the former, as if in a relay race. A few seconds later, both girls, each with a pencil in hand, rotate their wrists to the beat of the music, as if conducting a symphony orchestra. William watches, picks up his own pencil, and proceeds to copy the girls’ movements. Before long, nearly everyone in the class is tapping their pencils together in a steady rhythm; a series of clicking sounds can be heard throughout the room. Ms. Agu looks up from her desk, ‘‘Pencils down!’’ she demands. Everyone drops their pencils to their desks except Ayana, who manages to get in a few more taps.
Ayana initiated the orchestra-conductor activity with Claudia, eagerly vying for her attention and even providing the girl with her own baton. Soon, William imitated the arm and baton movements. Before long, the majority of the class eagerly displayed their conductor talents. Like a common cold, attentiveness to a nonlesson activity can successfully spread throughout the classroom. Interestingly, some conduct becomes contagious even if the initiator does not beckon audience members. For example, many auto-involvers quietly attract the focus of their peers. During one afternoon on the carpet, Calvin used the air he captured between the palms of his hands to make flatulentlike noises. Within moments, the activity gained the attention of Paul, William, Mario, and Robert. They all carefully watched Calvin and then mimicked his actions. The contagion was so apparent that, at one point, Paul even leaned over to gain Calvin’s approval of his technique, squeezing his palms together and inquiring, ‘‘Like this?’’ Instances like these show how a specific act becomes the object of focus and that this focus can be an engrossing – and very social – activity.
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STAYING FOCUSED ON THE TEACHER’S TARGET When children attend to their own unsanctioned focal concerns, teachers often intervene and redirect their attention.9 By doing this, they provide a twofold lesson to students: first, they reveal what count as legitimate objects of focus and second, they reveal what behaviors indicate ‘‘attentiveness.’’ Kids demonstrate what they have gleaned from these lessons when they apply what they have learned; this is most obvious when they regulate focus onto their teacher’s intended target.
Self-Regulation Students actively self-regulate and attend to their teacher’s lessons. First graders demonstrate focus by providing eye contact or using voices and body movement to respond to teacher prompts. Doing this is no easy feat since what counts as ‘‘paying attention’’ changes over the course of the school day. For instance, the target of visual focus is not always the same; teachers require that students ‘‘Look at the page!’’ or ‘‘Your eyes should be on me!’’ or ‘‘Focus on the board!’’ And, while in most cases, teachers expect a degree of stillness from students, on other occasions, especially during group activities, they measure attentiveness by children’s movement and verbal participation. Thus, kids must constantly discern – and enact – the behavioral cues that are appropriate for a particular moment. On some occasions, students are forthright about their attentional aims. This occurred when, in an act of self-proclaimed regulation, Margot premised her contribution to the classroom discussion with the statement, ‘‘I’m gonna say something that’s on topic.’’
Whistle-Blowing: Reporting Inattention First graders monitor one another’s attentiveness to classroom activities, often acting as whistle-blowers, detecting inattentiveness to classroom activities, and getting the teacher involved.10 By doing this, kids ensure that peers maintain focus on the assigned work by collaborating with teachers, acting on their behalf. For instance, young students are often quick to pinpoint their unfocused peers, especially when the teacher is unable to identify the perpetrator. This occurred one afternoon when after Amaka shook her shoulders and howled to the music her teacher cued on the CD
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player. ‘‘Who’s doing that?’’ Ms. Agu snapped, pivoting toward the students sitting on the carpet. ‘‘Amaka! Amaka!’’ several children shouted while pointing at the girl. Ms. Agu proceeded to scold Amaka about the virtues of ‘‘self-discipline.’’ The girl remained silent for the rest of the activity. That kids are quick to blow the whistle on peers makes surveillance more widespread, especially during times when teachers spread their students throughout the classroom, like during ‘‘Learning Centers’’ and ‘‘Workshop.’’ Ms. Larios divides her class so that small groups work in various centers throughout the classroom. I sit on the carpet with Margo, Marla, Jesus, and Diana. We each hold a small whiteboard and dry erase marker, writing and then displaying written messages to one another. Behind us, Janesia, another student, sits at her desk, book open, page blank; she has not begun her assignment. She watches us y Marla quickly scribbles onto her board, holds it up to her chest, to show us. It reads, ‘‘Janesia is going to get in chruble [trouble].’’ y Shortly thereafter, Ms. Larios walks by y Margo then displays her own writing, ‘‘Janesia is no [sic] doing nothing [sic].’’ The teacher looks over and reads their boards. ‘‘Turn around and pay attention to your own work!’’ she orders Janesia. The girl offers a pout and then complies.
Marla and Margo noticed that Janesia was not attending to the assigned task. By deliberately displaying the messages on their whiteboards, the pair alerted Ms. Larios of Janesia’s wrongdoing. Marla even predicted Janesia’s fate. The teacher validated Marla and Margo’s claims and read the girl’s behavior as unfocused, demanding that she ‘‘pay attention to [her] own work.’’ Rather than just making it a momentary project, students also take it upon themselves to monitor and enforce attentiveness over longer terms. For example, Sal and William were keen on writing down the names of classmates that did not follow directions and pay attention. Lisa and Ariel also acted as record-keeping whistle-blowers, often making note of the ‘‘bad kids’’ in their classroom. By keeping track, these students – and their teachers – had a record of supposed offenders and hold classmates accountable for their behaviors. As the following excerpt illustrates, this accountability sometimes affected friendships: Once recess is over, I wait at the line with the rest of the students of Room 12. Lily looks up at me and speaks in her high-pitched voice. Her brow is furrowed and she points to Marissa, who sits beside her, ‘‘She’s not my friend! She doesn’t pay attention and she plays! She bothers me!’’ ‘‘Really?’’ I ask, puzzled, ‘‘I thought you guys were friends!’’ ‘‘We are!’’ Lily explains, ‘‘But she plays a lot!’’ I look to Marissa, who returns the glance with sad eyes and a lower-lip that protrudes a bit. I instruct Lily, All you need to do is politely ask her to stop. Lily nods her head. So are you guys cool? They nod their heads.
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Lily denounced her friendship with Marissa, claiming, among many things, that the girl ‘‘doesn’t pay attention.’’ While fleeting, Lily used attentiveness as a basis for moral judgment, connecting the girl’s disengaged classroom behavior to her worth as a friend. Working Together First graders also keep classmates aligned with the class activity without notifying the teacher. By doing this, students demonstrate awareness of what constitutes ‘‘inattention,’’ as well as keep one another out of trouble. In the following excerpt, a group of first graders sat at a cluster of desks, while completing a writing assignment. When the teacher issued instructions, one student quietly encouraged a fellow student to follow along. Ms. Agu places a new transparency on the overhead. ‘‘Pencils down!’’ she warns, her words echoing off the back walls y Umar gently places his hand on Charles’ arm, which is outstretched, like the other, to prop up a book. Umar whispers to his partner that he should stop reading, offering a subtle chin nod toward Ms. Agu. Charles offers the boy a sideways glance, and his hands quietly rest the book on the desktop. Charles then turns his body toward his teacher.
In this instance, Umar quietly redirected Charles, urging his deskmate to stop reading and to place his book flat on the desktop. He did this subtly and on behalf of his peer, not necessarily the teacher. This quiet collaboration kept Charles aligned with his teacher’s project. Students commonly redirect those they perceive as unfocused by drawing on techniques used by their teacher. For instance, Jamar pointed his pencil at the smoke detector and reminded his talkative peers about Ms. Harvey’s claim that the school principal was ‘‘watching.’’ His classmates quickly looked up at the white disk, watched as it blinked a red light, and immediately buried their heads in their workbooks. When Ti’ara placed her foot on Cristina’s lap in order for her shoe to be tied, Spencer looked over and warned, using his teacher’s logic, ‘‘No y you guys aren’t learning right now!’’ Like Jamar, Spencer borrowed his teacher’s rationale in order to regulate the focus of his classmates. Students also urge peers to attend to the class activity by fostering a spirit of competition. During journal writing time, Ja’Quan proudly displayed several pages of writing he had completed. Donnie, who sat across from Ja’Quan, marveled at his deskmate’s progress. Determined not to be outdone, Donnie quickly focused on his writing and worked diligently for the remainder of the class period.11
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Finally, students encourage attentiveness to the class activity by praising one another. When Spencer answered Ms. Harvey’s question by offering the main idea of the story using a complete sentence, Martin congratulated the boy by patting him on the back. Sometimes students also provide their peers with vocal accolades for being on-task: The students sit on the carpet for a vocabulary lesson. Ms. Larios asks her students to offer a sentence using the word ‘‘right,’’ Juan J. raises his hand and offers, ‘‘The car turned right.’’ With this, Marla affirmed, using the vocabulary word herself, ‘‘You got it right, now you can go to college!’’
Examples like these demonstrate how students actively work together to stay focused on the teacher’s lessons and classroom activities.
STAYING ‘‘FOCUSED’’ TO AVOID THE DISCIPLINARY RADAR While first graders do a lot to regulate focus onto their teacher’s intended target, they also use what they know about attentiveness – appropriate targets and behavioral cues – for their own purposes. In other words, first graders come to make ‘‘secondary adjustments’’ (Goffman, 1963a) in order to navigate and maneuver around the order of the day (Corsaro, 1997; Corsaro & Eder, 1990; Corsaro & Molinari, 2005; Thorne, 1993). This is particularly apparent when kids attend to their own projects while actively working to remain under the disciplinary radar of their teacher and peers.12
Multitasking: Maintaining Multiple Focal Concerns Students can multitask, successfully engaging in two activities at once (Chavajay & Rogoff, 1999; Correa-Chavez et al., 2005; Rogoff et al., 2003; Rogoff et al., 1993). Umar, probably more so than other first graders, was a champion multitasker. For example, he seemed to have no difficulty forcefully erasing the inside cover of his new spiral notebook, then taking his pencil and balancing it on his upper-lip, all while eagerly participating and correctly answering his teacher’s questions about the format for party invitations. Some of the most skilled multitaskers attend to an unrelated activity, but are able to successfully engage the teacher when called upon. Such an
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occasion arose while the students sat at their desks as Ms. Harvey delivered a social studies lesson. Before long, the teacher interrupts the students’ writing and begins to talk about vocabulary words like ‘‘equator’’ and ‘‘northern and southern hemispheres.’’ She demonstrates, using a map as an example. She remains primarily toward the front of the room. Beneath her, most students’ eyes watch on, but Donnie bends at the waist, digging in his desk. ‘‘Donnie! Pay attention! What’s this line called?’’ she questions with a slight scowl while pointing to the map. The boy looks up at her, as if surprised, and then effortlessly replies, ‘‘The equator.’’ Good, I’m glad you were listening, she responds with a bit of shock.
Donnie’s body movement, visual focus, and noise created by the rustling of papers led Ms. Harvey to accuse the boy of inattention. She proceeded to administer a swift ‘‘attention test,’’ quizzing him about the ‘‘equator,’’ a concept she had just discussed. Donnie was able to answer without struggle, which convinced her that he actually attended to the lesson. Ms. Harvey’s accusation and subsequent affirmation supported the idea that Donnie, at least in this instance, simultaneously engaged two activities at once.
Concealing Other Focal Concerns When kids conceal behaviors that others may perceive as inattentive, they present the fac- ade that they are attending to the task at hand. On many occasions, this involves covert acquisition of personal belongings. For the most part, the students work independently at their desks. Before long however, La’mar takes out his plush little sea lion stuffed animal y ‘‘La’mar!’’ Ms. Larios cries, ‘‘Put that away in your cubby, it’s a distraction!’’ The boy pauses and, with a slight frown, rises from his seat and slowly trudges his way to the back cubbies, sea lion in hand. As he tucks it away in his cubicle box, Brenda pops up from her seat, runs to the back of the room, and sneakily grabs her lip gloss from the pocket of her pink backpack. Like lightning, she bolts back to her desk, without incident.
Deeming the object a ‘‘distraction,’’ Ms. Larios ordered La’mar to put the toy ‘‘away,’’ out of reach and sight. After having witnessed the labeling of La’mar’s toy ‘‘a distraction,’’ Brenda took great effort to stealthily retrieve her object. Neither Ms. Larios nor the other students appeared to notice. Concealing so-called inattention requires that students gauge timing. On many occasions, they wait for their teacher to look away. When taking care of other business – preparing the next lesson, tinkering with classroom technology, or, in the following case, taking a telephone call – the teacher
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provides students with a window of opportunity to engage in off-task behavior. [The students complete a math worksheet at their desks.] Donnie looks up at the teacher, still on the phone. He pauses, and then looks at a desk about ten feet away. His eyes go from the teacher to the desk, teacher to the desk. Finally, he swiftly jumps from his seat, scurries to the desk, grabs a backpack and jacket, and promptly returns to his seat, dropping the things and placing his head down. A second or two later, Ms. Agu hangs up the phone y
Donnie acted in a particularly calculating way in this example. He assessed the scene by making sure his teacher remained on the phone, as well as measuring the distance from and feasibility of retrieving his backpack. After successfully completing the mission, the boy even placed his head down, further concealing any previous movement or wrongdoing. Concealing off-task projects is not always a solo feat. Kids who want to talk, play games, or socialize often do so by quietly working together. To do this, students devise codes and other gestures with which to communicate. For example, without a single verbal exchange, they engaged in ad hoc games, like ‘‘Rock, Paper, Scissors.’’ Keeping quiet is a particularly popular strategy, as when Lisa and Ariel whispered to each other as Ms. Agu wrote on the whiteboard with her back to the class. Kids who collectively hide interactions and body movement demonstrate a similar sensibility. Mateo and Ariel worked together to conceal their collective project when they armwrestled underneath their desk. In another classroom, while seated at their desks, Lisa played ‘‘keep-away’’ with her fist as Clara tried to grab it; they did this while holding a textbook upright in order to shield off their activity. While on the carpet during a read aloud, Marissa and Cristina manipulated a stray piece of elastic as one held it taut and the other ‘‘karate-chopped’’ it. During each turn, the girls glanced at the teacher, turned sideways, chopped, and faced forward again, repeating this process over several rounds. Sometimes clandestine collaborations are even more elaborate, involving not just a pair, but several kids. Again, gatherings on the carpet seem to facilitate this kind of activity. Here is such an example featuring a group of boys from Room 44: As Ms. Harvey reads, Gabriel’s ‘‘Spiderman’’ figurine makes its way through the hands of several of the students. It appears to begin with Spencer, he handles it a bit and then passes it on to Matthew. Matthew moves the toy’s arms up and down and then swiftly hands it over to Jamar. Jamar examines it, weaving it through his fingers. He places it behind his back and then quickly reaches behind Donnie and hands it back to Spencer. Like a hot potato, Spencer gently tosses the object to Gabriel, who sits beside him. As if a baton in a relay race, Gabriel then passes Spiderman onto Carlos.
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Gabriel’s figurine passed through six different pairs of hands. The boys moved the object from person to person, ever so discreetly, using swift motions, placing it behind the back, and gently tossing it. The boys attended to their stealthy exchanges instead of Ms. Larios’ read aloud. They not only transported the item across the carpet but also worked together to go under the disciplinary radar of their teacher and classmates. First graders also rely on legitimate excuses to conceal other focal concerns. Discovered underneath their desks instead of writing in their workbooks, Cristina tried to argue that she was ‘‘picking up the red ball,’’ while Spencer reasoned that he ‘‘fell.’’ Some students devise even more elaborate – and successful – schemes. In the following example, Ms. Agu lectured from the front of the class, while Umar, Dora, and Claudia sat at desks toward the back of the room: I quickly look forward as Umar digs inside his desk. A single pen, pencil, and crayon drop to the tile floor. Claudia immediately spots the items and points to them. Meanwhile, her partner Dora remains motionless. Immediately, Claudia digs in her desk with both hands. She locates a pencil and gently tosses it toward the other objects. The chubby girl then quickly drops to the floor, and with blonde hair cascading down her back, crawls to the location, and swipes all four writing utensils with one of her hands, while balancing with the other. She then rises to her knees to meet Umar and offers the boy his three pieces. Still looking at the teacher and without a word, he swiftly takes them from her. Claudia then springs to her feet and scurries back to her seat.
Here Claudia knew that certain circumstances – like dropping a pencil – provided a legitimate excuse for being out of her desk. This demonstrates that she understood what her teacher and others might recognize as inattention and subsequently concocted a plan to avoid this. That she ‘‘scurries back to her seat’’ undetected indicates that her plan worked.
Performing Attention In addition to deliberately concealing other projects, students also perform attentive behaviors in order to create the illusion of focus on the assigned activity. The next excerpt demonstrates how La’mar did this during a standardized test: As the teacher and her students continue with each question, most of the students follow pretty consistently. Others, like La’mar, struggle a bit. I watch him while, with a pencil in his right hand, he traces his left, which lays flat against his ‘‘office.’’ After completing an outline of his hand, he releases and looks at the various mantras he had previously written on his ‘‘office’’ using markers. He proceeds to take his pencil and outline each
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While supposed to be focused on the questions posed in the test, La’mar instead engaged in a whole host of auto-involvements. He concealed his offtask behaviors by keeping up with the rest of the class, making sure he was on the same test question. By performing attention by simply bubbling in test circles, he was able to veil his disengagement with the actual content of the exam and remain under the disciplinary radar of other classroom members.
CONCLUSION Taken together, these findings paint a nuanced and complicated picture. By learning the moment-by-moment variations of what to pay attention to and how ‘‘attentiveness’’ looks, students are navigating through the social ropes of schooling; in effect, they are getting socialized at school, internalizing their teacher’s rules and moral lessons about attentiveness. Children apply these lessons to self and peers. They actively regulate focus and are thus instrumental to socializing one another to the norms of their classroom. While sometimes divisive, student interactions also suggest that enforcing and reinforcing attentiveness standards are acts of solidarity with teachers and/or peers. Students who regulate focus show that they are loyal to the classroom project and eager to get others to be a part of it. However, schoolchildren are not captive to an automated set of rules handed down by their teachers. Rather, the first graders featured here reveal that they are resourceful actors, demonstrating a great deal of agency and savvy by using their understandings about attentiveness to maneuver around the strict order of the day. Students who give the impression that they are paying attention to the teacher’s intended target continue to honor attentiveness standards but use their knowledge to engage in their own focal concerns instead of the assigned work. By actively shaping what behaviors get noticed by their teachers, students influence who among their peers will come to be seen as ‘‘attentive’’ and/or
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‘‘inattentive.’’ Survey-based investigations of attentiveness – which commonly rely on teacher evaluations – do not fully capture how students influence the identification and enforcement of attentive behaviors. By missing this piece, these studies may be measuring student skills other than attentiveness, such as the child’s social competencies, conformity to classroom norms, and the ability to perform attentiveness using impression management skills. In these ways, how students pay attention and how their teachers perceive this attentiveness intertwine in a complicated web that bears on classroom social relations as well as academic outcomes. The data presented here suggests that attentiveness also matters to first graders. They enforce standards of attentiveness, regulating one another’s behavior. When they maintain multiple lines of focus in combination with attentiveness to the teacher’s lesson, they continue to honor its worth, even while engaged in their own projects. Attentiveness is peer-influenced, be it by a whistle-blowing deskmate or a coconspirator sitting in close proximity on the carpet. Young students use attentiveness as a tool, often to include others in the classroom fold – whether aligned with the teacher or by working together to stay under the disciplinary radar. Children also use attentiveness as a gauge by which to measure peer-worth as a student and, sometimes, as a friend. In other words, how students focus serves as the basis for their classmates’ moral judgments. Thus, how classroom members construct attentiveness is consequential for social relationships between students and their teachers, as well as peers. Given that researchers have shown that social relations bear on academic outcomes, we have to consider how attentiveness fits into this puzzle, especially knowing that of all noncognitive skills, attentiveness is the most predictive of later academic achievement (cf. Alexander et al., 1993; Duncan et al., 2007). The data presented here suggest that the social dimension of attentiveness may help explain why paying attention matters so much for learning. Following this, we should reconsider the popular conception that attentiveness is a static characteristic belonging to an individual child; rather, these data suggest that paying attention is a dynamic process practiced in the classroom, and children play prominent roles in this process. If ‘‘attention’’ is to be a useful concept, we must take into account how it can vary and is, in some ways, a product of the collectively constructed social relations of a local culture, like the classroom. Specifically, students are responsible for learning meaning systems and rules of engagement, so normative classroom culture comes into play. In these ways, ‘‘paying attention’’ involves actual, nonscripted – and often
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situationally contingent – interactional skills. By narrowly defining ‘‘attention’’ and ‘‘inattention,’’ most studies do not fully appreciate the complex social world of attentiveness. This shortcoming limits medicalized and survey-based approaches from fully capturing the connection between attention and academic achievement, especially as it applies to low-income, underrepresented children, whom teachers and researchers deem the most ‘‘at-risk’’ for attentional difficulties and subsequent school failure.
NOTES 1. This is not to say that others have not offered glimpses into students’ ordinary days at school. Several journalists have captivated audiences with their portrayals of student life (e.g., Kidder, 1989; Kozol, 1991). A handful of academics have studied kids’ experiences at school, but their research subjects have tended to be the young preschooler (see Corsaro, 2003; Van Ausdale & Feagin, 2002) or older, transitioning teenagers (see Carter, 2005; Fine, 2001; Fordham, 1996; Ogbu, 1974; Perry, 2002; Valenzuela, 1999; Zhou & Bankston, 1998). Albeit important, both developmental stages miss the centrality of the early elementary years. Other ethnographers have focused on primary grade students, but have explored student attentiveness under the umbrella of other school processes (see Corsaro & Molinari, 2005; Ferguson, 2000; Lubeck, 1985; Thorne, 1993). 2. To protect privacy, I have changed all names. 3. I recognize that the results of this study are not generalizable to all school populations. Given their city of residence and the demographics of their school, the students who attend Southland Elementary are the children considered the most ‘‘atrisk’’ for inattentiveness and school failure, therefore their classroom interactions and school experiences are particularly important to examine. 4. Following the research logic of analytic induction, I reworked my theory so that it accounted for negative cases, as well as redefined the phenomenon under investigation so that negative cases were no longer an instance of what was to be explained (Katz, 2001). This process resulted in a social theory of attentiveness that absorbed negative cases. 5. In considering issues of reactivity, Emerson (1981) writes that the craft of fieldwork is ‘‘unavoidably interactional in character, and the field worker is necessarily consequential for those studied. Solutions to reactivity thus lie not in restricting, cutting off, or regularizing field interactions, but in trying to become sensitive to and perceptive of how one is perceived and treated by others’’ (p. 365). In this way, social scientists do not always perceive reactivity as a ‘‘problem’’; in fact, sometimes members’ responses to the researcher’s presence provide ‘‘valuable substantive data’’ (Katz, 1982, p. 137). 6. However, Fine (1987) warns that some kids may react to a detailed description of a research project with boredom or lack of interest. Instead, he recommends a ‘‘shallow cover’’ whereby ‘‘the researcher explains that research is being conducted but is vague about its goals – not telling subjects the specific hypotheses involved or
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the topics on which the researcher is taking notes’’ (p. 233). Following his advice, I found it beneficial to keep explanations more general. 7. When these became a pattern between specific students, teachers employed preemptive and on-the-spot strategies, usually seating the two culprits away from one another. 8. Corsaro (2003) urges that we reconceptualize play as a ‘‘complex, improvised feat’’ and regard its occurrence as an intricate social interaction (p. 96). 9. This is not to suggest that teachers regulate all auto-involvements and mutual engagements. In another paper, I explore how teachers actively negotiate the process of attention management and use discretion when deciding what behaviors – and whom – to enforce. 10. Teachers do not always welcome the aid of their students. On several occasions – and depending on a host of circumstances – teachers disregard whistleblowers or, even worse, accuse them of ‘‘tattling.’’ 11. Though, to be sure, this kind of collaboration can backfire, as when Anthony and Umar became preoccupied with counting and comparing how many lines they filled up in their journals, instead of actually writing. Moreover, while self-initiated competition may motivate students to complete their assignment quickly, this sometimes was at the expense of the quality of the product. 12. It is difficult to distinguish between behavior that went undetected and behavior that was simply ignored or ‘‘allowed.’’ While I often followed up with teachers during breaks or after school, I did not do this on every occasion. Furthermore, at times I was hesitant to do so because I did not want to implicate kids of wrongdoings and/or for teachers to perceive me as an ‘‘extra set of eyes.’’ Thus, to maintain my stance on honoring ‘‘members’ meanings,’’ I classify ‘‘under the radar’’ behaviors as those specifically intended to be just that.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was supported by a grant from the American Educational Research Association. I would like to thank Meredith Phillips, Brandon Berry, and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and feedback.
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THE AGE OF LOVE: DATING AND THE DEVELOPMENTAL DISCOURSE IN A MIDDLE SCHOOL SUMMER CAMP Sandi Kawecka Nenga and Lauren A. Apgar ABSTRACT Purpose – To examine how youth appropriate and resist elements of the developmental discourse as they construct and enforce dating norms. Methodology – In 2007, we conducted participant observation at a middle school summer camp for youth in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Youth ranged in age from 11 to 17 years old. Findings – Youth borrowed the idea of a normative sequence of behaviors arranged by age from the developmental discourse to establish a set of age-appropriate dating norms for all campers, regardless of chronological age. Youth enforced these norms by treating other dating actions as too young or too old. By tying this linear trajectory to social age instead of chronological age, youth creatively altered the apparently rigid developmental discourse and established dating norms which addressed their own values and concerns. Youth established dating norms and maximized opportunities for pleasurable, collective discussions about dating and romantic relationships. Although the developmental discourse influenced The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 109–131 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014010
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the norms in this peer culture, we argue that the small, heterogeneous composition of the camp facilitated youths’ ability to appropriate, refashion, and resist the developmental discourse. Keywords: Dating; middle school; developmental discourse; peer culture; summer camp
INTRODUCTION Ideas about child development and age-appropriate behavior permeate the social institutions in which contemporary youth live and learn (Lesko, 2001; Payne, 2001; Walkerdine, 1993). This developmental discourse has infused the everyday practices of parents, teachers, and child professionals and is particularly prominent in discussions of teenage dating (Burrows & Wright, 2001; Lesko, 2001). Adults might describe youth as precocious, ready to date, or late bloomers depending on the youth’s chronological age. In addition to adults’ talk and behaviors, the developmental discourse also shapes the discursive and behavioral practices of youth. Because the developmental discourse is so powerful, youths’ dating norms and behaviors should be heavily constrained by age-graded norms. However, our observations of one middle school summer camp revealed that a small, age-heterogeneous group of youth was able to break free of a strict, age-graded system of dating norms. The youth exerted agency to establish and enforce a single set of dating norms that applied to all campers, regardless of chronological age. We use interpretive reproduction (Corsaro, 1992, 2005) as a theoretical lens to examine how the campers fashioned dating norms which addressed their own interests and concerns. Specifically, youth at this summer camp established dating norms which maximized opportunities for public, collective discussions within the camp about dating and romantic relationships. While the developmental discourse is a powerful influence on the norms of a peer culture, we argue that youths’ ability to play with and resist powerful discourses are facilitated by small, age-heterogeneous groups.
THE DEVELOPMENTAL DISCOURSE AND DATING Cultural studies of childhood have documented the existence of powerful discourses that adults use to understand, monitor, and discipline children.
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Following Lesko, we take a Foucauldian approach and define discourse as a system of reasoning which operates across numerous social institutions and relies on ‘‘identifiable sets of ideas, metaphors, stories and feelings that are meaningful, repetitious and take on the banner of truth or goodness’’ (2001, p. 15). These sets of ideas are present in speech, writing, physical layouts, and social practices (Weedon, 1987). Individuals exercise agency to activate elements of discourses and employ them in the pursuit of power and pleasure, among other goals (Weedon, 1987). Foucauldian approaches emphasize that the power of discourse is strong but not absolute; often, discourses leave small opportunities for individuals to resist (Weedon, 1987). The developmental discourse is one particular system of reasoning which characterizes childhood as a linear sequence of age-linked stages through which individuals progress. At each stage, individuals acquire specific physical, cognitive, and social skills that enable their passage into the next stage. As child professionals become increasingly adept at identifying the skills and competencies children develop at different points, they describe more finely age-graded developmental goals (Lesko, 2001). The final stage of development is a healthy, well-adjusted adult (Lesko, 2001). Because these stages are linear, individuals who fail to accomplish a developmental task will not be able to advance to later stages. Consequently, child professionals employ continual measurement and surveillance in order to carefully monitor young people’s progress through developmental stages (Lesko, 2001; Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2006). Reaching developmental milestones too quickly or too slowly is usually evaluated negatively and merits professional intervention (Burrows & Wright, 2001; Lesko, 2001). Ethnographic studies of middle school peer cultures in the 1980s and 1990s documented an age-related progression of dating behaviors in late elementary school and middle school (Adler & Adler, 1998; Eder, Evans, & Parker, 1995; Fine, 1987). In the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades (approximately ages 9–11), dating is considered a mark of maturity for the first few kids to engage in the practice (Adler & Adler, 1998; Eder et al., 1995). These youth are often the popular students and some of the first to develop mixed-sex friendship groups. These early relationships are characterized by minimal interaction, emotion, and communication. For this age group, dating relationships are primarily about the status of ‘‘going out’’ and involve little to no direct interaction (Swain, 2005). Although ethnographers have reported that kids avoid direct contact with dating partners by using intermediaries to initiate and terminate relationships (Adler & Adler, 1998; Eder et al., 1995), there is currently little ethnographic data capturing intermediaries in action. As students progress through
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middle school, they become more involved in dating and develop dating norms which allow for a greater degree of physical and emotional intimacy. By the seventh and eighth grades (roughly ages 12–14), many more youth have become involved in dating and their relationships are characterized by a greater degree of physical affection, interaction, and emotional investment (Eder et al., 1995; Fine, 1987; Merten, 1996). In one middle school, seventh and eighth graders developed a more elaborate set of dating norms, including heterosexuality, exclusivity, serial monogamy, and continual participation in dating (Simon, Eder, & Evans, 1992). Taken together, these ethnographic accounts suggest that the developmental discourse may be heavily shaping dating norms in middle school peer cultures. Indeed, the developmental discourse has become an institutional discourse (Miller, 1994) which structures and standardizes the everyday practices of institutions charged with supervising youth including education, social work, child psychology, and social policy (Burrows & Wright, 2001; Lesko, 2001; Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2006; Payne, 2001; Walkerdine, 1993). Critical investigations have provided top-down analyses of how entrenched the developmental discourse has become in childhood institutions. Consequently, one might reasonably expect that the developmental discourse continues to limit middle school students’ dating behaviors to strict age-graded dating norms. There is relatively little research investigating the other side of the relationship between individuals and discourse regarding how individual youth respond to and manipulate the developmental discourse. In addition, while the groundbreaking studies of middle school peer cultures documented an age-related progression of dating norms, these researchers did not specifically examine how youth activated or resisted the developmental discourse as they established and enforced dating norms. In part, this may be because the developmental discourse is such a powerful, hegemonic discourse that it neutralizes agentic moves by youth. For example, Kelle (2001) used interviews with 9- to 12-year-old German children and found that their statements about what it meant to be ‘‘older’’ supported ideas central to the developmental discourse and contradicted their own experiences. In another relevant study, Raby (2002) observed that adults used discourses of adolescence as a time of risk and turbulence to interpret teens’ behaviors as ignorant and irresponsible rather than rebellious acts of protest. By making it impossible to articulate certain experiences and draining youth’s actions of meaning, the developmental discourse minimizes adolescents’ agency. Although the developmental discourse minimizes young people’s agency, it does not completely eliminate youths’ ability to manipulate the
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developmental discourse during their pursuit of power and pleasure. Investigations into children’s constructions of the meaning of age suggest that they are able to resist one key element of the developmental discourse: the focus on ‘‘rigid, age-graded expectations’’ (Lesko, 2001, p. 125). Specifically, the developmental discourse naturalizes the link between chronological age, or the years one has been alive, and social age, or the age one behaves, by mapping rigid age-graded developmental goals onto chronological age. However, Solberg’s (1990) research revealed that 12-year-olds in Norway were made ‘‘bigger’’ or ‘‘littler’’ by the degree of responsibility they had for household chores and the amount of unsupervised time they had at home. Similarly, Aarsand (2007) documented the ways that children used their knowledge of video games and computers to invert typical age relations, positioning themselves as the knowledgeable experts and constructing older relatives as ignorant or incompetent. In these studies of children’s interactions with adults, children produced a social age different from the narrow age-graded expectations associated with the developmental discourse; by doing so, the children disrupted the link between chronological age and social age (Lesko, 2001). Although these studies suggest that children and youth can and do manipulate ideas of age during interactions with adults, less is known about how youth activate elements of the developmental discourse during interactions with other youth. Interactions with other youth in a peer culture are one key mechanism kids use to engage with, embellish, reject, and resist cultural beliefs. Interpretive reproduction stresses the creative ways that youth collectively appropriate information from adults and older kids in order to create and participate in peer cultures (Corsaro, 1992, 2005). Language routines and behavioral routines, such as dating, are particularly important aspects of peer cultures. As they enact these routines, children and youth are both constrained by and actively contributing to the reproduction of existing social structures (Corsaro, 2005). Youth might be expected to appropriate developmental ideas of dating, alter them to address their own concerns and interests, and then incorporate those ideas into the peer culture. In sum, we know little about how middle school youth exert agency to manipulate the developmental discourse in pursuit of their own interests and concerns. This chapter makes several contributions. First, the majority of ethnographies which collected data on middle school dating practices were conducted in age-graded schools (Adler & Adler, 1998; Eder et al., 1995; Merten, 1996). Because educational institutions routinely deploy the developmental discourse to measure youth against age-graded expectations,
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the development of dating norms by chronological age may appear natural and unproblematic. By studying a summer camp composed of young adolescents from multiple grades and ages, we were able to investigate how dating norms varied in an age-heterogeneous group. Second, these previous ethnographies were conducted in predominantly white communities during the 1980s and 1990s (Adler & Adler, 1998; Eder et al., 1995; Merten, 1996). Because we observed a racially diverse middle school peer culture in 2007, we can analyze dating behaviors in a more recent, multiracial peer culture. Third, while it appears that the developmental discourse shapes youths’ dating behaviors, little is known about the ways that adolescents engaged with the developmental discourse during dating interactions with other youth. Our rich ethnographic fieldnotes allow us to draw a more vivid portrait of middle school students’ dating interactions, including their use of intermediaries. We draw on interpretive reproduction to examine how youth engaged with, creatively appropriated, and resisted elements of the developmental discourse in order to negotiate, monitor, and enforce a set of dating norms in a newly emerging peer culture.
INVESTIGATING AGE AND DATING AT CAMP To investigate the link between age and dating in a middle school peer culture, we conducted participant observation at a 2007 summer camp in a small Texas city. The Program for After School Success (PASS) summer camp took sixth, seventh, and eighth graders on field trips three days a week. Campers congregated in a classroom at the public school at 12:30 p.m. before embarking on a field trip. The PASS field trips included outings to a pool, an arcade, a museum, a mall, a park, a roller skating rink, and a movie theater. At the end of the activity, campers rode the bus back to the public school. If the field trip ended before 5:30 p.m., youth went to the computer lab or the gym to play games before going home. Throughout the day, the camp director, the bus driver, and an occasional volunteer remained on the edge of the group or sat at a table that served as home base for the campers. The PASS camp offered youth large amounts of unstructured time and allowed them to roam away from the prying eyes and ears of adults. Consequently, this camp was ideal for observing the dynamics of the peer culture. Because most of the youth did not know each other at the start of the camp, they had to create a new peer culture. The 20 students who attended PASS came from three different middle schools serving the sixth, seventh,
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and eighth grades. Although students in these grades are typically 11–14 years old, the youth in the PASS camp ranged in age from 11 to 17. Some of the middle school students were older than the norm for their grade because their parents delayed their entry into public school and/or because they had had to repeat one or more grades.1 For example, one eighth grader who started first grade a year late and had been held back twice was 17 years old. The gender composition of the camp was fairly even with eleven boys and nine girls. Fifty percent of the students were Latino, black, or multiracial. Sixty percent of the students were on free or reduced lunch status. Both racial minorities and economically disadvantaged students were overrepresented at PASS.2 Data from the school district indicated that minority students made up 36% and economically disadvantaged students made up 35% of the students in the school district. One advantage of this camp was that it allowed us to study how a racially diverse group with members from multiple schools, ages, and grades organized a new peer culture. Every day that the camp met, two ethnographers entered the field and attempted to become quiet and marginal members of the peer culture (Eder et al., 1995). Officially, we entered the field as volunteers, a role familiar to some of the returning campers because of the presence of high school and college volunteers in past summers. Although the first author was a 35-year-old college professor at the time of the study, she looked young. Even after the first author revealed her age, most campers insisted that she was a high school or college student. The second author was a 20-year-old undergraduate at the time of the study and the youth accepted her as a college student. Despite entering the field as volunteers, we had very little authority. The camp director neither introduced us as volunteers nor granted us the full authority of a volunteer. On the second day of the camp, the camp director introduced a high school student by saying ‘‘Haley is a volunteer who will be here every Thursday, so that means that anything she says goes, just like if it was one of us’’ (06/07/07, Nenga’s fieldnotes). Haley, the high school volunteer, was explicitly given the same authority as the camp director or her assistant. In contrast, we introduced ourselves by first names only when the camp director had the kids go around the room to introduce themselves by their first name. No mention was ever made of any authority we might have. During field trips, we joined in and participated in activities with the kids and avoided sitting at the home base table with the camp director and the bus driver. By the end of the first week at camp, both ethnographers had been accepted into the peer culture at the camp as marginal members. At first, youth asked what we were doing at the camp. We responded that we were
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from the university and wanted to see what it was like to be a kid at PASS. The campers typically then asked us questions they would ask other adults, such as ‘‘Can I go to the bathroom?’’ or ‘‘What are we doing next?’’ Our typical responses were that they had to ask the camp director for permission and that we did not know what was happening next. Youth soon stopped asking us questions they would ask other adults at the camp. They demonstrated their acceptance of us into the peer culture when they broke rules in front of us by cussing, switching seats on the bus, and streaming explicit music videos in the computer lab (Corsaro, 2005; Eder et al., 1995). Youth also included us in their groups by saving seats for us on the bus and inviting us to join their conversations. By accepting their invitations to sit with and talk to them, we were able to move between different friendship groups within the peer culture and observe all of the youth at the camp. While in the field, we tried to take jottings unobtrusively whenever possible. After exiting the field each day, we used our jottings to write full and detailed fieldnotes. Each week, we met to compare fieldnotes and to discuss the salient features of the peer culture. We changed all names to pseudonyms to preserve confidentiality. During data analysis, we used a largely inductive approach identified by Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995) which consisted of identifying emergent themes, coding fieldnotes, writing analytic memos, searching for negative cases, and refining our analyses. We identified age and dating as two main concerns in the peer culture and focused our analyses on how the youth at camp used ideas about age to structure and enforce dating norms.
CONSTRUCTING AND ENFORCING DATING NORMS These youth employed elements of the developmental discourse to create dating norms at the same time that they were creating a new peer culture. On the first day of the camp, they sat down at tables with the other students from their middle school. Over the course of the first two weeks of the camp, the campers shuffled around until they eventually formed three groups: one small group of sixth grade girls from Ames Middle School; one larger group of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade boys from all three middle schools; and one larger group of girls and boys from all three grades and all three middle schools. Dating began rather slowly in the camp, and it was not until the second week of the camp that the first pair decided they were ‘‘going out.’’ By the last week of the camp, youth from all three friendship circles were asking other campers to go out with them, seeking and offering advice about
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how to conduct a romantic relationship, relaying messages between dating partners, and breaking off their relationships. On the last day of the camp, bids to begin and end relationships dominated the activity in the peer culture. Dating activities in this peer culture may have begun slowly because the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders who entered the camp brought a variety of dating norms from their school-based peer cultures. In previous studies of peer cultures, sixth graders’ dating behaviors were often very different from eighth graders’ dating behaviors in U.S. middle schools (Adler & Adler, 1998; Fine, 1987; Simon et al., 1992). It took nearly two weeks for the youth at the camp to collectively establish one set of dating norms that applied to all campers, regardless of chronological age or grade level. As they patrolled the boundaries of normative dating behavior, youth constructed a hierarchical progression of dating behaviors that were linked to social age. Campers reacted to certain dating behaviors as if they were ‘‘too young’’ and other dating behaviors as if they were ‘‘too old’’ for themselves. Some of the older campers (aged 14–17) engaged in dating behavior that was considered childish or too ‘‘young,’’ and some of the youngest campers (aged 11–12) engaged in dating behavior that was deemed too ‘‘old.’’ To distinguish chronological age from social age, we surround ‘‘young’’ and ‘‘old’’ with quotation marks when we are referring to social age. When youth divorced their dating norms from campers’ chronological ages, the PASS youth rejected the narrow age grading promoted by the dominant developmental discourse in the larger culture. In the camp’s peer culture, youth used ideas of age to construct and enforce three dating norms: (1) youth should exhibit a moderate level of interest and participation in dating at the camp; (2) youth should engage in short, monogamous relationships; and (3) dating partners should engage in moderate levels of commitment and intimacy while dating. Dating behaviors considered too ‘‘young’’ included avoiding dating within the camp, dating multiple partners at the same time, and refusing to talk to a dating partner. Youth who spent most or all of their time discussing their dating relationships, expressing their emotional commitment to partners, spending time alone with their dating partners, and engaging in physical affection engaged in behaviors considered too ‘‘old.’’ Drawing on interpretive reproduction (Corsaro, 1992, 2005), we note that these dating norms reflected the young campers’ own concerns within their peer culture. The behaviors the youth deemed ‘‘age-appropriate’’ ensured that dating remained a public, collective activity in the peer culture and provided them with numerous opportunities for pleasurable interactions.
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Norm 1: A Moderate Level of Interest and Participation in Dating is Age-Appropriate Within the PASS camp, the norm was for kids to be moderately interested in and active in dating. We use the phrase ‘‘active in dating’’ rather than ‘‘actively dating’’ because kids could participate in the dating scene without agreeing to date another individual. Alternatives to dating included serving as intermediaries, offering advice, and providing assistance to someone who was dating. Youth identified lack of interest and activity as ‘‘young’’ behaviors, while excessive interest and activity were frowned upon and considered an ‘‘older’’ behavior. ‘‘Younger’’ Behaviors Youth who exhibited a total lack of interest in dating did not provide opportunities for other kids to discuss and participate in their relationships. Because youth at the camp routinely opened conversations by asking each other who they liked and whether they were dating anyone, any lack of involvement in dating and romance was quickly discovered. On the bus one day, Luis (Latino, 12) and Antonio (Latino, 17), tried to invite another boy, David (Latino, 11), to join the romantic peer culture. Luis asked David, ‘‘Who do you like?’’ Antonio got into the conversation and asked David, ‘‘What’s her NAME?’’ David said ‘‘She’s not here.’’ Luis asked, ‘‘Not here at camp or not here in this country?’’ David said, ‘‘She’s not here.’’ Antonio yelled ‘‘WHAT?’’ David asked Antonio, ‘‘Do you speak English? I said she’s not here.’’ Antonio said ‘‘No, I speak Espan’’ol David said, ‘‘You need a translator.’’ Antonio asked ‘‘What. Country. Does she. LIVE IN?’’ David answered ‘‘Texas.’’ ‘‘Texas?! That’s not a country!’’ responded Luis. Antonio shook his head. (06/14/07, Nenga’s fieldnotes)
In this episode, Luis first invited David to join the romantic peer culture by asking David who he liked. Had David chosen a girl at the camp, Luis might have served as an intermediary and relayed David’s interest in the girl. Indeed, Luis often served as an intermediary by relaying messages between boys and girls who were dating. However, David refused to participate in the camp’s peer culture by stating that the girl he liked was not ‘‘here.’’ As Luis and Antonio continued to question David, it became clear that David could not provide any concrete information about the girl he liked. Without a name or location, Luis and Antonio assumed that David’s girl was fictitious and began to question him slowly and loudly, as if David were too young or too incompetent to understand them. Throughout this conversation, David claimed a level of involvement in dating that was unacceptable to Luis and Antonio because David’s participation in dating occurred
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outside of the peer culture. David claimed to like an unknown girl outside the summer camp, which meant that the other boys could not participate in the enjoyable activities of observing, discussing, and correcting David’s relationship. The informal social control exercised in the peer culture was a powerful influence on youth who were not ready or able to participate in the dating scene at the camp. Some of the girls who were not ready to date channeled their romantic interests into celebrity crushes, which is a common transition into sexuality for girls (Karniol, 2001). Within the peer culture, celebrity crushes were negatively valued partly because they did not offer a relationship within the camp that other kids could collectively regulate and mediate. Youth ridiculed such crushes for being too ‘‘young.’’ While we waited for the bus one day, Sam (Latina, 11) told her friend, Morgan (white, 11), that she had a poster of Pete Wentz, the lead singer from the band Fallout Boy, over her bed. Morgan mocked Sam by referring to Pete as ‘‘Pee’’ twice and then ignored her for a few minutes. By using bathroom humor more common to younger children (Corsaro, 2005; Hadley, 2003), Morgan signaled her belief that celebrity crushes were appropriate for younger children. After a few minutes, Morgan began talking about the ongoing relationships of kids at the camp, as if to say that only observable relationships were worth discussing. After this interaction, Sam began to hide her celebrity crush and to discuss dating relationships within the camp (06/20/07, Nenga’s fieldnotes). Youth expected their peers to be involved in dating within the camp regardless of their chronological age. David and Sam were two of the youngest campers (both age 11), but even older campers were teased if they did not participate in the camp’s dating activities. Although William (Latino, 15) claimed to be dating a girl who was not in the camp, he was still chastised. One day on the bus, Abby-Reese (multiracial, 11) told William ‘‘Some guy told me during lunch that you need a girlfriend’’ (06/27/07, Apgar’s fieldnotes). Abby-Reese’s statement implied that William was behaving immaturely and that he needed to start dating. Although developmental research would suggest that Abby-Reese should be less interested in dating at age 11 and that William should be more active by age 15, within this camp both were expected to adhere to the same norm of moderate participation in dating activities. ‘‘Age-Appropriate’’ Behaviors The statements and activities of the campers established a moderate level of interest and participation as age-appropriate. Youth could participate in
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dating activities by dating, serving as intermediaries, or by actively discussing the ongoing formation and termination of other kids’ relationships. On the last day of the camp, Faith (white, 13) considered breaking up with Victor (black, 12) in order to date Colyn (white, 14) again. Luis (Latino, 12), Antonio (Latino, 17), and Kelly (white, 13) were all involved in Faith’s decision. Luis and Antonio stood talking to Faith. Then Faith came over and sat down with Kelly. Faith said, ‘‘I don’t know what to do.’’ Luis came up and tapped Faith on the shoulder. Luis said, ‘‘Okay. Number one, he really likes you. Number two, he’s really sad about you maybe breaking up with him.’’ Then Luis walked back to Antonio. Kelly asked Faith, ‘‘Are you breaking up with Victor?’’ Faith said, ‘‘I don’t know. He really likes me. But Colyn said he would go out with me again.’’ (06/28/07, Nenga’s fieldnotes)
Faith and Victor’s dating relationship involved four other campers – Colyn, Luis, Antonio, and Kelly – and illustrated the variety of roles available. Youth like Luis could serve as intermediaries and deliver messages between dating parties. Others could discuss the relationships, listen to the dating parties as they deliberated, and offer to date. Notably, the youth we observed did not sanction each other for assuming the roles of intermediary, confidant, or prospective dating partner. Although there were multiple ways youth could demonstrate their interest in dating, the ideal form of participation was to date a member of the opposite sex whom one ‘‘liked.’’ Romantic feelings were prized, but unnecessary for participation in the camp’s dating culture. Sometimes youth embarked on a relationship with someone for whom they did not have romantic feelings. When the tour guide left, I sat on a bench for a while next to Madison. I heard Kelsey protesting, and then some kids walked over to Carlos. I leaned over to Madison and asked if Kelsey had a crush on Carlos. Madison quietly said ‘‘no, she was forced to pick, and she picked Carlos, but she doesn’t have a crush on him.’’ (06/26/07, Nenga’s fieldnotes)
To ensure that she was participating in dating, some of the kids at the camp presented Kelsey (white, 13) with the choice of dating Carlos (Latino, 13) or Antonio (Latino, 17). Although she did not ‘‘like’’ either boy, Kelsey chose Carlos. By making it clear that her choice was a matter of convenience rather than affection, Kelsey clearly established that she was interested in dating but not excessively so. Although eighth graders in previous research were interested in more serious relationships (Simon et al., 1992), Kelsey followed the camp norm of having only a moderate level of interest in dating.
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‘‘Older’’ Behaviors Youth regularly expressed disapproval of girls and boys who were excessively active in dating. Youth were deemed excessively active when they spoke frequently about their relationships, when they interacted oneon-one, and when they engaged in physical intimacy. Even the adult camp director could become involved in chastising youth who discussed their romantic lives too often. For example, one day the camp director had listened to Faith (white, 13) discuss her previous relationship with James (who did not attend the camp) for several minutes before turning to AbbyReese (multiracial, 11) and sarcastically saying ‘‘I think we should talk about James some more. We don’t talk about James enough. We need to talk about him more’’ (06/20/07, Apgar’s fieldnotes). A few days later, Luis (Latino, 12) also chastised Faith for discussing James too often by yelling ‘‘Kelsey said you’re obsessed with James!’’ (06/26/07, Apgar’s fieldnotes). Interpretive reproduction suggests that youth appropriate resources from multiple sources, including older peer cultures and adult cultures; in this instance, they may have appropriated tools for policing excessive interest from the adult camp director. Spending time alone and engaging in physical intimacy were also considered ‘‘older’’ dating behaviors. One day at the pool, Sam (Latina, 11) and Danielle (black, 13) watched two kids who attended Sam’s school: Ethan and Tara. As Ethan and Tara sat together at a picnic bench, talking and occasionally holding hands, Sam told Danielle that Tara was in sixth grade like herself. When Danielle saw Tara kiss Ethan on the cheek, she sneered and turned to Sam: Danielle asked Sam if Ethan went to ‘‘your school.’’ Sam said yes. Danielle asked what grade he was in. Sam said that he was in eighth grade, but that next year he would be in ninth grade. Danielle shook her head and said it wasn’t right to date a boy so much older. (06/19/07, Nenga’s fieldnotes)
In this instance, Danielle exhibited age-appropriate behavior by discussing the relationship of two other kids. Danielle delivered her judgment that the relationship between Ethan and Tara was inappropriate because there was an age discrepancy, because the two spent time alone, and because the two engaged in ‘‘older’’ dating behaviors such as holding hands and kissing (see norm 3 below). In sum, kids at this summer camp established a norm of moderate interest in and participation in dating activities. By treating kids who did not participate in dating as if they were childish and expressing disapproval for intense ‘‘older’’ relationships that were conducted in private, the PASS
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campers constructed dating as a public activity. The public nature of ageappropriate dating provided multiple opportunities for other kids to become involved as intermediaries, confidants, and judges. Consequently, this norm worked to ensure that dating was a public, collective activity within the peer culture.
Norm 2: Short, Monogamous Relationships are Age-Appropriate Once youth began dating, they faced the question of how many people they should date at the same time. Youth at this camp appropriated elements of the developmental discourse to construct their norm of serial monogamy. Dating multiple partners at the same time was considered a ‘‘younger’’ behavior. Engaging in a series of short, monogamous relationships was considered age-appropriate. As youth encouraged each other to adopt the more age-appropriate norm of serial monogamy, they simultaneously created multiple opportunities for campers to participate in the camp’s dating activities. ‘‘Younger’’ Behaviors Kids at this camp considered dating multiple partners at the same time a sign of immaturity and expressed their disapproval by mocking polygamous youth for behaving childishly. After stopping for ice cream one day, the youth began discussing Antonio’s (Latino, 17) bid to date Madison (white, 13). Madison told Carlos (Latino, 13) and Kelsey (white, 13) that she had refused Antonio’s offer. Madison said that Antonio had 20 girlfriends at once. Carlos asked Madison, ‘‘Don’t you want to reconsider going out with Antonio?’’ Madison said no. Kelsey told her ‘‘You should go up to him and say I’ll go out with you’’ (while she was pretending to pick nose). Madison imitated that, and then started rubbing her nose with the back of her hand saying, ‘‘I’ll go out with you.’’ Carlos said that if Antonio said yes, then Madison could cough and wipe it on him. Madison pretended to cough up spit and then pretended to wipe it on someone while she said, ‘‘OK, we can go out.’’ (6/26/07, Apgar’s fieldnotes)
When the kids pointed out that 17-year-old Antonio had 20 girlfriends at once, they identified his dating behavior as too ‘‘young’’ for the norms of the camp. In response to Antonio’s ‘‘young’’ behavior, Kelsey and Carlos suggested that Madison avoid the relationship by acting childishly. Kelsey advised Madison to pretend to pick her nose, as if she were unable to control her bodily fluids like a younger child. Carlos built on this suggestion
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by incorporating a second bodily fluid, saliva, into the refusal. Madison eagerly acted out both of their suggestions. In this case, Madison was not censored for acting ‘‘too young’’ because her actions reaffirmed her intention to avoid a relationship that was not age-appropriate. ‘‘Age-Appropriate’’ Behaviors Youth borrowed the notion of an age-linked sequence of behaviors from the developmental discourse to construct their norm of serial monogamy. Through their conversations, youth encouraged each other to abandon the ‘‘younger’’ practice of dating multiple partners. Underneath the buzz and glow of fluorescent lights, a group of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders debated the rules for dating at the summer camp. Faith (white, 13) and William (Latino, 15) began by discussing Faith’s relationship with Colyn (white, 14). Faith said that she wanted to be able to date more than one guy, but she didn’t want Colyn to date anyone but her. William said that she was jealous and that the definition of jealousy was not wanting someone to date anyone else. William said it wasn’t fair that Faith wanted to date more than one guy but she didn’t want Colyn to date anyone ever. Faith protested, ‘‘Not forever. Just until I’m ready.’’ (06/14/07, Nenga’s fieldnotes)
After Faith quietly protested that she was not ready to date Colyn exclusively, a few other kids at nearby tables chimed in with their opinions. They muttered ‘‘it’s not fair’’ and shook their heads gravely while staring at Faith. Their reactions indicated that most of the middle school students accepted monogamy as the norm. In addition, Faith and William linked monogamous dating practices with being age-appropriate. When William patiently suggested that Faith was violating a norm by asking Colyn to be exclusive while she was not, Faith’s drew on the logic of development to argue that she was not yet ‘‘ready’’ for mutual monogamy. For Faith, mutual monogamy implied a level of commitment that was appropriate for youth ‘‘older’’ than herself who had acquired a set of relational and emotional skills. The norm of serial monogamy addressed the campers’ concern that dating remain a public, collective activity in the peer culture because it provided numerous, highly emotional discussions in which kids could participate. First, there were conversations about serial monogamy during which youth like William socialized ‘‘younger’’ kids like Faith to accept the norm. Second, when youth received multiple bids to date, their decisions about whom to date and when to break up became public, collective activities. Many kids joined these dramatic and pleasurable discussions, just as Luis,
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Antonio, and Kelly did when Faith was trying to decide between dating Victor and Colyn (in the previous section). Simply keeping track of the beginning and ending of relationships constituted a significant portion of each day in the camp. In sum, youth at this camp drew from the developmental discourse to create a continuum of age-linked norms regarding the number of dating partners. Dating multiple partners, or being able to, was considered a ‘‘younger’’ behavior while serial monogamy was considered ageappropriate. As with the first dating norm, kids acted ‘‘younger’’ when pointing out and resisting norm violations. Socializing ‘‘younger’’ campers into the norm provided one opportunity for ‘‘age-appropriate’’ campers to express their interest in dating. The serial monogamy practiced at this camp was characterized by a series of short relationships; most kids dated for one to three days. Because decisions to begin and end relationships were frequent public activities, even kids who were not dating themselves had multiple opportunities each day to help other campers make their dating decisions. This norm also functioned to maximize the enjoyable, collective nature of dating in the peer culture.
Norm 3: Expressing Moderate Levels of Emotional Commitment and Physical Intimacy is Age-Appropriate The third dating norm in the camp’s peer culture focused on how dating partners should interact. While youth might use intermediaries at the beginning, middle, and end of the relationship, the middle school students decided that it was inappropriate to use intermediaries so much that one completely avoided their dating partner. Instead, youth who dated were expected to talk to each other, preferably in public settings. Youth who demonstrated high levels of emotional involvement and engaged in sexual contact were acting ‘‘too old.’’ The norm of engaging in public interaction helped to ensure that dating relationships were conducted in full view of the peer culture. As a result, kids other than the dating pair could participate in ongoing dating relationships by evaluating interactions and offering advice. ‘‘Younger’’ Behaviors When kids used intermediaries to ask each other out, to relay messages, and to signal that they wanted to break up, they offered other youth the opportunity to participate in the dating activities at the camp. However, using intermediaries exclusively resulted in a total lack of interaction
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between dating partners. This behavior was considered too ‘‘young’’ and youth tried to teach each other how to interact with their dating partners. After Carlos (Latino, 13) used an intermediary to ask Kelsey (white, 13) to date him, other kids monitored Carlos’ behavior and intervened when necessary. As Carlos walked into the room, Lukas told him ‘‘Say hello to your girl.’’ Carlos shrugged him off and didn’t immediately talk to Kelsey. (06/27/07, Apgar’s fieldnotes)
Lukas (Latino, 15) tried to coach Carlos to engage in a minimal level of interaction by suggesting that Carlos simply greet the girl he was dating. Carlos only engaged in this ‘‘younger’’ behavior occasionally; at other times, he talked to the girls he dated (see below). Throughout the camp, Lukas continued to gently coach Carlos by talking to him about his relationship and checking in with the girls he dated to make sure that Carlos was treating them right. ‘‘Age-Appropriate’’ Behaviors Age-appropriate behavior while dating consisted of public interaction and minimizing physical and emotional intimacy. On the bus ride home from a museum, Kelsey (white, 13), Carlos (white, 13), and Madison (white, 14) engaged in a complicated round of seat switching to prevent Kelsey and Carlos from having any private interactions. At the beginning of the bus ride, Kelsey and Carlos were sitting in seats across from each other. Youth who sat in adjacent seats like this commonly leaned across the aisle to whisper confidences and share headphones for mp3 players. Madison switched seats to sit with Carlos and tried to make caveman faces out the bus window. Carlos then switched seats to sit in front of Kelsey. Kelsey was counting boyfriends that she had in the past and then she said, ‘‘6 including you.’’ Kelsey asked Carlos how many girlfriends he had. I didn’t hear Carlos’s answer. Madison tried to get a trucker’s attention, but couldn’t, so she gave up making faces. Kelsey asked Carlos how long his longest relationship had lasted and Carlos said ‘‘4 weeks.’’ Kelsey said, ‘‘That’s all?’’ She asked Madison and Madison said ‘‘2 months, but then my parents found out.’’ (6/26/07, Apgar’s fieldnotes)
At the beginning of this interaction, Madison moved into the bench seat with Carlos, placing herself between Carlos and Kelsey and effectively preventing them from talking to each other. Carlos then switched seats on the bus. Carlos could have moved into the same seat as Kelsey, but that would have offered the kids the opportunity to touch and spend time alone. Instead, Carlos chose to sit in the seat in front of Kelsey, where he could not touch her easily. In addition, sitting in the seat in front of someone meant
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that kids had to sit up and raise their voices, ensuring that the conversation was at least somewhat public. As Kelsey and Carlos discussed their relationship history, they continued to draw Madison into the conversation. Kelsey and Carlos minimized the intimacy of their relationship by conducting it in public, involving others in their conversations, and avoiding physical contact. Although previous research suggested that the relationships of 13- and 14-year-olds could be more intimate (Eder et al., 1995; Fine, 1987; Merten, 1996), Kelsey and Carlos followed the camp’s norm for ‘‘ageappropriate’’ behavior. ‘‘Older’’ Behaviors Within the camp, very few kids expressed a desire for emotional and physical intimacy, which were considered ‘‘older’’ dating behaviors. Instead, the youth at the summer camp remained vigilant against dating behaviors which might intensify their physical and emotional involvement. When Faith (white, 13) began dating Colyn (white, 14) for the second time during camp, she giddily announced that her favorite sentence was ‘‘I love Colyn.’’ William (Latino, 15) overheard her and told her it could not be her favorite sentence ‘‘because it’s only been a couple of days’’ (06/26/07, Apgar’s fieldnotes). William’s comment effectively reminded Faith that she needed to avoid comments which might suggest a high level of emotional commitment to her dating partner. Throughout the summer, it was primarily boys who pressured girls to engage in physical intimacy. This pattern was similar to the one Martin (1996) found in her interview study of high school students. When boyfriends attempted to increase physical intimacy, girls at the camp often terminated the relationship with the support of other boys. While ostensibly watching an educational film, Faith (white, 13) attempted to explain why she broke up with her boyfriend James (not attending the camp) to William (Latino, 15), Colyn (white, 14), Aidan (white, 13), and Abby-Reese (multiracial, 11). Faith started talking about James, again. William said ‘‘Isn’t he your ex?’’ Abby-Reese said ‘‘Twice.’’ William asked why Faith broke up with him. Faith said, ‘‘Do you really want to know?’’ William said yes. Faith said okay but she didn’t want to say it out loud. William asked Abby-Reese if she knew, and she said yes. Then he asked Aidan, and Aidan nodded. William asked Colyn and he shrugged. Then Colyn drawled he knew why they broke up, but he didn’t want to say it out loud either. William caught on and said, ‘‘oh yeah, I know but I don’t want to say it where people could hear it either.’’ AbbyReese leaned over to whisper to William. The first time, I heard her say ‘‘blow job.’’ Then she pulled back and said, ‘‘well not a blow job, but...’’ William said ‘‘oh’’ and turned back to watch the movie. (06/13/07, Nenga’s fieldnotes)
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William and Colyn, who first mocked Faith about breaking up with her boyfriend, stopped their teasing when Abby-Reese told them the reason that the couple broke up. This change in mood illustrated the boys’ recognition that oral sex was a behavior too ‘‘old’’ for their norms and their support of Faith’s actions. Although Faith was the one who took action to prevent her participation in behaviors that were too ‘‘old,’’ her perceptions and judgments were shared by the boys. In sum, youth at this camp constructed a continuum of dating behaviors linked to social age rather than chronological age. Youth who dated were expected to engage in moderate levels of interaction and intimacy with their partners. Avoiding interactions entirely was deemed ‘‘younger’’ behavior, while expressions of emotional and physical intimacy were regarded as too ‘‘old’’ and inappropriate. By valuing public interactions, minimal physical contact, and minimal displays of commitment, the youth at the PASS camp ensured that dating behaviors took place in the public arena where kids could collectively discuss, evaluate, monitor, and intervene in dating activities.
DISCUSSION At this small, age-heterogeneous summer camp, youth were able to play with and resist the strict age-graded norms associated with the developmental discourse. The youth established and enforced dating norms such as continual interest and participation in heterosexual dating, public interactions, the moderate use of intermediaries, monogamous relationships of short duration, an avoidance of physical affection, and a moderate display of emotional intimacy. In previous observations of age-graded schools, these norms were not typically observed in the same grades. The use of intermediaries and avoidance of physical affection were more typical of fifth and sixth graders while continual participation in heterosexual dating, serial monogamy, and moderate displays of intimacy were more commonly found among seventh and eighth graders (Adler & Adler, 1998; Eder et al., 1995; Fine, 1987; Merten, 1996). At the camp we studied, youth in a heterogeneous age group created a single set of dating norms that applied to everyone in the camp regardless of their chronological age. The single set of dating norms we observed may be due to the specific characteristics of our sample. First, the small size of the camp we studied may have made age-graded norms impractical. If the youth had enforced strict age-graded norms, the sheer variety of chronological ages within the
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camp would have severely curtailed all 20 campers’ opportunities to be active in dating. Adhering to strict-age-graded norms would mean that each youth could only date another youth with similar dating norms. (Imagine the difficulties presented when one partner could only interact by intermediary and another partner was supposed to have private, one-onone conversations.) The most opposite-sex same-chronological age dating partners anyone in the camp might have had was three and some youth would have had none. In addition, if each chronological age had four or five dating norms, the sheer number of dating norms would have been difficult to track and enforce. Second, we speculate that this peer culture’s focus on the needs and desires of the wider group may have been facilitated by the diverse composition of the camp. Some of the economically disadvantaged white, Latino, black, and multiracial kids came from large families and were used to attending to the needs and desires of a larger, age-heterogeneous group. By establishing a single set of dating norms for everyone at the camp, the youth made it easier for all campers to participate in dating. Because previous observations of middle-school dating routines tended to focus on students in predominantly white (Eder et al., 1995; Simon et al., 1992), middle-class to upper middle-class communities (Adler & Adler, 1998; Fine, 1987; Merten, 1996), it is possible that strict age-graded dating norms are not a general feature of middle school life but are fostered by specific populations in age-graded settings. More attention needs to be paid to a variety of peer cultures in order to identify conditions which foster both agegraded and non-age-graded dating norms. In this camp, youth employed three elements from the developmental discourse during interactions with each other: a normative behavioral sequence arranged by age, surveillance, and the necessity for intervention. Regardless of their chronological age, youth who opted out of dating within the camp – either by inventing fictional crushes or asserting a celebrity crush – were denigrated for behaving too ‘‘young.’’ Youth who dated another camper, used intermediaries occasionally, and minimized private interactions were praised for their relationships. Youth who entered into relationships characterized by intense emotional exchanges and physical affection were critiqued for engaging in dating behaviors that were ‘‘too old’’ for the camp. By serving as dating partners, confidants, and intermediaries, middle school students were able to move through the social circles of the camp, monitoring each other’s dating behaviors and intervening when necessary. Although these 11- to 17-year-old students uncoupled social age from chronological age in this peer culture, they reinforced other elements of the developmental
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discourse such as the age-linked progression of behaviors and the belief that deviations required policing and correction. Ultimately, including these elements in their dating norms reinforces the legitimacy of the developmental discourse. Consistent with interpretive reproduction (Corsaro, 2005), we noted that youth creatively appropriated information from multiple sources as they constructed a peer culture which addressed their own values and concerns about dating. Both the developmental discourse and the camp director served as sources of dating norms and policing strategies. While the end goal of dating norms in the developmental framework is a healthy adult relationship, youth in this camp constructed a linear trajectory of age-linked dating behaviors in order to facilitate opportunities for pleasurable interactions. The dating norms of continual participation, moderate use of intermediaries, monogamous relationships of short duration, and publicly conducted relationships all functioned to ensure that dating remained a public form of recreation in which the greatest number of campers could participate. In sum, youth at this summer camp exerted agency to wield some elements of the developmental discourse for their own purposes and to reject another element of the developmental discourse which could have severely curtailed their dating activities. Although the developmental discourse can be so powerful that it neutralizes youths’ agency (Kelle, 2001; Raby, 2002), we argue that the small size of the camp, the heterogeneity of campers’ ages, the diverse composition of the camp, and the youths’ desire to engage in pleasurable collective interactions all played a crucial role in lessening the powerful grip of the developmental discourse. It is also possible that these youth were able to play with and resist the developmental discourse because adult authority figures played a smaller role in their peer culture at camp than they would at school. Without an institutional insistence on strict agegraded norms and regular adult interference, youth had more freedom to construct a peer culture and dating norms which met their own needs. Our analysis of this age-heterogeneous peer culture emphasizes the importance of the social context for understanding when and how youth are able to exert agency to engage with, appropriate, challenge, and reshape norms and discourses. Previous analytical investigations of curriculum development, child welfare practices, and child psychology have demonstrated the disciplinary power of the developmental discourse. Our research demonstrated that youth can appropriate elements of the developmental discourse for their own purposes. In this peer culture, youth combined their desire to engage in
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enjoyable, collective interactions with ideas about age-appropriate behavior to create a set of dating norms which ultimately minimized emotional and physical intimacy. Adults concerned with minimizing the negative consequences of teen dating might pay less attention to prohibitions and restrictions. Instead, nurturing the cultural tools and skills youth creatively produce and employ might facilitate their ability to construct their own healthy dating cultures.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For their helpful comments, the authors would like to acknowledge Donna Eder and the League of Academic Such ‘n’ Such: Kathryn Gold Hadley, Jeni Loftus, Robyn Ryle, and Carla Shirley. This research was funded by the Southwestern University Undergraduate Research Group Experience and the Fleming funds.
NOTES 1. It is not unheard of in this area for parents to delay their child’s entry into public school by a year in the hope that this will make the child physically bigger and stronger in comparison to their classmates, thus providing the child with an advantage during athletic tryouts. Another common reason for interruptions and delays in a child’s education in this area can be the family’s cyclical migration for employment purposes. 2. We speculate that the wide age range and overrepresentation of racial minorities and economically disadvantaged kids occurred because the camp was strategically timed to coincide with the end of summer school classes held in the same building. Academically weak students who failed either their classes or year-end standardized tests were required to attend summer school. These students are disproportionately likely to be older, racial minorities, and economically disadvantaged. Approximately half of the kids at the camp we studied attended summer school in the morning.
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Burrows, L., & Wright, J. (2001). Developing children in New Zealand school physical education. Sport, Education and Society, 6(2), 165–182. Corsaro, W. A. (1992). Interpretive reproduction in children’s peer cultures. Social Psychology Quarterly, 55(2), 160–177. Corsaro, W. A. (2005). The sociology of childhood. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Eder, D., Evans, C. C., & Parker, S. (1995). School talk: Gender and adolescent culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fine, G. A. (1987). With the boys: Little league baseball and preadolescent culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hadley, K. G. (2003). Children’s word play: Resisting and accommodating Confucian values in a Taiwanese kindergarten classroom. Sociology of Education, 76(3), 193–208. Karniol, R. (2001). Adolescent females’ idolization of male media stars as a transition into sexuality. Sex Roles, 44(1/2), 61–77. Kelle, H. (2001). The discourse of ‘‘development’’: How 9- to 12-year-old children construct ‘‘childish’’ and ‘‘further developed’’ identities within their peer culture. Childhood, 8(1), 95–114. Lesko, N. (2001). Act your age! A cultural construction of adolescence. New York: Routledge. Martin, K. (1996). Puberty, sexuality and the self: Girls and boys at adolescence. New York: Routledge. Merten, D. E. (1996). Going-with: The role of a social form in early romance. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 24(4), 462–484. Miller, G. (1994). Toward ethnographies of institutional discourse: Proposal and suggestions. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 23(3), 280–306. Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2006). Continuing rethinking the history of Ontario day nurseries: Loci for intervention, regulation, and administration: Part two. Child & Youth Care Forum, 35(2), 183–204. Payne, M. A. (2001). Limitations unlimited: Interrogating some finer points of the ‘‘scientific study’’ of adolescence. Journal of Youth Studies, 4(2), 175–191. Raby, R. C. (2002). A tangle of discourses: Girls negotiating adolescence. Journal of Youth Studies, 5(4), 425–448. Simon, R. W., Eder, D., & Evans, C. (1992). The development of feeling norms underlying romantic love among adolescent females. Social Psychology Quarterly, 55(1), 29–46. Solberg, A. (1990). Negotiating childhood: Changing constructions of age for Norwegian children. In: A. James & A. Prout (Eds), Constructing and reconstructing childhood: Contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood (pp. 118–137). London: Falmer Press. Swain, J. (2005). Sharing the same world: Boys’ relations with girls during their last year of primary school. Gender and Education, 17(1), 75–91. Walkerdine, V. (1993). Beyond developmentalism? Theory & Psychology, 3(4), 451–469. Weedon, C. (1987). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
NEW AVENUES TO SCHOOL EXCLUSION AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION FOR URBAN YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE UK Daniel Briggs ABSTRACT Purpose – UK urban state schools have recently experienced increased pressure to improve pupil performance levels and punitive policies appear to be one way of dealing with ‘‘problematic’’ young people. While some are permanently excluded for serious acts, others, who are by comparison less problematic, are unofficially ‘‘excluded’’ and referred to off-site educational provision (OSEP) where they receive reduced timetables and unchallenging courses. This research study set out to examine why 20 young people were ‘‘unofficially’’ excluded from school and their progress in OSEP. Methodology – The study made use of ethnographic methods with 20 excluded young people in one south London borough in the UK. The research was undertaken from March 2009 to August 2009. Findings – This chapter shows how ‘‘unofficial’’ exclusionary processes, to which these urban young people are exposed, have implications for their identity, self-worth and lifestyles, and makes them increasingly vulnerable The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 133–157 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014011
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to crime and victimization. The chapter makes use of labeling perspectives to understand the significance of the social reaction to deviant labels young people receive in school (Becker, 1953) and how they respond as a consequence (Lemert, 1972). Keywords: School exclusion; social exclusion; urban young people; off-site educational provision; urban street culture; lifestyles
INTRODUCTION This chapter is concerned with examining urban young peoples’ experiences of unofficial school exclusion, and how these processes directly contribute to increased social exclusion and exposure to victimization and crime. Underperforming UK urban state schools have recently experienced increased pressure to improve their league table status. This has been manifested through various campaigns to change the public perception of these schools while making improvements to the physical school environment. In particular, punitive policies on ‘‘problematic’’ pupils also appear to be used to sustain this image. However, the urban street culture young people display in these schools is seen by teachers as problematic and therefore is considered a threat to the school status quo. As a consequence, many are demonized by teachers (Becker, 1953). This demonization marks an important shift in young peoples’ attitude to mainstream education and contributes to their distance from learning (Lemert, 1972). Some lose interest in lessons, ‘‘backchat’’ the teachers and general attendance suffers. Instead most develop increasingly erratic routines characterized by late nights and late mornings. This jeopardizes their commitment in school as they start to spend more time with peers on the streets (Matza, 1969). Importantly, while most of these pupils are considered problematic, some do not necessarily do enough to warrant permanent exclusion, and instead their minor misdemeanors are noted by the schools. As a temporary solution to resolve their commitment to education, they are referred to the educational alternatives in off-site educational provisions (OSEP). They are, however, told they will return to school with good behavior and improved performance. When they are referred for these educational alternatives, few do well. Already fragile commitment levels are jeopardized by skewed daily routines and unchallenging courses that offer no qualifications, and this experience
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only seems to reinforce allegiance to peers on the streets (Matza, 1969). This, once again, reduces the motivation to attend any form of education. Indeed, none in this small sample return to school and, instead, this process results in their ‘‘unofficial’’ exclusion from school. This experience has implications for their identity, self-worth, and lifestyles, and not only augments their interactions on the streets but also makes them increasingly vulnerable to gang life, crime, and victimization (Pitts, 2007). Consequently, more come into contact with the criminal justice system and their life options are truncated despite efforts they may make otherwise. The chapter begins by examining UK policy debates around urban youth, school exclusion, and OSEP. Some attention will then be given to the aims of the project, the methods used, sampling strategies, and pupil demographics. The discussion and conclusion follow the findings.
CURRENT POLICY DEBATES AND URBAN SCHOOLS Schools are envisaged as playing a key role in the current UK government’s policy to promote social inclusion among children and young people and, in particular, tackling social exclusion (Tett et al., 2001). This is particularly the case for inner-city state schools. These schools, however, generally suffer from poor attendance, high truancy and exclusion rates (Bruns, Moore, Stephan, Pruitt, & Weist, 2005; Cohen & Angeles, 2006; Lupton, 2004; Raffaele Mendez, Knoff, & Ferron, 2002), and high turnover rates of teachers (Brown, 2004; Kitching, 2001) and find it difficult to invest in specialist resources (Croft, 2004). Many adopt various campaigns to alter the public perception of the school and invest in changes to the physical school environment (Mac Iver, 2007). There is also increasing pressure for them to improve their position in the schools league table (Lupton, 2004). Despite massive investments to resolve these issues through specialized educational programs (DfES 2003; Raffo & Gunter, 2008), there is little evidence to show overall improvement in school attendance and truancy levels (Reid, 2010), and instead greater weight appears to have been given toward punitive measures in such schools (Osler & Starkey, 2005). For these reasons, school pupils in disadvantaged urban areas tend to find the experience of state schools distinctly negative (Kinder, Kendall, Downing, Atkinson, & Hogarth, 1999). In recent research with disadvantaged urban young people in North London, Briggs (2010) showed how, for most, the secondary school experience was described as ‘‘frustrating’’; most became victims of crime, and experienced demonization and discrimination
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from peers and teachers. Indeed, many felt that institutional routes to ‘‘success’’ were not available to them (see Briggs, Matthews, & Pitts, 2007; Christian, 2005; Majors, 2001; Pitts, 2007). Other research points to confrontational relationships with teachers, discipline problems, poor facility in English, difficulties with cultural adaptation, truancy, and racism that hinder success in such schools (Dwyer Modood, Sanghera, & ThaperBjorkert, 2006; Majors, 2001; Milbourne, 2002; Modood, 2003). It is, perhaps, unsurprising therefore that a proportion of pupils in these schools are permanently excluded.
PERMANENT SCHOOL EXCLUSION Rates of permanent school exclusion have been increasing in the UK since mainstream school performance league tables were introduced in 1988 (McIntyre-Bhatty, 2008). Funding and targeting of resources is linked to the ranking of schools within these tables which means schools have come under increasing pressure to focus resources on more ‘‘able students’’ and academic attainment rather than the behavior management and specific needs of ‘‘difficult pupils’’ – who often perform poorly (Kinder et al., 1999). This is because schools are labeled as failing if these pupils stay in school so consequently large numbers of young people are excluded (Osler & Starkey, 2005). This has particularly been the case in urban state schools (Kinder et al., 1999). Permanent exclusion from school occurs when other all mediatory and disciplinary alternatives have proved unsuccessful, and when the school decides it can no longer accommodate ‘‘difficult pupils’’ (Collison, 1996; Hirschfield, 2008). Permanent school exclusion can lead young people to increased interactions with peers who share a sense of alienation (Briggs et al., 2007; Pitts, 2007). In an urban environment, this may be increasingly within a framework of an urban ‘‘street culture’’ (see Briggs, 2010 for full description of ‘‘street culture’’). In this particular scenery, there is considerable pressure to adopt the norms of urban street culture (Sewell, 1997), which is often augmented by the prestige given to unruly and antagonistic behavior (Strand, 2007). These social and cultural conditions play an important part in shaping urban young people’s attitudes, their perceptions of the social world, and, more importantly, what it can offer them. However, with this participation, many expose themselves to increased involvement in crime and gangs and increase the chances of victimization (Donoghue, 2008; Melrose, 2004; Pain, 2003; Pitts, 2007; Smith, 2003).
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The consequences of permanent exclusion often result in a lack of education, heightened family stress, fewer opportunities to acquire skills and qualifications required in the labor market, and social exclusion (Berridge, Brodie, Pitts, Porteous, & Tarling, 2001; Berridge, 2006; Pritchard & Williams, 2009; Social Exclusion Unit, 1998). For the purposes of this chapter, social exclusion has been defined as ‘‘a set of factors and processes which accentuate material and social deprivation’’ (Arthurson & Jacobs, 2003, p. 2). Aptly, Osler, Street, Lall, and Vincent (2002, p. 3) note that: Exclusion can occur through feelings of isolation, disaffection, unresolved personal, family or emotional problems, bullying, withdrawal or truancy. These experiences may be as significant as formal disciplinary exclusion procedures if they deny or restrict an individual’s access to education and lead to a more general social exclusion.
Such actions on pupils can affect the school’s reputation for excluding young people and can therefore damage their public perception. Moreover, permanently excluding a pupil is costly for UK schools because they must pay for educating the pupil in specially designed local authority provision. This comes from the individual school budget and can be double the cost of mainstream education (Kinder et al., 1999). There is, however, no (or very little) cost for the school if they can discourage students from returning to a school or encourage parents to remove their children. Despite some effort to clarify such procedures (Berridge et al., 2001), research shows that this is done through the use of ‘‘unofficial’’ exclusion whereby schools ‘‘temporarily’’ offload ‘‘difficult or problematic’’ pupils into OSEP (Brodie, 1999; Social Exclusion Unit, 1998; Stirling, 1992). Official guidance states that this practice is unacceptable, but it continues to take place with damaging longterm consequences for pupils and their families (Berridge et al., 2001; Brodie, 1999). This remains an extremely gray area.
TEMPORARY EXCLUSION TO OFF-SITE EDUCATIONAL PROVISION OSEPs are designed to be short-stay centers for pupils who are underperforming in UK schools. They may also admit pupils with behavioral difficulties and others who can be identified as vulnerable because of their health or social and emotional difficulties. They vary considerably in size and function, and can be privately run or operated by charities. The success of OSEPs depends on their responses to supporting young peoples’ individual needs and the support they receive from their local authority.
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Government research in 28 high-performing OSEPs across England shows that a ‘‘good OSEP’’ should offer a well-balanced curriculum, needsled support for young people, good working partnerships with local agencies, and have good communication with schools so pupils can return to continue their education. The same research, however, found significant gaps between policy intention and practice (and this was across the highperforming OSEPs). It was found that many young people in OSEPs stayed for indefinite periods. Not knowing the length of the placement made longer-term planning difficult, and opportunities to reintegrate pupils into mainstream schooling became limited. Other barriers, they suggest, included inadequate accommodation, pupils with diverse needs and different ages arriving without clear educational plans, limited numbers of specialist staff to provide a broad curriculum, and difficulties reintegrating pupils into mainstream schools (Ofsted, 2007). It is, perhaps, unsurprising that many young people who access these provisions receive an inadequate education (Collison, 1996). According to the DCSF (2008), 135,000 UK pupils spend time in such provisions annually. Recent pan-London research estimates that on average, 3,520 pupils per month spend time in OSEP (DCSF, 2010). While the function of OSEP is to integrate excluded pupils back into mainstream education, because of their past misdemeanors, some commentators suggest there is little motivation to bring these pupils back to school, which causes a backlog of pupils within these provisions (Atkinson, Johnson, Wilkin, & Kinder, 2004). Reintegration is also hindered by communicative problems between the school and OSEP provider, and a distinct lack of a working relationship between schools and multiple agencies (Kitching, 2001). There also appears to be a stigma attached to this provision because it is perceived to have secondary status within the education system, perhaps aptly reflected in the reduced curriculum: The aim of an OSEP is to prepare a young person for reintegration into the mainstream, as appropriate to their needs, and we believe that in order to ensure that this is successful, it is vital that OSEP students do not follow any curriculum that is radically different from the National Curriculum, albeit in a reduced form. To offer any education other than the National Curriculum to students in OSEP would lead to discontinuity across the different provisions. Withdrawing young people from the National Curriculum in this way could reinforce their existing disengagement from it (Citizenship Foundation, 2008, p. 1). Pupils in OSEP get frustrated at the lack of challenging work and this increases the propensity for poor attendance and poor performance
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(Atkinson et al., 2004; Kinder et al., 1999). This chapter is concerned with documenting this process of unofficial exclusion and examining the consequences. To do this, and highlight the various social exclusion processes at play, the chapter will make use of labeling perspectives.
THEORETICAL FOCI Becker, Lemert, and other theorists in the labeling tradition argue that the relationships that develop between deviants and social controllers are important influences that shape and transform deviant phenomena. They suggest that deviant behavior is defined by situation, perpetrators, and audience (Downes & Rock, 2001) rather than appearing as socially problematic per se (Taylor, Walton, & Young, 1973). Such behavior, deviant theorists argue, is only deviant to those who condemn it or wish to eliminate it: Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘‘offender.’’ The deviant is one to whom that label has been successfully applied; deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label. (Becker, 1963, p. 9)
Exposure to such processes has been found to prompt a reorganization of the self-identity as a means of response to the social reaction around him or her (Lemert, 1972). In many respects, this results in further distance from conventional society as the deviants start to see the world as ‘‘outsiders’’ (Becker, 1963). This identity shift, in turn, also prompts the interaction with significant others in and around them that also serves to confirm this identity (Matza, 1969; Young, 1971). This theoretical focus will help us understand the social exclusion processes to which young people in this study were exposed and how they responded. The findings follow the aims and methodology of the research. Aims and Rationale for Research The rationale for the research arose because of concerns that some pupils had not been treated fairly by the local education system in one London borough (‘‘Borough’’ hereafter) and had been unofficially excluded. The specific aims were to examine
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1. The reasons for their behavior in and out of school, and attitudes to education; 2. Existing procedures with regard to referral processes to OSEP; 3. The reasons why they have been referred to OSEP; 4. Their progress in these provisions. The research began in March 2009 and concluded in August 2009.
METHODS Ethnographic methods were undertaken with 20 excluded young people. Over the fieldwork period, open-ended qualitative interviews were conducted with 20 young people and observations were made in OSEP. The interviews were mostly carried out in public spaces such as cafe´s, parks, and pubs, but in some cases, interviews were undertaken in young peoples’ homes. Young people were asked about their experiences of secondary school, what led to their exclusion and their experiences of OSEP. Eight interviews were also conducted with school head teachers (‘‘Heads’’ hereafter) of Borough schools and five other key school representatives. These professionals were asked to reflect on current provisions for problematic school pupils, their views on OSEP, and to comment on how to improve the process so fewer young people were excluded.
The Sample and Representativeness Initially, a list of 32 unofficially excluded young people from various secondary schools (for 11–18 year olds) in Borough was provided by the education authority. The researcher’s role was to see who would be prepared to speak about their experiences by recruiting as many of the 32 young people as possible. The goal was not to generate a representative sample because the targeted nature of the research focused on a specific population in a precise area with an aim to examine their particular experiences. Therefore, this was a research project that targeted a number of young people for interview in one specific borough and is therefore not representative of national trends in any way. Moreover, different boroughs have varying provisions for excluded young people so these findings are not necessarily generalizable.
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Furthermore, given that this was an emerging social problem, Borough’s educational authority had very little data on these pupils and those who had been unofficially excluded in the past. Therefore, caution must be exercised to government figures (DCSF, 2008, 2010). All that was provided to the researcher was their assigned OSEP and their contact details. Initially, young people were contacted through their OSEP to see if they would participate in the research. However, it became clear that many were not available through this means since many attended irregularly. Fortunately, many of these excluded pupils knew each other and once contact had been established with one or two, these pupils assisted in locating others to the sample. Participants were not coerced into participating in the study; on the contrary, many found it therapeutic to voice their experiences and concerns at their treatment. During the fieldwork, 12 young people could not be located. Therefore, of the 32, 20 were formally interviewed. Of these 20 pupils, around 10 had reasonable attendance records at their OSEP (50–60% across a term) although, at times, staff found it difficult to locate them. Others (n ¼ 5) had patchy, unpredictable contact and rarely attended (20–30%). Some (n ¼ 5) had completely dropped out of this provision. Thirteen of the 20 were boys and seven were girls. Participants were aged between 15 and 16 years of age. Ten described themselves as Black, six as White, three as Mixed Race, and one as Asian. All participants were guaranteed confidentiality and anonymity, and were paid d20 for their participation. There were no refusals to participate in the study. Data Coding and Analysis Once transcribed, interview and observation data was categorized thematically, with the key areas of investigation providing the overall framework for coding (Ritchie & Spencer, 2004). Analyses were inductive and thematic. All interviews were coded initially for emerging core descriptive content with coding further refined in an iterative process of data coding, charting, and interpretation. Three interviewees aided in reviewing the findings to ensure accuracy (Fetterman, 1989). In this way, participants were treated as experts of the social setting and this is linked to the retention of validity (Gilbert, 1993). Findings Those interviewed in this cohort of young people did not appear to conform to stereotypical young people excluded from school (see Berridge et al., 2001); that
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is, they did not appear to have significant psychological/behavioral problems and/or learning difficulties, or suffer from any home abuses. The fact they find themselves bereft of the education system, as we will see, marks important shifts in what appears to be unacceptable in some contemporary urban school environments. However, we start here by setting the context for their unofficial exclusion from school.
Context: Experiences of Secondary School and New Interactions Many of the young people in this study performed well in primary school and early in their secondary school career. However, with the transition to secondary school came new interactions with peers and greater autonomy, for most, within an urban street culture. As a result, from year 8 (aged 11–12) onwards, many start to adopt these cultural norms and this results in what teachers describe as ‘‘attitude problems.’’ These stem from disagreements about uniforms, ‘‘backchatting,’’ disrupting other pupils, and refusing to follow instructions/lesson plans. Students initiated these behaviors in response to three primary factors: (1) when they were not clear on their learning, (2) when they felt their voice or opinion was disregarded by teachers, and (3) when they felt stigmatized by teachers. These interactions also appear to be a response to a wider set of tense social exchanges with teachers in and around school. Young people reflect that many teachers disregard their appearance, style, tone of voice, and body language because they are symbols of an urban street culture (see Briggs, 2008, 2010): Dan: Some people would say it is up to you to change your behavior. Should you be responsible or is it the system? Dominic: As much it was me it is also the system, it is stereotyping, you wear the hood and teachers used to wind me up on purpose, others would just blame you, and because I was young I just reacted badly. It’s not just me though. Dan: No? Dominic: They are on a hype [exaggerating] with the stereotypes. I came back from lunch and he [Head] was like ‘‘you been smoking [cannabis].’’ I said ‘‘no.’’ He was accusing me not asking, like ‘‘you have been smoking and if I catch you again, I will exclude you.’’ Like, it didn’t help that my brother went from being bad, like his reputation carried over so it made me look worse because he got good. The teachers didn’t like me at all.
Teachers’ responses are often strict and dismissive in an attempt to uphold the rules. Unfortunately, given that the bulk of this group grow up in and
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around this urban street culture, where interaction with other young people and adults did not necessarily respect authority, many problems merely escalated between teachers and pupils – to the point where both parties showed visible signs of aggression. Young people do not want to be disrespected among their peers because this was not part of the social code of conduct that most appear to have developed through interacting with their peers: In year 8, I just started to argue with teachers, get sent out, doing stuff I shouldn’t be doing and then just not going to lessons. [Dan: Why?] Don’t know just because they was rude. Teachers shouting at me. I had a hat on or a chain and then they don’t like it so they shout at me, then I shout at them. It just escalated from the way I dressed or I came in chatting, on the phone, hoody on. [Mike]
Many of the early problems do not come to light with parents as many pupils curtail contact from the school. By year 9 (aged 14–15), pupil/teacher relations deteriorate significantly and there are more accounts of detentions. Yet there is little value in these ‘‘punishments’’ as most ‘‘get off lightly’’ as they see it: Like 20 minutes [in detention] is not really a punishment really, no matter how many times you get a letter y but school finished at 3.30pm but we were supposed to be there an hour but we left at 3.50pm y I swear [it’s true]. All we did was word searches, no learning, no punishment. [Robert]
There is little to motivate pupils when they start to realize that they have to work harder to catch up. Consequently, for most in this sample, minimal or no effort is made in class. It didn’t take long for a pupil who had located the excitement of being out of school, with peers, to get frustrated with their waning motivation toward their work. However, the full consequences of their actions are unknown; largely because both parents and the school are often unaware of the extent these problems develop. By year 9, many also develop significantly skewed time frameworks that are not conducive to school attendance, that is, late nights and late mornings. Time is predominantly spent ‘‘jammin ends’’ (hanging around on the streets or parks) with friends, going out, playing X-box, or smoking cannabis. These skewed time frameworks easily cancel out any motivation to attend the subjects they find difficult and those where relations with teachers are strained: Maria: We would sometimes, like in year 9, go out in the evening and come back at like 5–6 am in the morning and then sleep all day. Weekends was worse. Dan: So when Monday comes, you’re knackered [tired]. Maria: Yeah, just can’t be bothered getting up.
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When they managed to get to class, mobile phones and the Internet were constant distractions: Robert: I would answer it [the phone] on the sly. Talk to them [friends]. They would be like ‘‘we are gonna be in this place’’ and I say ‘‘alright I’m gonna get myself sent to referral room and run out of school.’’ Dan: So sometimes it was deliberate to get sent to the referral room. Robert: Yeah, then we leave. Dan: So might you go back [to school]? Robert: Sometimes.
It was often at this stage that problems culminated in ‘‘exclusion’’ and referral to OSEP. This sets some context for the chapter. There now follows an examination of their ‘‘exclusion’’ and referral to OSEP, their experience in these provisions and the implications. ‘‘Exclusion’’ and Referral to Off-Site Educational Provider Head teachers (Heads hereafter) said that they were often unwilling to exclude these pupils, but felt they had little choice. They admit that the pupils simply ‘‘had not done enough’’ to be permanently excluded and said that referral tended not to hinge on drastic or violent events, but more persistent misdemeanors, over time: It was like they build it up [the things you do wrong]. At the end of year 9, the last two weeks and they told me that I am not coming back [to school]. [Dan: No warning?]. No. [Remi]
This is an important shift because earlier research shows that permanent exclusion tends to result from this kind of behavior – persistent disruptive behavior, violence in school, or involvement in crime (Berridge et al., 2001; Ofsted, 1996). Indeed, when pupils compare their trivial misdemeanors, as they see it, against the quite serious nature of others, most consider their wrongdoings to be minor. Indeed, it is this continual punishment for minor misdemeanors that made young people angrier. Dominic was not given any chances: ‘‘they were strict with the uniform and they just exclude you and no one is there to calm you down, I never got help.’’ Similarly: The school are strict, they take things too far but silly things like sending people home for top button not being done up and ties not a certain length and stuff-you get a detention. [Tim]
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This is in contrast to the more serious problems that would warrant permanent exclusion to local authority provision. According to Heads, the schools would have already explored all the avenues with parents, and permanent exclusion or referral to OSEP is part of the ‘‘last resort.’’ However, some Heads reflect that high permanent exclusion rates would affect the perception and perhaps the league position of the school. Yet pupils were completely aware of this relationship: It’s like the school wants a school full of perfect children basically because the school was bad before, lots of gang violence, they have come up and they don’t want it go down, they don’t want nothing which is going to let it slip. [Tim]
Heads also said that the reason OSEP are used is because there are waiting lists to attend the local authority provision – where all permanently excluded pupils are referred. However, on discussion with various representatives from this college, there was no such waiting list. Only two pupils in this sample of 20 were called in for a meeting with the school and given a range of options for an alternative provision. Few young people are aware the school is still responsible for their education and are unaware of their legal rights: Leo: Mum had to go to school meeting before the summer holidays but they didn’t want to send me to [local authority provision]. I wasn’t sure if I was permanently excluded. They just sent me a letter in the holidays about [name], then I came here [to OSEP] and started after the holidays. They suspended me for six weeks, then after I came back I didn’t change much and then they had a meeting with my mum, they told me why I was excluded, it said permanently excluded but I didn’t go to [local authority provision]. Dan: And the appeal process? Leo: Mum didn’t look into the appeal process, I just got told to go to centre [OSEP].
One Head indicated that many schools ‘‘didn’t follow the full process; of sending letters, through governor meetings, and through right of appeal’’ because of a lack of knowledge about the Education Act. It was quite clear, however, that these processes are removing young people from schools without a legal process. For example, a key feature of referral to OSEP is that it is temporary, for a set time, before reintegration is made back to school for year 10 and 11 (age 15–16). However, these processes are not honored by most schools in this research: Mike: They said they were ‘‘excluding me for a little while’’ then I had a meeting with them and they said I was coming here [OSEP] for six weeks or something like that. Dan: At the end of year 9?
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Mike: Yeah, then I am here thinking I am going back to school, then they came saying I was not allowed back in the school. I was like ‘‘forget you, I ain’t bothered.’’
Peter had continually broken uniform rules and been sent home numerous times for his disruptiveness in class. He said ‘‘they waited until the end of year 9 and then told me. They never really explained why until the end of year 10 because I kept phoning them even though I had left to find out why. A few weeks after I found out they sent me letter but it took a year.’’ His mum also kept phoning the school but had no luck – ‘‘they kept telling mum I was excluded but she didn’t know any more.’’ In fact, a significant proportion of those interviewed appear to have been referred to OSEP conveniently at the end of year 9 before the advent of their GCSE1 years. Heads said this is because their academic capabilities are out of sync with what is expected with the advent of study for their GCSEs. The safest decision therefore, which appears to be made on behalf of the school and less on behalf of the pupil or their family, is for them to receive alternative education in OSEP. This made most young people angry because their families were disappointed, they lost their friends, and missed the opportunity to take GCSEs. Taken together, this made them feel inadequate and inferior: Dan: When did they say you were being ‘‘excluded’’ as you say? Adam: I don’t know too much about that, you know. I did know they said that I would be going to [OSEP], some NVQ2 thing in college so we went there to do the taster and select what we wanted and I thought ‘‘I won’t be doing GCSEs’’ but I thought to myself ‘‘what is going on here?’’ It wasn’t just me, it was other people. Dan: Were these people considered ‘‘problematic?’’ Adam: Yeah, some of them. I didn’t want to be in it so I don’t want to not do my GCSEs like everyone else. If you come to a job and they see that you have no GCSEs what would you think? Dan: I see your point. Adam: They told my mum and that I was going to another program and they offered me here or College because I heard that here you could do your GCSEs so I wanted to do them because I want to feel like a proper student because NVQ does not sound proper.
The problem was that Adam could not do GCSEs in this OSEP. A few, who took ‘‘exclusion’’ as a ‘‘wake-up call,’’ make some effort but not without difficulty. When the school wouldn’t let Dominic back, he ‘‘stopped trying’’ for a while but then realized that he had to negotiate something for his future. During year 10 (aged 14–15), he spent three days a week at an OSEP and had had a number of conversations with the school to augment
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his education. He managed to arrange a further two days a week at another college ‘‘but it still wasn’t enough’’ he said. After another meeting, he was sent to another ‘‘educational center’’ ‘‘where it was alright but not enough, not reliable: They change the days and work is easy and you go there to waste time.’’ However, by now many have disorganized routines, have developed difficult relationships with their families, spend more time on the streets with peers, and are unsure how next to proceed. Experiences of OSEP Once referred, the few young people in this sample who attend OSEP on a regular basis appear to be positive about the support; in particular, about how the educational facilitators interacted with them – in a less judgmental fashion: There are some really good people here, they will really help you, you want them to help you. And that is good for here too, like if you’re angry y see this is like a home, like a family to all of us if you know what I mean coz it’s just so friendly and when you walk in it’s just like wow. Everyone’s just friendly and they don’t tolerate bullies or anything. [Naomi]
These students are, however, the minority in the sample. For a significant number, attending and engaging in such provisions often proves to be difficult because their out-of-sync time frameworks – composed of ‘‘jammin ends,’’ late nights playing on computers, or smoking cannabis – affect the motivation to attend ‘‘center.’’ These lifestyles are augmented by potentially long distances to travel, unchallenging courses and programs, and the pressure from others, who also had fragile commitment levels, to skip class or leave at lunch: Like it started well [attending OSEP] but then I did the same thing, started going in late, not turning up, leaving at lunch [with others]. I was alright then I was bored of it, like too easy, like then I was running out with other people who was there because they were bad people as well. [Maria]
For staff in these agencies, the persistence needed to constantly phone and chase up certain young people is clearly tiring. In these field notes recorded from one visit to one provider, my arrival seems to trigger the mid-morning ‘‘phone around.’’ On this particular day, of the 12 who should have been present at 10 am, only 5 had arrived at 11 am: One can see, when faced with repeated responses like ‘‘I’m on my way’’ or ‘‘the bus has problems,’’ how frustrating it can be for staff. After not getting through to some pupils,
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large efforts were made to leave non-judgmental messages asking for their whereabouts and expected arrival time but they were visibly tired of making these calls. The frustration continued, however, when the worker started to call parents [the next step in the protocol], and even their responses appeared to be quite laissez-faire: ‘‘I told her to go’’ and ‘‘he’ll probably be there in 20 minutes’’ were mimed to me while the worker started to shake her head. [January 7, 2009]
In addition, on referral to ‘‘center,’’ they find themselves interacting with other ‘‘problematic’’ pupils and having to negotiate old adversaries and new enemies. This also has implications for how some see themselves – ‘‘I am with this group of kids who got kicked out of school, they don’t care, why should I?:’’ What they do is kick you out, so you can go centre, then it isn’t very good but what some schools don’t realize is that you are with even worse children. Within two weeks, you know the people, you go here, you go there, they call you on weekend and you end up robbing someone or you get robbed. [Dominic]
Despite most having sporadic attendance levels, some reflected it is ‘‘better than school.’’ This was often for the wrong reasons in that, in some provisions, they could use their mobile phone, wear what they liked, play games, and in some programs, come and go or not turn up without repercussions: Peter: They [OSEP] are stricter [than school]. Dan: What do they do if you don’t turn up? Peter: They exclude you for three days but if you leave at lunchtime they exclude you for three weeks and tell you ‘‘it’s your loss to your education.’’ If you are disrespectful, they will exclude you as well.
Yet later in the interview, after revealing his late night habits such as smoking cannabis and playing X-box, he said: Peter: Sometimes I wake up late or stay in bed all day, probably on the phone and miss centre but all they do is exclude you for a few days. Dan: And you’ll take that [you don’t mind if that happens]. Peter: Yeah, because I know I am going back.
Some pupils do not appear for anything from a few hours, to a few days to several weeks. While some program workers insist in some informal conversations that they follow up these students, when asked what happens to some pupils, some do not seem to know much and tend to merely accept the absence as a ‘‘lifestyle choice.’’ There is also poor communication between schools and OSEPs, which blurs the role of responsibility for attendance and follow-up visits from the school. Only one of the 20 pupils
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reflected that ‘‘some visits’’ were made on his progress to determine whether he could return to mainstream education. He, however, did not return. Moreover, the informal atmosphere in some provisions, while concurrent with the young people’s lifestyles and dress codes, does not appear to offer formalized learning systems that would be beneficial to them: Robert: That is my classroom out there. [Points to the hall where classes take place] Robert: That ain’t no classroom. Dan: So do you feel like you are not being educated? Robert: Yeah, but I heard they are closing this place down in June or July. So there is nothing you can do about it. It doesn’t make you feel hopeful, like for ‘‘what you are doing [for the future]?’’
In this way, such informal settings did not seem to invoke high levels of commitment. Here my field notes record my initial experiences of another OSEP learning environment: I turned up around 11.30 am, and outside there were a few girls smoking. One was Dinah who I was there to meet. She was trying to suck as much out of the cigarette as possible and her friend was trying to persuade her to give up – maybe because, as I later discovered, she was pregnant. We went inside and waited around to be let in – there didn’t appear to be anyone around of authority but when we finally went in and a lady showed us into the main hall where a young man was slowly getting out the tables. It was a community hall, with some chairs randomly placed in the room. Another pair were playing chess in the corner. It looked a little haphazard and disorganized. A table was set up for us in the corner for us to do the interview but there was too much noise in the room – one young chap started banging tables and playing music on his phone so we moved to the reception area which was more public. Dinah seemed to be quite aggressive to the lady in charge while to me she seemed calm. The lady in charge seemed unmoved by her attitude and slowly walked off. Throughout the time in the reception, young people seem to drift in and out to smoke, talk on their mobiles and generally ‘‘hang around.’’ I was later to learn that in afternoon, they were to sit a ‘‘GCSE exam in Math.’’ [May 15, 2009]
But then again, Dinah’s relationship with staff had been damaged because they had publically discussed her pregnancy in front of staff and other young people. This reduced the respect she had for them and, at times, also contributed to her reduced attendance on the program: Like I have fallen pregnant and they [the staff] told the students, and they are discussing it among themselves and I am like ‘‘that is unprofessional’’ and that is not their business. Even though I didn’t like them I came here but after that I was so angry. I don’t really talk to them now.
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However, what appears to be most ambiguous is that there was no clarity over whether OSEP can administer GCSEs; Heads said only mainstream schools are able to do this. This ambiguity is particularly prevalent in young people’s responses. Leo informed me that ‘‘we are doing GCSEs, I think it’s less worthy ones. We done two the other day.’’ Equally, Robert was ‘‘not too sure’’ about GCSEs: ‘‘I asked them [the staff] a while ago but I forgot and she told me, it slipped my mind. I think you get equivalent or something.’’ Even on some of the OSEP websites, there is vague information about GCSE accreditation. One school professional indicated that these providers cannot administer GCSEs: They [pupils] may choose GCSE subjects but they can’t do the exams [in OSEP]. What you can have is a service provider can approach a school and use them as a test centre but the school pays for the exams. It’s not much but the provider does not really prepare them for GCSEs so in the terms the kids don’t get much.
None of the interviewees are aware of this. Indeed, none of these providers offer the National Curriculum so the pupils are not getting recognizable qualifications. For example, despite his ‘‘exclusion,’’ Junior was initially positive about his referral to center: ‘‘It was a good place to go, like we have fun and learn – I got on well with teachers and they get on well with us. I used to be the best-attended pupil. I had certificates and everything.’’ He saw the referral as a chance to get back into school since he had been told that this was possible: [School] were saying ‘‘stay there for two weeks and we’ll get you back into school.’’ My performance in [OSEP] was brilliant. I went every day. But every time I kept asking them ‘‘can I go back,’’ I couldn’t.
He did not either. After several requests to return on the grounds of improved behavior and attendance, his commitment started to waver, but it was not until after a year and a half of being in the provision did he start to question ‘‘what he was working towards.’’ This was marked by his immediate self-withdrawal from the program since it was not only the school had made promises but also the OSEP who had led him to believe not only could he return to school, but that he could take qualifications in the OSEP: I didn’t want to go centre [OSEP]. It was easy, I used to be top student but I left. I was there for like one year and a half. I left in January just gone. Like I found out in January that I could not get anything and I thought ‘‘I’m not staying here for nothing, no qualifications.’’
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In addition, the drop in number of days required to attend OSEP (in comparison to school – from five days to two or three per week) appears to impact on attendance levels as it reduces the requirement on the part of the pupil that, in turn, reduces motivation, and augments already irregular routines. Cameron was enthusiastic to do his GCSEs, but his current timetable was not promoting effective learning. He said he had large gaps between lessons: Cameron: I was only at centre two days a week. Dan: What do you do between that? Cameron: Stay at home. Dan: And do what? Cameron: Go round, do nothing. I was angry. [Long pause]
Similarly, as with school, most pupils continued to avoid the key subjects such as math, English, or science – all of which they had poor ability. However, the majority of the core course and programs in OSEP revolve around these key subjects. For example, Robert did not turn up ‘‘some Mondays’’ because Math and English were ‘‘boring.’’ He reflected that ‘‘center’’ had offered him ‘‘something,’’ that ‘‘something’’ was marked by little awareness of what he actually accomplished on a week-to-week basis: Robert: It’s a good place, if it weren’t for here, I would be on the road. It has given me something to do rather than be at school. Dan: Yes, but what exactly do you do here? Robert: Work. Monday Math and English but I don’t come much. Tuesday gym, that’s ok I suppose. Wednesday we have [pause] can’t remember. Thursday cooking which ain’t that good and Friday is relationships and sex talks for half day then the rest of the day we have off.
The increased spare time spent out of school, which is often amplified when pupils are referred to OSEP, means they are often at the mercy of peer influences and expose themselves to more situations in which crime and victimization can occur.
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EXPOSURE TO CRIME AND VICTIMIZATION A few in the sample had been involved in crime throughout their secondary school years. Robert and Peter were both involved with gangs from the age of 11. They recall being involved in petty crime, largely to do with robbery or/and theft. The more they drifted into this lifestyle, early in secondary school, the more attendance suffered. For them, this was made worse by the potential for confrontation with adversaries/gang members from other schools/areas that also affected their attendance levels in school: I slowed down in school, was not focused in lesson and I was focused on these boys [trying to avoid victimization]. At lunchtime, I would have to duck out quick because otherwise they would be waiting for me. They know I’m [gang name] and I thought ‘‘fuck this, school ain’t worth it.’’ [Peter]
Nevertheless, the vast majority of pupils are not involved in crime during their time in secondary school. It is, however, with the advent of increased time spent outside of school and on referral to OSEP that this changes. Prior to exclusion, two students had been involved with criminal justice agencies, but postexclusion an additional seven had come into contact with the criminal justice system. Tony, who had never had contact with the police, found that he was frequently ‘‘stopped and searched when missing school’’ when he was with friends during the day. In the five months since leaving OSEP, Junior had got ‘‘into trouble with police for robbery.’’ He now had a ‘‘year’s probation’’ and wanted to stay on ‘‘the straight and narrow.’’ Dominic was kicked out of school at 14 and was robbing with a gang from Catford: ‘‘I was 15 when I was arrested and just thought it’s ‘just not worth it’ – I learnt from that. Now I only go places now where I need to go.’’ Cameron had recently been in trouble with the police and had a pending court case for breaking and entering. He felt it was taken out of context, and in the process of arrest, he was also ‘‘accused of assaulting a police officer.’’ This made him angrier: ‘‘the world is out to get me, bruv’’. Some reflected on having to travel to OSEP out of their area, which enhanced the chances of potential violent confrontations and increased the chances of victimization: ‘‘like sometimes I have had hassle from people outside centre [OSEP] which can deter you or on the buses [Cameron].’’ While the few who had been involved with gangs make considerable efforts to detach themselves from disruptive networks or gangs, they maintain they never completely sever links. Those links may, they reason, come in handy if they needed to generate some ‘‘quick cash’’ or if ‘‘a boy needed sorting out’’ (revenge or payback). A few said that they miss the
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respect that ‘‘the streets’’ gives them and lament that it may not be long until they drifted back into the lifestyle because without connections, they are vulnerable as Peter had learnt: I miss the rep[utation] and safety: you can go certain areas and they won’t touch you but without that you are vulnerable and your connections can’t keep you.
Despite this, most are optimistic about gaining at least some qualifications in the future. While disappointed about missing GCSEs, this does not completely crush motivation for a few to ‘‘try college.’’ Many seem to think that attending college will resolve and remedy previous problems with education, and this is the pathway most have in mind. Such an overreliance can be dangerous since, without continuous levels of dedication and motivation, a similar pattern of disaffection may follow.
DISCUSSION This chapter has shown that, in a climate of pressure on inner-city urban schools to achieve (Osler & Starkey, 2005), a mixture of subtle and blatant social exclusion processes appear to have severely damaged these young people’s chances of an education (Arthurson & Jacobs, 2003). Their ‘‘unofficial’’ exclusion appears to be some attempt by schools to uphold the rules and standards of education because these ‘‘problematic’’ pupils may affect their league table status (McIntyre-Bhatty, 2008). This is not a new phenomenon (Berridge et al., 2001; Brodie, 1999) and their unofficial exclusion seems to point toward money-saving measures on behalf of schools so that funding their education is not drawn from school coffers. This seems odd because many of these young people do not fit the profile of ‘‘excluded’’ young people in that very few had ‘‘issues at home,’’ they were not necessarily from a disadvantaged family or area nor criminally active throughout their time at secondary school. Most are, however, demonized by teachers, experience discrimination (Becker, 1953), and are not offered help with weak subjects (Briggs et al., 2007; Briggs, 2010; Christian, 2005; Majors, 2001; Pitts, 2007). Most lose interest, ‘‘played up in class,’’ and become disaffected (Lemert, 1972), preferring to tap into the urban street culture by ‘‘jammin ends,’’ play X-box, or smoke cannabis (Briggs, 2010). While a few are clearly exposed to this urban street culture from a young age, and this had some bearing on the secondary school performance, it is this sociocultural backdrop that becomes more prominent for most as life in mainstream school erodes (Pitts, 2007).
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When they were ‘‘excluded,’’ they were confused at the reasons why, were not clear about the implications and what they would be working toward and its educational worth (Citizenship Foundation, 2008). Many feel angry and this appears to carry over into other areas of their lives. Parents also have little idea about the process and were unaware of their rights. Tokenistic attempts are made to reintegrate them back into school, while young people are left to navigate themselves through the bureaucratic and disorganized nature of the educational alternatives. But without support and direction, many do not know how to progress. So by the time some start OSEP, their out-of-sync lifestyles and skewed learning attitudes are already well-established; lifestyles which were augmented by potentially long distances to travel, unchallenging courses, potential meetings with gang adversaries, and the pressure from others, who also had fragile commitment levels, to ‘‘skip class or leave at lunch’’ (Matza, 1969). Taken together, this appears to have laid the foundations for most to be vulnerable to social exclusion, crime, and victimization (see Arthurson & Jacobs, 2003; Briggs, 2008, 2010; Pitts, 2007).
CONCLUSION: A CONSIDERATION OF URBAN STREET CULTURE While this chapter has examined the process by which pupils are unofficially excluded from school and their subsequent experiences, it is perhaps of equal worth to consider the urban street culture and the centrality it plays in urban young people’s lives. This is because both the structural inequities of education policy and individual difficulties in education appear to be complemented by this culture that offers sanctuary when other aspects of direction and life meaning appear to be weakening or even disappearing. It is this culture that needs greater consideration in the formation of school policy that must accommodate it, rather than seek to eradicate it because this will only result in more socially excluded young people.
NOTES 1. General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSEs) are mandatory examinations for young people in England and Wales. They are taken when pupils are aged 16.
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2. National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) are vocational courses normally taken in a college setting (postsecondary school education).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to the young people and professionals who took part in this research. Thanks also to Claire Farrelly, Attendance Improvement Officer for Norfolk County Council, UK, who offered constructive comment on the research report for this chapter. Additional thanks to Loretta Bass and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments to improve the chapter.
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Ofsted. (2007). Pupil referral units: Establishing successful practice in pupil referral units and local authorities. London: Ofsted. Osler, A., & Starkey, H. (2005). Changing citizenship: Democracy and inclusion in education. New York: Open University Press. Osler, A., Street, C., Lall, M., & Vincent, K. (2002). Not a problem? Girls and school exclusion. London: National Children’s Bureau. Pain, R. (2003). Youth, age and the representation of fear. Capital and Class, 27, 151–171. Pitts, J. (2007). Reluctant gangsters. Devon, UK: Willan Publishing. Pritchard, C., & Williams, R. (2009). Does social work make a difference? A controlled study of former ‘Looked-After-Children’ and ‘Excluded-From-School’ adolescents now men aged 16–24 subsequent offences, being victims of crime and suicide. Journal of Social Work, 9, 285–307. Raffaele Mendez, L. M., Knoff, L. M., & Ferron, J. M. (2002). School demographic variables and out-of-school suspension rates: A quantitative and qualitative analysis of a large, ethnically diverse school district. Psychology in the Schools, 39, 259–277. Raffo, C., & Gunter, H. (2008). Leading schools to promote social inclusion: Developing a conceptual framework for analysing research, policy and practice. Journal of Education Policy, 23, 397–414. Reid, K. (2010). Management of school attendance in the UK: A strategic analysis. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 10, 88–107. Ritchie, J., & Spencer, L. (2004). Qualitative data analysis for applied policy research. In: A. Bryman & R. Burgess (Eds), Analysing qualitative data (pp. 173–194). London: Routledge. Sewell, T. (1997). Black masculinity and schooling: How black boys survive modern schooling. Stoke-on-Trent, UK: Trentham Books. Smith, J. (2003). The nature of personal robbery. London: Home Office Research Study 254. Social Exclusion Unit. (1998). Truancy and school exclusion. London: Social Exclusion Unit. Stirling, M. (1992). How many pupils are being excluded? British Journal of Special Education, 19(4), 128–130. Strand, S. (2007). Minority ethnic pupils in the longitudinal study of young people in England. London: DfES Publications. Taylor, I., Walton, P., & Young, J. (1973). The new criminology: For a social theory of deviance. London: Routledge. Tett, L., Munn, P., Blair, A., Martin, I., Martin, J., & Ranbon, S. (2001). Collaboration between schools and community education agencies in tackling social exclusion. Research Papers in Education, 16, 1–19. Young, J. (1971). The drugtakers. London: Paladin.
CONSTRUCTING ALTERNATIVE FEMININITY: THE GENDER IDENTITY OF ‘‘BAD GIRLS’’ IN TAIWAN Yu-Hsuan Lin ABSTRACT Purpose – Recent research on the gender culture and femininity of adolescent girls found that girls construct their gender identity in various ways that are intertwined with race, ethnicity, social class, and sexual orientation. However, these existing studies focused on either general schoolgirls (see Ali, S. (2003). To be a girl: Culture and class in schools. Gender and Education, 15(3), 269–283; Bettie (2003); Weiler, J. D. (2000). Codes and contradictions: Race, gender identity and schooling. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press; Renold, E. (2005). Girls, boys and junior sexualities: Exploring children’s gender and sexual relations in the primary school. London: Routledge) or delinquent girls in a gang (see Miller, J. (1998). Gender and victimization risk among young women in gangs. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 35, 429–453; Miller (2001); Joe-Laidler & Hunt (2001); Schalet, A., Hunt, G., & Joe-Laidler, K. (2003). Respectability and autonomy: The
The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 159–179 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014012
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articulation and meaning of sexuality among the girls in the gang. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 32, 108–143; Messerschmidt (1995); Messerschmidt, J. W. (1997). Crime as structured action: Gender, race, class, and crime in the making. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage), and only a few studies paid attention to girls who showed overt oppositional behaviors at school. Methods – The research uses qualitative methods and explores the gender identity of two adolescent girls in a junior high school in Taiwan, who are regarded as problem or ‘‘bad’’ girls by the school faculty. Results – The two girls both manifested ‘‘ladette’’ culture (Jackson, 2006). On the one hand, they showed masculine behaviors such as fighting, troublemaking, disobeying school regulations, and using drugs and alcohol. On the other hand, they deliberately emphasized their femininity and sexual maturity in the way they dressed, talked, and behaved. Keywords: Constructing femininity; bad girls; Taiwan; gender
INTRODUCTION Most subcultural studies have presented girls as invisible, peripheral, or stereotyped, so we know little about the identity formation of girls in youth cultural groupings (McRobbie & Garber, 1976; Wilson, 1978; Brake, 1980; Abbott & Wallace, 1990). However, since the late 1970s and 1980s, feminist work has focused particularly on the lives of young women, bringing issues of sexuality and the domestic world into the domain of radical youth studies in order to remedy sexist assumptions about youth culture and add to the ethnographic information already available on girls. Nevertheless, feminist researchers have been more inclined to address young women’s lives in the bedroom or the kitchen than in the traditional haunt of male ethnographers, the street corner (Griffin, 1993, p. 191). For example, Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber (1976) argued that one of the most important subcultures among girls of the seventies was the ‘‘Teeny Bopper’’ culture, requiring only the use of a bedroom, a record player, and a friend. In another ethnographic study, McRobbie (1978) found that working-class girls construct an antischool culture through the strategic reappropriation of material and
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symbolic forms of femininity. Most girls find school dull and boring, and their hopes for the future focus on romance, marriage, and motherhood. One way in which girls combat the classed and oppressive features of school is to assert their femaleness and sexuality in order to control the classroom. While McRobbie successfully pointed out that a girls’ subculture (bedroom culture or femininity) exists and is structurally different from boys’ culture, she also tended to universalize the diverse experiences and identities of girls. Nevertheless, some researchers questioned subsequent attempts to produce a specifically female subculture. As Celia Cowie and Sue Lees (1981, p. 29) stated, ‘‘Girls participate in drugs, drink, sex, fighting and crime. Girls are on the street. y The more important question of the terms of their participation or exclusion as laid down in the street has been neglected’’ (p. 29). Other studies, such as those of Sue Lees (1986, 1993), Christine Griffin (1985), and Claire Wallace (1987), argued that young women have a number of strategies of resistance such as becoming tomboys or even getting pregnant, both of which flout the ‘‘nice girl’’ stereotype (Abbott & Wallace, 1990, p. 68). Indeed, Jackson (2006) found that since the mid-nineties, middle schoolgirls in Britain had shown the so-called ladette culture. The laddish attitudes and behaviors used to be seen mostly in boys with poor academic performances. However, more and more girls began drinking, smoking, and using drugs in the same manner as problem boys, thus exhibiting laddish masculine behaviors. Jackson’s study noticed the existence of alternative femininity, but since the author aimed to explore pupils’ and teachers’ perceptions of ladette culture and not the meaning of ladette femininity, it is difficult to know precisely the frames of reference ladettes use in constructing their femininities. In addition, feminist criminology has accumulated many studies on gang or delinquent girls. This research found that these girls differ significantly from non-gang girls in the way they produce their femininity. Traditionally, joining gangs and participating in crime are behaviors that manifest masculinity. The participation of girls in gangs can be viewed as transgressing social norms concerning appropriate feminine behavior. Thus, a number of scholars have discussed gang girls as constructing an ‘‘oppositional’’ or ‘‘bad girl’’ femininity (see Hagedorn & Devitt, 1999; Messerschmidt, 1995; Portillos, 1999). Because these girls challenged traditional gender roles, some scholars regarded their participation in gangs as resistance against and liberation from traditional cultural expectations. Yet, many scholars also think that girls who take part in deviant behavior compound their identity construction so that it is even more complex, and therefore they are more subject to social harm than typical girls (see Swart,
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1991; Curry, 1998). Female gang members must find a balance between expectations of deviant behavior and gender norms. On one hand, their behaviors have to be deviant enough to ensure their place within the gang itself. On the other hand, if they are too deviant, they risk the danger of offending other gang members who maintain certain attitudes about appropriate female conduct (Swart, 1991). Thus, female gang members confront a tension between establishing their independence from men and being tough on one hand and negotiating and accommodating constraining norms regarding femininity on the other. Similarly, Miller (2001) argued that female gang members negotiate the tension between traditional norms of femininity and the demands for toughness and independence required by ‘‘gangsterhood’’ through striking a ‘‘patriarchal bargain.’’ However, this negotiation indicates that although bad girls who break social norms seem to be able to free themselves from traditional gender roles, in fact they may face contradictory expectations, which makes their gender identity construction process more intricate than general girls experience. Therefore, this chapter attempts to understand how certain bad girls – who dare to act against the traditional norms of gender and display a femininity that is officially devalued – construct gender identity and what this identity involves. Does this gender identity make girls feel more empowered or does it propel them into adverse situations? Existing studies on how adolescent girls construct femininities focus on either general schoolgirls or girls who have already joined gangs. However, there is little discussion about problem girls or girls in crisis who fail in school but have not officially joined gangs. As Jackson (2006) pointed out, many problem girls, like problem boys, show poor school performance, engage in physical fighting, drink alcohol, and use drugs. In addition, their clothing, appearance, and speech convey extremely sexual characteristics. They are regarded as bad girls at school and challenge the nice girl image sanctioned by mainstream society. The focus of this study is on how problem girls construct a complicated gender identity, part of which is liberating and part of which may bring greater social harm. Therefore, this chapter delves into the lives of two problem girls who drop out of a junior high school in Taiwan. They are labeled by the school faculty as bad girls, who reject the social expectation of adhering to traditional feminine roles and, at the same time, present anti-school behaviors. In other words, they construct an alternative femininity that is not sanctioned by the school and is often ignored by feminist researchers. Using the narrations of these bad girls, I explore their perceptions of gender as well as how their gender identities intertwine with class and racial dynamics, thereby simultaneously
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reproducing and challenging existing social categories. In the following sections, I will first discuss the methods used to collect data for this analysis. I will then present the results based on the interview data using the actual words of the girls interviewed. Finally, in the discussion and conclusion, I present the implications of their gender identity.
METHOD The research for this chapter was conducted in a junior high school in Taiwan that draws on a predominantly working-class neighborhood. My two research participants, Sue and Wei, were labeled as bad girls by the school faculty for several reasons such as violating school regulations, having numerous boyfriends, taking part in gang gatherings, using drugs, and dropping out of school. However, they called themselves ‘‘players’’ or ‘‘playgirls’’ instead of bad girls. The term players connoted that they had more interesting lives and a broader social network than ‘‘good girls.’’ When I met Sue and Wei, they had already dropped out of school for about one month during their eighth grade; they were 14 years old at the time. They then tried to pass through ‘‘the period of observation’’ to return to school. I was therefore allowed to interview them individually in a counseling room. In cultural studies, the best method for exploring a group’s culture traditionally has been ethnography. Yet, conducting participant observations with these girls proved to be difficult. First, both girls had dropped out of school for a short period of time; when they returned to school, according to school regulations, they were not allowed to enter the classroom. Instead, they were placed in the counseling office so that they could be observed and counseled by the school faculty; hence, I needed to conduct my research in the counseling room. Second, the girls did not want me to follow or interview them during after-school hours since they were always very busy. They may have had part-time jobs, group gatherings, or dates with boyfriends and so on. According to Cowie and Lees (1981), conducting interviews during school time rather than in the girls’ own leisure time could provide a welcome diversion from classes. Similar to the experience of Cowie and Lees, by interviewing the girls in school, I found them not only willing to talk but also prepared to discuss intimate questions about their lives with verve and excitement. I think the interviews were successful partly because I provided the girls with a social arena where they could talk about what they liked to do in contrast to the boredom they usually experienced in school.
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The last and most important reason relates to a reflection on methodology. As McRobbie (1978, p. 97) pointed out: ‘‘Sociologists looking at male youth cultures can normally expect to find some clearly visible features such as an orientation towards football, motorbikes, vandalism, violence or simply ‘doing nothing’. But with girls there existed no such ‘easy lead’.’’ Perhaps girls’ culture provides no ‘‘easy lead’’ because it forms mostly in their bathrooms and bedrooms, and thus girl’s culture is much more invisible than that of boys. However, I rejected limiting girls’ culture to the idea of a ‘‘bathroom culture.’’ Actually, girls also form their cultures on the street, but they do not reveal their secrets or deep thoughts on the street as it is too dangerous. They may meet their enemies and boys at any time. On the street, they need to be tough and avoid all potential harm. They do not discuss serious topics and painful memories when ‘‘hanging out.’’ On the contrary, they feel comfortable in a private room with someone they trust. Indeed, I found that interviewing the girls was the most suitable method to obtain their perceptions on life. As a result, instead of a full ethnography, the methodology employed for this study centers mostly on interviews. A few observations that took place near the end of the research serve as supplementary data. The research period spanned the girls’ eighth and ninth grades in junior high school.
Interviewing To avoid structuring their responses through the imposition of my preconceptions, I used the method of nondirective questioning and always tried to follow up on what they themselves contributed. For example, to encourage them to share their experiences freely, I usually started sessions with questions such as ‘‘How are you doing?’’ and ‘‘What have you done this week?’’ I then tried to ask more specific questions about their perceptions of the events that they mentioned. In general, I talked with them about dating, friendship, clothes, makeup, popular culture, school, family, work, and their expectations about the future. At the beginning, because I was a stranger, I afraid they would be reluctant to talk to me about their lives. However, I was surprised at their talkativeness, openness, and willingness to talk. For example, when I met Sue for the first time, she did not know who I was and why I was there. At that time, her teacher had told her only that a teacher wanted to chat with her. Despite the unfamiliar situation, we talked for more than three hours. The topics she spoke about covered her love stories, details about her clique, and her daily life. Toward
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the end of our talk, I explained my research project to her and invited her to be involved. She immediately agreed without hesitation. I was very surprised at her rapid reaction and suggested she consider her response more thoroughly. She said. ‘‘Why? What should I consider?’’ I explained the research details and the potential harm to her if she were involved in the research. She insisted, ‘‘It doesn’t matter.’’ My meeting with Wei was similar. Before I met her, she already knew about my research from Sue and expected my invitation. When I asked her to be involved in my research, she was very happy and agreed immediately to participate. Of course, I could say I was just lucky to find such participants who were very willing to cooperate. Nevertheless, I found them eager to tell their stories perhaps because very few adults were willing to listen to and value their experiences. Their experiences and culture had always been devalued by adults and official authority. However, my interest in their lives and positive attitudes toward their experiences made them feel respected and valued, which might be a main reason that they were very willing to talk to me. In addition, from their description, I got a sense that they defined me as an outsider friend who posed no threat to them and thus was reliable. Because I was not in their clique, I did not compete with them and I could keep their secrets. In this context, I became the best person to whom they poured out their thoughts and troubles. Therefore, I obtained very rich and valuable information from the interviews. The duration of each interview depended on how much free time they had, ranging from half an hour to over three hours on occasion. During the research period, both girls were interviewed on more than ten different occasions. All interviews were tape recorded, and extensive field notes were made after each visit to the school.
Observations As I mentioned in the previous section, my participants did not like me following them around during after-school hours; hence, the number of these observations was very small. However, as graduation from junior high school became more imminent, the girls had much more leisure time and finally agreed to let me follow them around after school. For example, Sue worked part time at a snack bar after school, and she allowed me to visit her while she worked. However, in order to avoid making her boss unhappy, I could only chat with her when she was not busy. Moreover, the snack bar was run by her boyfriend’s relatives; therefore, to maintain their good opinion, she did not want to talk about the details of her daily life in front of
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them. On the occasions that I visited her at work, I was like a casual friend. We exchanged what had happened recently but avoided in-depth conversations. Usually, I just ordered dinner and observed her interactions with her boss and other colleagues. Nevertheless, Sue was always glad to see me and welcomed my sudden visits. As for Wei, she was transferred to an alternative school for ‘‘at-risk’’ students in her last year in junior high school, and I obtained permission from that alternative school to observe her there. Although she still skipped a lot of classes, she actively asked for my company when she felt bored. During that period, we were free to interact as friends and hung around internet shops, snack shops, and her home. I attended her graduation ceremony, met her parents, and even accompanied her to a job interview after she graduated. To some extent, Wei’s mother was glad and reassured that in me Wei had a friend who could both take care of her and share her heavy burden. In general, I did more observations with Wei than with Sue.
The Girls’ Social Class and Racial Background Sue and Wei’s performances of this alternative version of femininity were inseparable from their class and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Both girls were from working-class families. With respect to racial differences, Wei belonged to the Ming-Lan people, who are the majority in Taiwan. Sue had mixed blood from her Ming-Lan father and aboriginal mother whose race has been largely marginalized by the Ming-Lan society. Sue seldom mentioned her parents’ backgrounds, as though they were too shameful to talk about. Even when I directly asked her questions about her parents’ jobs, she would just reply ‘‘I don’t know’’ or give me a vague answer. However, as our friendship deepened, she confided that they had lived on several kinds of social welfare. Her father was disabled by virtue of his legs and sold illegal lottery tickets from his wheelchair. Because of the underground nature of the lottery tickets, it was the seller’s responsibility to offer the prize to the winner. This obligation meant that Sue’s father owed a great deal of money to the winners, and thus he had many enemies. I knew from the school faculty that there was gossip that Sue’s mother might be a prostitute. It made me realize that Sue’s reluctance to talk about her family might have been because of the illegal and shameful nature of their lives. She might have felt that most people (especially middle-class people) would judge her family harshly. In addition, Sue was very ashamed of her maternal aboriginal blood and was reluctant to talk about it. At the only interview in
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which we discussed this topic, she scorned her aboriginal relatives and devalued the aboriginal culture. She also mentioned that a fist fight that happened in her fifth grade occurred because a boy called her ‘‘Fan A.’’1 She then had a very severe fight with that boy. Acknowledging and experiencing the racial discrimination in society, Sue denied and devalued her aboriginal blood. Wei’s family experienced ups and downs during her childhood. As a child, she lived in a very good situation because her father was a highly paid member of the air force. However, after Wei’s father retired from the military, he spent his pensions on a business that failed and then could not find another high-paying job to recoup his losses. Their economic situation kept getting worse, and finally her father’s infidelity caused her parents to divorce. Consequently, her mother’s meager salary as a nurse became the sole income of the family. Although her mother soon remarried, her stepfather proved to be a carbon copy of her father. He borrowed a great deal of money from her mother and subsequently had affairs. Consequently, they divorced and Wei’s mother was left with much debt and another younger sister from the second marriage. As a result, Wei experienced downward mobility during her early adolescence. However, unlike Sue’s hard-living2 family, Wei, her sister, and her mother had maternal grandparents who ran a laundromat and lived nearby. They shared Wei’s mother’s domestic burden and financial problems. This support enabled Wei’s family to maintain a settled life. When I first met Sue and Wei, they had both just started dating boys who were affiliated with a gang. The girls were very excited about their new lifestyle. In the next section, I discuss five areas around and through which their gender identities are produced.
Screaming Against Normative Femininity Appearance Most Taiwanese junior high schools have hair and dress regulations for students, such as ‘‘appropriate’’ lengths and styles of hair, school uniforms, and no makeup or jewelry. Strict regulations for students’ appearance made it easy for school faculty to distinguish good students from bad students. Appearance was also a criteria applied by students to identify themselves. Bettie (2003) found that girls who do not meet prep norms create alternative symbolic economies in which they earn and wear different ‘‘badges of dignity.’’ Similarly, Sue and Wei not only resisted the school regulations by dying their hair, coloring their fingernails, wearing jewelry, and so on but
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also created an alternative version of gender performance that represented their definition of beauty. When I met Sue for the first time, something on her ears caught my attention, but I did not see it very clearly. So I asked her: ‘‘What’s that on your ear?’’ She answered: ‘‘Q-tip’’ in a normal tone. ‘‘What?’’ I was very surprised and asked her again. She immediately took off the Q-tip and explained: ‘‘It’s just a stick of Q-tip. You can also wear a comb on your ears so that you don’t need to bring a comb.’’ I was so surprised that such ordinary material could become a decoration. Then she started to tell me that her friends had more ear piercings than she did. The bigger the ear hole was and the more piercings, the better. After several weeks, Sue’s version of beauty was confirmed after I saw Wei’s tongue ring. Wei also thought that it was cool to pierce as many holes as one could in one’s body. In addition, both girls came to school with their hair dyed golden blonde, which made the director of discipline very angry, and he forced them to re-dye it black. Such battles related to their appearances were constantly waged in the school and gave the school faculty continued headaches. In some ways, the spectacular appearances of Sue and Wei not only provoked the authority of the school but also separated them from the ‘‘nice girls’’ who were devalued by them. Exaggerated Sexuality McRobbie (1978) and Thomas (1980) both studied the anti-school culture of working-class girls and found that they use ‘‘overt display of sexuality’’ to rebel against school authority. For example, these girls purposely highlighted their biological sexual maturity, showed interest in sex, and had boyfriends to show that they were prepared to enter the adult world. Moreover, Schaffner (2000) and Bettie (2000) both argued that low-income girls of color often play up their sexuality in speech and dress as a means of asserting their claim to adult status. Similarly, Sue and Wei clearly knew that schools attempt to desexualize students, but they openly showed that they have boyfriends, already have had sexual experiences, and talked loudly about sexual topics in front of school faculty and classmates. For example, one day when I arrived at the counseling room, I covertly took out condoms and gave them to the girls as a gift. I thought they would quickly hide them in their pockets because of shyness. To my surprise, when they saw the condoms, they were extremely excited and started to talk about sex, tell dirty jokes, and make fun of each other sexually. It was I who was afraid that other teachers and students would see us in such circumstances. I kept asking them to ‘‘Keep it down’’ and ‘‘Don’t keep playing with it, or the director of discipline will notice it,’’ in an attempt to lower their voices and
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stop them from playing with the condoms. This incident showed that they not only do not evade sex-related topics but also intentionally and overdramatically talk about them loudly to show their familiarity with these topics. For a period of time, Wei’s boyfriend would come on his motorbike to pick her up at the school entrance. From time to time, they would show some intimate behaviors before other parents, teachers, and students. A teacher who knows Wei saw this behavior and deliberately told her jokingly, ‘‘You, I caught you hugging a boy at the school entrance.’’ Wei made nothing of it and even appeared to be proud and pleased. Later, some parents protested and the director of discipline intervened to put a stop to it. Wei then told her boyfriend not to pick her up at the school entrance. These girls challenged the ‘‘proper femininity’’ asserted by school authorities by displaying ‘‘exaggerated femininity.’’ This behavior not only presented an effective challenge to the physical and sexual taboos and the behavioral norms for girls in the school but also made them feel superior to the ‘‘square’’ girls who do not have boyfriends. Inevitably, however, such displays also lead to a bad sexual reputation. Toughness When I first saw Sue, I found it difficult to believe that she was the ‘‘bad’’ student that the school faculty was talking about, as she was very short and thin. However, she actively articulated her bad behaviors to prove that she was, in fact, bad, as the following dialogue demonstrates: Sue: I was famous in the first year of junior high school and became very bad in the second year. I: What do you mean by ‘‘very bad’’? Sue: I dyed my whole hair golden. Then I went to the disciplinary office without wearing my uniform. I also gave a student who had newly transferred to our school a hard time just because I needed to teach other members in my clique how to give someone a hard time. In addition, I even blackmailed a student in the school, and all students on that floor saw it happen. But I said: ‘‘If someone here dares to speak out, I will ensure he/she leaves this school.’’ Consequently, no one dares to speak out; the school faculty does not even know about this affair yet.
Obviously, Sue was very proud of her bad behaviors and perceived them to be a symbol of her toughness in the school. Because of her violence and roughness, Sue was even given a frightening nickname, which was borrowed from the name of a majestic male god who governed ghosts in hell. Interestingly, I found that, to show respect, her peers all called her by this nickname rather than her real feminine name. Of course, Sue enjoyed being
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called the masculine nickname. For Sue, earning a scary masculine nickname was an achievement in her community, which valued masculine characteristics. Wei also liked to flaunt her toughness. One of the most serious events that Wei spoke of involved a fight with an older female student at her previous junior high school, which she had attended during her first year. Wei cut the girl’s face with a knife. After that event, and combined with several other misconducts, in her second year, Wei was transferred to her current school. In this school, Sue and Wei organized a clique to protect each other, hang out, drop out of school, and sometimes take drugs together. By appropriating masculine characteristics such as ‘‘toughness’’ and ‘‘rebelliousness,’’ Sue and Wei felt themselves to be powerful and respected. Taking their context into consideration, ‘‘looking bad’’ may be a protective strategy in the patriarchal environment at school and on the street. It is also a defense mechanism for coping with their emotional vulnerability and perpetual disappointment (Joe-Laidler & Hunt, 2001). In sum, their oppositional behavior challenged the traditional idea of femininity by screaming against it.
All Playgirls are Losers in Their Relationships with Boyfriends Despite their toughness in school, both girls perceived themselves as ‘‘losers’’ in their relationships with boyfriends and thus reproduced a traditional feminine role as discussed below. As Sue noted: Although girls in the gang are very fierce and violent, they are all very tender and sweet to their boyfriends. The relationships are our weaknesses, and we all joined the gang because of our boyfriends y. I don’t know why. I am a loser in the aspect of relationships. I feel that every playgirl is a loser when talking about relationships.
To Sue, being labeled a loser meant that one showed obedience, powerlessness, and vulnerability in a relationship. Although they had struggled hard and ‘‘won’’ their status in school, they had ‘‘lost’’ their power and toughness in their relationships and were willing to change for their boyfriends. For instance, Sue mentioned several times how much effort she had expended on dressing and serving just to play up to her boyfriend and also had ascribed the way she was to her boyfriend. In addition, she couldn’t force her boyfriends to use condoms when they had sexual intercourse, even though she wanted them to.
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Sue: As for Liu [Sue’s ex-boyfriend], he often ejaculates outside my body [a risky method to avoid pregnancy]. I: Isn’t it very dangerous? Sue: Of course. But I’m lucky. I haven’t gotten pregnant yet. I: But aren’t you worried? Sue: I think it’s okay. I was worried in the beginning, but I don’t know why my menses still comes every month. I: Since you are worried about being pregnant, why don’t you just use condoms? Sue: I don’t know. Sometimes you just don’t want to use them. I: Is it because of him? Sue: Yes. I: Have you ever asked him to wear one? Sue: Sometimes. I: But he usually refuses to use one? Sue: Yes. I: Have you ever argued with him? Sue: Of course, although he wore one, but then, he later took it off secretly.
Because some male youth in Taiwan felt that wearing a condom was not comfortable, they not only refused to wear it but also viewed the risky sexual behavior as a symbol of their power over girls and therefore perceived it to be a masculine act. In the end, the girls had to risk getting pregnant or having an abortion in their early adolescence. In Sue’s case, despite the fact that she knew that it was not in her own interest, she still could not insist that her boyfriends wear condoms. As for Wei, she also made a great deal of emotional investment in her relationships. Most of her life centered on her boyfriend, as if he was the only thing that mattered to her, and she became very vulnerable in a relationship. When I asked, ‘‘What if your boyfriend broke up with you?’’ she replied, ‘‘I don’t know. And I’m a very emotional person. My mother is always worried that I will commit suicide for love. Yes, I think it’s possible.’’ Although it seemed that, in their relationships with boyfriends, Sue and Wei were traditional and powerless, both girls
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were also highly conscious of the benefits associated with a heterosexual relationship.
Heterosexual Relationship as Crucial Capital Though the girls were devoted to their relationships with their boyfriends, they also knew that they obtained benefits from them such as money, status, and protection. Unlike the working-class girls in McRobbie’s (1978) research, Sue and Wei’s ideals of love were not characterized by only romantic fantasies and ideas of marriage. They chose their boyfriends very carefully. For example, not long after I met them, I found out that the most famous bad girl was usually the most famous bad boy’s girlfriend. Most of those ‘‘bad’’ girls had ‘‘really bad’’ boyfriends. Here, ‘‘really bad’’ meant that their boyfriends were the leaders of a clique or a gang. The following dialogue shows how their relationships were intertwined with status, power, and money. Sue: Which girl doesn’t like a big [powerful] man? Big men always have lots of money y. It’s hard to let girls in without any relationship, except your younger sisters [female subordinates]. I: So you also use relationships to solidify your position in a gang? Sue: Yes.
For working-class adolescents, joining a gang is a shortcut to success. However, gangs have traditionally been male-privileged groups. For a girl, there is no way to join a gang without being affiliated with a man, even if she is very smart. So developing a heterosexual relationship with a big man in a gang becomes crucial capital in obtaining respect, status, and protection. Wei evoked the benefits of being with a big man when she disclosed the following: Wei: My ex-boyfriend just graduated from junior high school. He was a leader in that school. Even now, a lot of people still know him. I: So if you transferred to that school then – [interrupted by Wei]. Wei: Even if I transfer to there now, no one would dare offend me.
As Bettie (2003, p. 93) stated, ‘‘The body has long been the only raw material or capital with which impoverished and working-class women have to work.’’ Similarly, for Sue and Wei, without any other school-sanctioned
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capital, they could appropriate only their beauty as raw capital to obtain a heterosexual relationship and thus further enhance their status. However, if we examine the kinds of boys that they chose, we can envisage how their tastes in men influenced their class future. As mentioned earlier, their boyfriends were so-called bad boys. Like Sue and Wei, most of them were from working-class families. They devalued schoolwork, appreciated the counter-school culture, and were involved in gang activities, finally holding certain positions in a gang. In other words, these bad boys were involved in a culture of ‘‘laddishness’’ and embraced ‘‘hegemonic masculinities’’ (Jackson, 2002). The tougher and more macho a boy was, the higher the position he could achieve in a gang. Otherwise, a boy would be devalued by not only the male gang members but also the girls associated with the gang. I: So you cannot fall in love with a boy with a low position in a gang or you will hold the same low position? Sue: Actually we playgirls won’t choose boys with low positions because being with them will bring shame on us. Those boys are not respected in a gang. If they do something wrong they will be beaten. That would cause us to lose face.
According to Sue, playgirls will not choose boys with low positions in a gang; boys who actively asserted their hegemonic masculinity and embraced sexist attitudes were most likely to have playgirls as girlfriends. On the contrary, the least likely to be chosen were ‘‘feminized guys’’ who were situated inappropriately in the male masculine hierarchy. Like the working-class women in Class Reunion (Weis 2004), their class culture or ‘‘habitus’’ (Bourdieu, 1993) encouraged them to choose boyfriends from the same background. However, their dependence on men who maintained and valued hegemonic masculinity also made them less able to escape the aggressive masculinity and sexist attitudes historically embedded within working-class men’s constructed masculinity and habitus. Similarly, Sue and Wei needed to manage their relationships very carefully and attentively, which included playing a traditional feminine role to ingratiate their masculine boyfriends, thereby enduring unfair double standards and obeying the sexual labor divisions in a gang despite their disagreement with them.
Sisterhood with Resentment From the school faculty’s viewpoint, Sue and Wei were good friends. They belonged to the same clique, always hung out together, and even ran away from home and dropped out of school together. However, I found that they
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had a much more complicated set of relations. Though they were close, I could not find a so-called sisterhood in their friendship. On the contrary, their feelings toward each other were filled with hatred, resentment, and hostility. The girls ranked each other’s status according to their boyfriends’ status in a gang, thus causing their friendship always to be influenced by their boyfriends’ status. In Sue and Wei’s case, before they knew their boyfriends were affiliated with a gang, Sue’s status was higher than Wei’s in their clique. When Wei got a boyfriend who had higher gang status than Sue’s, Sue became Wei’s younger sister [female subordinate]. In a gang that emphasized a masculine hierarchy, men with higher status had the responsibility of providing financial support to their male subordinates and, of course, their women. Since Wei’s boyfriend was the ‘‘elder brother’’ [leader] of Sue’s boyfriend, it was the former’s boyfriend who was responsible for providing a place to stay, financial support, and work opportunities for the four of them. Because of her man, Wei’s position among the girls was raised considerably, thus causing tension in Sue and Wei’s friendship. Competition, hostility, and resentment were rife in their friendship. On the other hand, because of Wei and Sue’s close relationship, they knew each other’s secrets and past sexual experiences well. In their own clique, these sexual behaviors would not be judged harshly; however, in a male-dominant group, they became useful tools to slander a girl’s sexual morality. Wei often confided her worries to me: Though I’m having a good relationship with my boyfriend right now, I’m always afraid that Sue will tell my boyfriend that thing [Here, ‘‘that thing’’ is something related to a past sexual relationship with a male also known by her boyfriend].
To compete for a ‘‘big’’ man, girls used male criteria, such as their double standard, to monitor and judge each other. As a result, it was difficult to develop sincere friendships among these girls. In addition, as mentioned earlier, in competitive heterosexuality, beauty is crucial capital when competing for a big man. Naturally, ‘‘good-looking’’ is important body capital in gaining a valuable relationship. ‘‘There’s no ugly girl in a gang’’ and ‘‘In the gang, females can survive only if you are beautiful’’ claimed Sue, demonstrating the intense competition between girls for a big man. Interestingly, despite their beauty, they all thought that they were not beautiful. Wei always complained ‘‘I’m too fat. I need to diet.’’ In fact, her figure was more than acceptable. Sue complained about herself, too: ‘‘My skin is too dark. I’m not white enough.’’ Her darker skin color, which was inherited from her aboriginal predecessors, made Sue feel that her appearance was flawed. They all judged themselves with dominant
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criteria such as ‘‘white is beautiful’’ and ‘‘thin is beautiful.’’ At the same time, they knew each other’s ‘‘weaknesses’’ and used the same logic to discredit each other’s looks. This logic, however, operated differently upon and through Wei and Sue. For Wei, she suffered only gender oppression. In Sue’s case, she clearly suffered racial discrimination according to the MinLang people’s aesthetic standards of ‘‘white is beautiful.’’ In the end, the hostile tensions within the girls’ friendship made solidarity based on the same class or gender become more difficult and pushed them further into compliance with traditional female roles and racist attitudes.
Rigid Standards in Sexual Morality Wei and Sue have much experience in relationships, have had numerous boyfriends, dare to talk about and laugh at bold sexual topics, and describe details of sexual intercourse in front of school faculty and classmates, all of which inclines the school faculty and classmates to label the girls negatively as ‘‘promiscuous’’ and ‘‘sluttish.’’ However, contrary to my expectation, they condemned promiscuity and constructed a set of very rigid sexual morals. For example, in their culture, if a girl ‘‘casually’’ has sex with men, she would be described as ‘‘Po,’’ and ‘‘Po La A’’ is the greatest insult to a girl’s sexual morals. Sue described her view of this issue in the following terms: I don’t sell my body. I think girls who sell their body are bitches y. Some girls are easy lay, bitches and shameless. The boys in the gang would ask me if there are girls to lay. I will help them find those very ‘‘Po’’ girls, but I am not one of them. Though I am not a virgin anymore, I only do it with people I have feelings and liking for.
Sue went on to elaborate: I don’t care about girls who are forced to sell their body but those who are ‘‘Po’’ enough to sell themselves, like girls who just want the money to buy some clothes, or get drugs, or get drunk, so they give it to the boys. And the most despicable of all are girls who steal others’ boyfriends. They will be beaten for sure. The ‘‘Po’’ type makes me angrier, especially when they steal my good friends’ [boyfriends]. That is super bitch. Yes, we playgirls all think the same. We hate ‘‘Po’’ girls and girls who steal.
Far from challenging the constraining double standards that govern female sexuality, Sue actively perpetuates them by putting down other girls as whores and sluts. Sue’s attitude echoes many previous studies on gang girls. Previous research revealed that gang girls create hierarchies among themselves. Typically, the sexual double standard is reinforced by girls as sanctions against those they perceive as too sexually active (see Campbell,
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1990; Miller, 2001; Swart, 1991). For Sue, becoming someone who beats and punishes these ‘‘Po’’ girls may be a process of producing identity, emphasizing that she is not that type of person by punishing that type of girl. She tries to draw a moral line by means of her own categorization in order to show her pureness and morality. The action of drawing that line is so important to her perhaps because she knows, deep down in her heart, that she has already been categorized as a promiscuous and easy kind of girl by the mainstream society. She wants to win back in her own way some dignity in the mainstream society that categorizes her as promiscuous. As a result, the sexual double standard tends to disadvantage girls in their relationships with boys, but it also interferes with the strength of their own friendship groups (Miller, 2004).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS This study finds that as different fields correspond to different cultural capitals, the gender identity of these marginalized girls is not a static presentation on a single dimension. On the contrary, their gender identity swings between femininity and masculinity. In different cultural fields, their gender performances cleverly display beneficial characteristics. For example, in the school setting, in order to redeem themselves from implicit class and racial harm and to win back their dignity, they appropriate the masculinity appreciated by the working class and present a tough and fierce image to establish their status in the peer group. However, in the clique/gang culture dominated by working-class men, in order to gain protection and resources, they must rely on romantic relationships as crucial capital in order to climb up the class ladder. As a result, they play the ‘‘nice girl’’ role in their romantic relationships, tolerating the sexual discrimination and double standards constructed by working-class boys in a specific historical context. The contradictory identity of these girls is the result of their constant negotiation and struggle with the cultural rules in different fields. Moreover, the resistance to social stigmatization combined with the power structure and gender culture in the gangs makes them produce more rigid sexual morals, and thus they monitor and evaluate one another’s sexuality, which leads to hostility and competition in the girls’ friendship. An explanation of this phenomenon from the viewpoint of agency would note that the girls make conscious use of different gender performances to fight against class and racial oppression. Because they lack the cultural capital sanctioned by schools, it is perhaps logical for them to use the most familiar,
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appreciated ‘‘hegemonic masculinity’’ to challenge the middle-class culture approved of by the school and to combat the ‘‘proper femininity’’ displayed by mostly middle-class ‘‘good girls.’’ Through the development of oppositional identity, these marginalized girls establish a respectful self-identity and earn the admiration of their peers. Similarly, in the street, these ‘‘bad’’ girls consciously appropriate ‘‘traditional femininity’’ as a way to promote their position. For example, they are tender and obedient and care about their appearance and dress in order to gain a ‘‘valuable’’ love, enjoying the money, protection, and status that accompanies their romantic relationships. Therefore, the implementation of diverse femininities can be deemed as their way of resisting their own marginal status. However, from the structural aspect, ‘‘hegemonic masculinity’’ leads them down the road of counter-school culture, indirectly causing their failure in school performance. ‘‘Traditional femininity’’ also makes them unable to escape the hegemonic masculinity and sexually discriminatory attitudes historically constructed by working-class men. Solidarity based on same sex and class also becomes more difficult to achieve. In this process, the resistance of agency and the oppression of structure take place and function at the same time. Furthermore, this study finds that the girls’ gender identity formation cannot be simply interpreted as influenced by heterosexual hegemony or patriarchal culture. It also has class and racial origins. For instance, the girls’ aesthetics and tastes, their displayed femininity, and the choice of boyfriends are all closely related to the cultural habitus in the working-class community. Especially in Sue’s case, in addition to class oppression, she suffered from much implicit racism while she was growing up, which resulted in her stronger need for self-identity. This need might explain her greater emphasis than Wei’s on hegemonic masculinity, obedience in relationships, and rigid standards in sexual morality. Thus, it is obvious that during the process of constructing identity, the dynamic forces of gender, race, and class always interweave closely with one another. Moreover, racial and class oppression may be represented by gender identity. In sum, various social dynamics underlie gender performance.
NOTES 1. ‘‘Fan A’’ is a discriminative name for aboriginal people in Taiwan, which is very similar to ‘‘negro’’ for African Americans. 2. The ‘‘hard-living’’ and ‘‘settled-living’’ categories were flagged by Howell (1973) and were refined by Weis in the context of deindustrialization (2004, pp. 90–95).
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An earlier version of this chapter was written during my visiting at SUNYBuffalo. I am grateful to Lois Weis and Yoshiko Nozaki. Their encouragement and comments contributed to the improvement of this chapter. My writing also benefits from the mentorship of Hui-Ling Pan at National Taiwan Normal University. All faults are mine.
REFERENCES Abbott, P., & Wallace, C. (1990). An introduction to sociology: Feminist perspectives. London: Routledge. Bettie, J. (2000). Women without class: Chicas, cholas, trash, and the presence/absence of class identity. Signs, 26(1), 1–35. Bettie, J. (2003). Women without class: Girls, race, and identity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bourdieu, P. (1993). Sociology in question. London, UK: Sage. Brake, M. (1980). The sociology of youth culture and youth subcultures: Sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll? London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Campbell, A. (1990). Female participation in gangs. In: C. R. Huff (Ed.), Gangs in America: Diffusion, diversity, and public policy (pp. 163–182). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Cowie, C., & Lees, S. (1981). Slags or drags. Feminist Review, 9, 17–31. Curry, D. G. (1998). Female gang involvement. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 35(1), 100–118. Griffin, C. (1985). Typical girls? Young women from school to the job market. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Griffin, C. (1993). Representation of youth: The study of youth and adolescence in Britain and America. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Hagedorn, J. M., & Devitt, M. L. (1999). Fighting female: The social construction of female gangs. In: M. Chesney-Lind & J. Hagedorn (Eds), Female gangs in America: Essays on girls, gangs and gender (pp. 256–276). Chicago, IL: Lake View. Howell, J. T. (1973). Hard living on clay street: Portraits of blue collar families. New York: Anchor Books. Jackson, C. (2002). ‘Laddishness’ as a self-worth protection strategy. Gender and Education, 14(1), 37–51. Jackson, C. (2006). ‘Wild’ girls? An exploration of ‘ladette’ cultures in secondary schools. Gender and Education, 18(4), 339–360. Joe-Laidler, K., & Hunt, G. (2001). Accomplishing femininity among the girls in the gang. British Journal of Criminology, 41, 656–678. Lees, S. (1986). Losing out: Sexuality and adolescent girls. London: Hutchinson. Lees, S. (1993). Sugar and spice: Sexuality and adolescent girls. London: Penguin Books. McRobbie, A. (1978). Working-class girls and the culture of femininity. In: Women’s Studies Group, Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham (Ed.), Women take issue: Aspects of women’s subordination. London: Hutchinson & Co.
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McRobbie, A., & Garber, J. (1976). Girls and subculture: An exploration. In: S. Hall & T. Jefferson (Eds), Resistance through rituals. London: HarperCollins Academic. Messerschmidt, J. W. (1995). From patriarchy to gender: Feminist theory, criminology and the challenge of diversity. In: N. H. Raffter & F. Heidensohn (Eds), International feminist perspectives in criminology: Engendering a discipline (pp. 167–188). Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. Miller, J. (2001). One of the guys: Girls, gangs, and gender. New York: Oxford University Press. Miller, J. (2004). The girls in the gang: What we’ve learned from two decades of research. In: M. Chesney-Lind & L. Pasko (Eds), Girls, women and crime (pp. 97–114). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Portillos, E. L. (1999). Women, men and gangs: The social construction of gender in the barrio. In: M. Chesney-Lind & J. Hagedorn (Eds), Female gangs in America: Essays on girls, gangs and gender (pp. 232–244). Chicago, IL: Lake View. Schaffner, L. (2000). Worlds of girls in trouble: Sex, anger, and violence in everyday life. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, CA. Swart, W. J. (1991). Female gang delinquency: A search for ‘‘acceptably deviant behavior. MidAmerican Review of Sociology, 15, 43–52. Thomas, C. (1980). Girls and counter-school culture. Melbourne Working Papers, pp. 125–156. Melbourne, Australia. Wallace, C. (1987). For richer for poorer: Growing up in and out of work. London: Tavistock. Weis, L. (2004). Class reunion: The remaking of the American white working-class. New York: Routledge. Wilson, D. (1978). Sexual codes and conduct: A study of teenage girls. In: B. Smart & C. Smart (Eds), Women, sexuality and social control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
APPLYING THE ‘‘NEW’’ SOCIOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD TO EXPLAIN THE BLACK–WHITE TEST-SCORE GAP$ Sarah H. Matthews ABSTRACT Purpose – This chapter draws on tenets of the ‘‘new’’ sociology of childhood, which posit that children are affected by social structures in the same way that adults are, to formulate an explanation for the black–white test-score gap. Methodology – It builds on an analysis of ethnographic fieldnotes, which recorded the experiences of early elementary school students in a racially homogeneous school in a low-income African-American neighborhood. Findings – The case is made that the children were oppressed by adults in the school. Being in school was almost a wholly negative experience for children. Students’ active strategies to protect the self were ineffective, which led to their shutting down emotionally. Like adults in similar social
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An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, 2009.
The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 181–202 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014013
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contexts, children’s energy was devoted to self-protection rather than to being a student. Keywords: Black–white test-score gap; African-American school children; segregated schools; ‘‘new’’ sociology of childhood
INTRODUCTION This chapter draws on tenets of the ‘‘new’’ sociology of childhood, which posit that children are affected by social structures in the same way that adults are, to formulate an explanation of the black–white test-score gap. Building on an analysis of ethnographic fieldnotes that recorded the everyday life of students in a racially homogeneous elementary school in a low-income African-American neighborhood, it makes the case that unjust use of authority by adults in the school led children to use strategies to protect the self that inhibited their embracing the student role. Children’s energy was devoted to self-protection rather than to absorbing the curriculum. The black–white test-score gap may be traced to the oppression experienced by children in low-income schools in inner-city neighborhoods.
THE ‘‘NEW’’ SOCIOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD In their state of ‘‘not yet socialized,’’ children have been of little interest to sociologists (Alanen, 1988; Ambert, 1986; Johnson, 2001; Mayall, 1998; Thorne, 1987). In the mid-1980s, however, a body of scholarship began to emerge that argues that by equating childhood with socialization sociologists relinquished the study of children and childhood to the fields of developmental psychology and education (Mayall, 1999; Qvortrup, Bardy, Sgritta, & Wintersberger, 1994). Children were dismissed as essentially uninteresting with the presumably benign concept of socialization, which essentially is a black box (Mehan, 1992). These ‘‘new’’ sociologists of childhood argue that social constructions of children as ‘‘incomplete’’ or ‘‘in process’’ hide competencies that they actually possess (Mackay, 1973; Waksler, 1991). These scholars argue that much is to be gained by attending to children’s actual relationships within social contexts to discover how children affect and are affected by social arrangements (Thorne, 1993). They argue further that not only have adults’ perspectives
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been substituted for children’s, but that ‘‘there is an absence of systematic information on the experience of childhood in any given society’’ (Oldman, 1994, p. 44). From this newer perspective, children are assumed to be reflexive social actors who behave strategically within social contexts in ways that make sense to them (Corsaro, 2005). In the past, scholars have suggested that social processes do not apply to children. Goffman (1961, p. 12), for example, excludes orphanages and foundling homes from his analysis of total institutions; his rationale being that these young inmates lack a ‘‘home world’’ with which to contrast life in the institution. He assumes that children are incapable of recognizing injustice and mistreatment or of using tactics to gain some semblance of control in their lives. There is an ongoing debate among childhood scholars about whether children are essentially different from or the same as adults (Johnson, 2001). From an evolutionary biology perspective, humans are genetically social, which means that they come equipped with the capacity to put themselves in the role of the other (Massey, 2002; Small, 2001). This chapter adopts the position that, for sociologists, explanations for children’s behavior are to be found in the structure of situations in which they interact with others (Lofland, 1976). In short, Goffman’s (1961) analysis of the effects of total institutions on participants is assumed to apply to children until proven otherwise. One of the universal features of childhood is that children are subject to adult authority. This recognition led Jenks (1996, p. 41) to suggest that ‘‘childhood might be more instructively theorized in terms of dependency.’’ In a similar vein, Mayall (1994, p. 118) writes, ‘‘The crucial distinction that makes children children is that they are not adults; as individuals and as a social group, they lack adulthood. This lack can be defined variously as deficiency, disadvantage, and/or oppression.’’ Socialization posits that children are simply deficient relative to adults and that under ‘‘normal’’ circumstances they will ‘‘develop’’ and grow out of their deficiency. Conceptualizing children as either disadvantaged relative to adults or oppressed by them requires examining power relationships between adults and children in the various social locations of children’s lives. This shift in conceptualization makes it possible to use sociological theories about power relationships to explain children’s behavior. While the institution of childhood exists in all societies, what constitutes being a child varies from one society to another and among social locations within societies (Hart & Risley, 1992; Lareau, 2003; Qvortrup, 2002). The nature of the power relationship between children and adults in various
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social contexts is critical to interpreting children’s behavior. When the individual student is the unit of analysis, as is the case in most research on student achievement, relationships cannot be included in explanations. Wilson (1998) argues, ‘‘This individualistic framework is not designed to capture the impact of relational, organizational, and collective processes that embody the social structure of inequality.’’ Relying exclusively on ‘‘individual-level analyses’’ fails to ‘‘capture the complex and important influence of the social structure of inequality’’ (p. 508). By focusing on power relationships in inner-city elementary schools, this chapter identifies ‘‘institutional practices that ultimately undermine academic achievement’’ (p. 508).
THE BLACK–WHITE TEST-SCORE GAP More than fifty years after school desegregation was mandated by the Supreme Court in Brown v. The Board of Education, the gap between the average test scores of black and white students has not disappeared. Although the gap narrowed beginning in the 1960s as black students’ test score began to rise (Cook & Evans, 2000; Hedges & Nowell, 1998; Phillips, Crouse, & Ralph, 1998), the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth found that ‘‘the typical American black still scores below 75% of American whites on most standardized tests’’ (Jencks & Phillips, 1998, p. 1). Desegregation and attempts to equalize financial resources across schools have reduced but failed to eliminate the gap. Various studies report that as children progress through school, the gap either does not diminish or increases (Cook & Evans, 2000; Downey, von Hippel, & Broh, 2004; Entwisle & Alexander, 1992; Farkas & Beron, 2004; Fryer & Levitt, 2004; Hart & Risley, 1992; Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Phillips et al., 1998). Explanations for the test-score gap between black and white elementary school children fall into two broad categories: family effects and school effects (Cook & Evans, 2000; Phillips et al., 1998). Evidence that family effects are significant is found in the fact that the gap is present when children enter kindergarten (Fryer & Levitt, 2004; Phillips et al. 1998; Hart & Risley, 1992). The gap is not eliminated by formal schooling, but persists and even widens (Alexander, Entwisle, & Horsey, 1997). Studies suggest that this is due in part to more black than white students attending lower quality schools (Currie & Thomas, 1995; Fryer & Levitt, 2004). Cook and Evans (2000) found that black children who attend schools almost exclusively with other black children had the lowest achievement levels.
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In the school year 1999–2000, 40.2% of black elementary school students attended schools in which at least 90% of the students were black, up from 34.8% a decade earlier (Logan, Oakley, & Stowell, 2006). Racially segregated schools are, at least in part (Neckerman, 2007), the result of an out-migration of more affluent blacks and whites that concentrated and isolated poor African-Americans in inner cities (Kantor & Brenzel, 1993; Wilson, 1996). With few exceptions, black students who have only black classmates attend schools in impoverished, inner-city neighborhoods in which all the students are poor. Racially segregated schools receive little attention in research. Research that compares white and black students within the same school (e.g., Ferguson, 2000; Fryer & Levitt, 2004, 2005; Lewis, 2003; Schoenfeld, 1989) excludes students in racially homogeneous schools by design. Studies that compare black and white students across schools use percentages of the student body that fall into various racial and ethnic categories as measures of segregation. Rather than being a continuous variable, which is implied in such findings as ‘‘the average black student attended a school in which 56% of the students were black’’ (Logan, et al., 2006), racial composition may be conceptualized better in terms of a tipping point (Gladwell, 2000), as Cook and Evans (2000) suggest when they report that the divergence of black– white test scores was highest in schools that were less than 20% white.
RESEARCH METHOD The data that serve as the impetus for this chapter were collected as part of a longitudinal evaluation study of the effects on children of their mothers’ enrollment in various drug treatment programs. Ethnographic research was intended to document children’s experiences in the only residential program included in the study where children resided with their mothers in a public housing project located in the inner city of a large rust-belt city. As part of the project, ethnographic data were collected to document the children’s experiences in the elementary school that the neighborhood children attended. Throughout the study period, these children were at most 10% of a student body that comprised approximately 350 students. Fieldnotes, which included all students, were collected during three academic years beginning in October 1995 and ending in September 1997 by two ethnographers, both middle-aged, white women. As many ethnographers have pointed out, participant observation with children is difficult (Fine & Sandstrom, 1988; Mandell, 1988). Researchers
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cannot easily shed their adult status; size alone disqualifies them. Nevertheless, I tried to experience the school as if I were a child by doing what the children did. Separating myself from the other adults in the school was not easy because adults and children occupied widely differentiated castes. I tried to distinguish myself from other adults by sitting in classrooms at the back of the room or among the children. In the lunchrooms, if possible, I sat with my back to adults and focused on the children. I followed instructions given by adults. For example, when the lights were turned out in the lunchroom, I raised my hand and shut my mouth as the children were instructed to do. While my acquiescence to the control of adults was voluntary and I took advantage of my adult status on occasion, I did not act like the other adults in the school. Probably most important from the children’s perspective, this meant that I did not tell the children what to do or object to their behavior. I sometimes intervened on their behalf when I could do so without challenging adult authority. While we were lined up in the hall after lunch being berated by a staff member, one first-grade boy said about me to another boy, ‘‘She never gets mad.’’ With very few exceptions, the students in the school were African-Americans. During the first year of fieldwork, the principal characterized the school as the poorest in the district, with 95% of the students below the poverty line. The school and district were on ‘‘academic watch.’’ Of the thirty professional staff, approximately half were white women, a quarter black women, one quarter white men. One was a black man. The nonprofessional staff was AfricanAmerican, with only one exception, as were the few retirement-aged volunteers in the school. An African-American woman replaced an African-American man as principal after the first school year of the study. Fieldnotes focused on the everyday school life primarily of students in first-, second-, and third-grade classrooms and lunchrooms because the majority of students who were in the evaluation study were in those grades. During most of the period of participant observation, there were two lunchrooms, one for girls and one for boys, although all the afternoon kindergarten students ate in the boys’ lunchroom. Three forty-minute lunch periods were scheduled, the first for kindergarten and first graders, the second for second and third graders, and the third for fourth and fifth graders.
DOCUMENTING OPPRESSION Since the publication of research by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), which suggested that teacher’s expectations of students affect their achievement,
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teachers’ views of students with various characteristics have received attention (Ferguson, 1998). In a recent review of the literature, Jussim and Harber (2005) point to a dearth of rigorous studies that examine the relationship between teacher expectations and student achievement, but cite one study that found that the relationship, although small, was strongest for poor and African-American students (Jussim, Eccles, & Madon, 1996). In 1979, deLone summarized findings for the Carnegie Council on Children from research conducted by Leacock (1969), Rist (1973), and Ogbu (1974), as well as from journalists Kozol (1967) and Kohl(1967): Abundant journalistic and scholarly studies suggest, on the basis of intensive classroom observation, that many teachers behave differently toward children from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds and adjust educational goals, teach different material, and reward or punish behavior differently by class and race as wellyTeachers ridicule students frequently in classrooms with predominantly low-income childreny when teachers of low-income students were asked about their educational goals, the ones they put first were behavior control and adjustment of children to the norms of the school, and sometimes academic goals were not mentioned at all. (deLone, 1979, p. 108)
Although research on teachers’ differential treatment of children is somewhat scarce after the early 1970s (Ferguson, 1998), there is nothing to suggest that much has changed since deLone’s review was written. Ferguson’s account (2000) of the treatment of black boys in school, for example, echoes findings from earlier research (see also, Lewis, 2003; Polakow, 1993; Rosier, 2000). Although Alexander et al. (1997, p. 87) assert that there is general agreement that ‘‘Most youngsters, including so-called at-risk youths, begin school enthusiastic, optimistic, and eager to learn,’’ the school that was the setting for this ethnographic research was a hostile environment for students in which enthusiasm and optimism for school were rapidly extinguished and eagerness to learn quickly foundered on the shoals of oppression. That the adults held negative views of the students was clear to the children, who were continually harassed by them. Children were rarely praised but often rebuked, not only for their behavior but also for who they were. Excerpts from fieldnotes used to make this case do not adequately convey the pervasive level of oppression. Lack of Respect for Students ‘‘Like Them’’ Some of the adults in the school said directly to the ethnographers that they considered the children in their classes to be essentially uneducable: A second grade teacher told me that she had good classes where she taught fourth grade before, and that she had taught first grade for eleven years so well that seven of her
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students had skipped second grade and gone right into third. But the children she is teaching now are not good. They do not know how to behave and their parents do not teach them.
As the only other adult present, I was often an unwilling recipient of negative comments about the children made within the children’s hearing: One second grade teacher said to me, ‘‘The other second grade teacher hand-picked the students for her class.’’ She said that she was left with the ones the other teacher didn’t want. She said that she had two kids who were DH [Developmentally Handicapped] and four to whom she gave some other label: ‘‘I looked up all of their grades and they had Ds and Fs. I should have a class that had maybe four A students, four B students, four C students, and four D students, like that. I saw the other teacher looking at the lists, crossing off names, and adding names. Some teachers get special privileges.’’ She said this to me in a loud whisper in the back of the classroom. At least some of the children could hear her.
More subtle messages also relayed adults’ disdain for the children. One day in late February, I observed second- and third-grade boys in the lunchroom handing slips of paper to the principal and the lunchroom attendant. When I quietly asked one of the students what they were, he said they were suspension slips: I asked if all the children were being suspended and he said they were just filling them out. I sat next to a second-grade boy to read: ‘‘Your child has constantly disobeyed the rules of the lunchroom after being warned repeatedly. Your child has to return to school on [date] with a parent for a conference with the principal.’’ Children were supposed to put their names on the appropriate line of the form and turn it in.
The message to the children was that each was thought equally likely to get into serious trouble in the lunchroom during the remainder of the year. Adults also made clear to the children in much less subtle ways that they had little respect for them. Accusing children of ‘‘poor home training’’ was common: The music teacher shouted at the first-grade children to be quiet: ‘‘If you can’t follow the rules that are written on the board, then you can leave. What kind of training do you get at home? Shut-up.
While (some) of the children were attempting to complete an assignment she had just given, a second-grade teacher walked around the room and rearranged desks: She began to move desks so that there was more space between them by shoving them while telling children that they were not behaving. She started in one row of girls by shoving one girl’s desk into the aisle space. The girl next to her moved her desk in the other direction, anticipating the teacher’s next move. The teacher yelled at her to put her
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desk back, ‘‘You don’t need to move yours.’’ She moved to the girl on the other side of her, and pushed her desk. While the children were supposed to be working on an assignment, the teacher moved around the room, shoving their desks so they would be ‘‘just so’’ and berating them.
Adults also made statements that indicated that they did not enjoy being with the students: Several second-grade boys were sent out into the hall with threats of suspension. One of the students asked the teacher about suspensions and she said, ‘‘It means I won’t have to put up with him for a couple of weeks.’’
Adults, then, said things directly to the children that indicated that they had little regard for them. Adults treated children’s reasonable requests and comments as insubordination: A third-grade boy pointed out that the pencil he had been given was too short. It was inches long with no eraser. The art teacher told him that it was fine; he could write with it. He said that he could not; it was too short. He did not write when the teacher read the first test question and after the second question she told him to go stand in the hall. He went and leaned against the door frame with his hands on his head. She told him not to lean on anything and to stand so she could not see his face. A boy carrying a loaded lunch tray asked the lunchroom attendant behind the table to put his apple on his tray for him. She said, ‘‘I’m not your servant.’’ He explained to her that he was carrying books under his tray and was having trouble balancing everything. While she watched, he managed to get his things balanced long enough to take the apple, but it fell to the floor when he put it on his tray. An art teacher told a third-grade boy to sharpen the pencils that were in a box: ‘‘Make sure those pencils are sharp.’’ He said, ‘‘Okay.’’ She said, ‘‘Ronny, you don’t need to answer back. Just sharpen them.’’ I ran into a second-grade boy in the hall. He said he was going to another classroom to get something for his teacher and I tagged along. When we got to the classroom, the door was locked. I stood on one side of the door and he stood in front of the window in the door, which he was just tall enough to see through. He tapped on the glass. I said, ‘‘Does she see you?’’ He said, ‘‘Yes.’’ We continued standing. I asked if she was coming he said, ‘‘No.’’ He tapped again. We continued to wait. I said again, ‘‘Does she see you?’’ He said, ‘‘She sees me.’’ He continued to look into the classroom. He said to me, ‘‘Come stand by me so she can see you, then maybe she’ll open the door.’’ I said, ‘‘Do you think that will make a difference?’’ He said it would. I did not comply with his request and we continued to wait. She finally came to the door.
Adults made clear to the children that they did not consider them to be appropriate recipients of ordinary civility. As the last excerpt makes clear
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that teachers treated students with less respect than adults was not lost on the children.
School as a Menacing Environment for Children The children spent six hours a day, five days a week with a teacher in a classroom. The only exceptions were a forty-minute lunch period each day, which might include recess, and a few hours each week with specialty teachers in the library and in music, art, and physical education classrooms. Some children met in small groups with reading specialists. Two sets of kindergarten students were in the school for half-day sessions. Regardless of their location in the school, adults hectored the children constantly. It was rare for any time to pass without some criticism of the children’s behavior being made by an adult. To be a child in the school was to hear, watch, and experience admonishments about bad behavior almost continuously. In some cases, specific students were identified with reprimands and accusations: Near the office a group of seven first-grade girls was standing against the wall. Their teacher came out of their classroom, grabbed one of the girls by the arm, and shoved her into the room, yelling something at her. Then she came back out to tell the other girls to go into the room. A third grade teacher kept telling the class to be quiet. She singled out one student and said, ‘‘Stop talking, Denise.’’ Denise responded, ‘‘I wasn’t talking.’’ The teacher replied, ‘‘Then you’re a liar.’’ A second-grade teacher asked Esther to do something and then yelled at her, ‘‘I don’t like your attitude. You’ve got an attitude.’’ Kindergarten students were lined up near the lunchroom door to go back to their room. As they started down the hall, one of the lunchroom attendants said to a boy, ‘‘Deondre, before this day is over I’m going to have to give you a spanking.’’ She repeated this and then said, ‘‘Do you want a whipping?’’ Deondre stared at the floor.
When she had finished, another lunchroom attendant said to Deondre kindly, ‘‘Get at the end of the line, sweetheart.’’ Her remark was unusual. It was very uncommon for adults to break rank even in this relatively nonconfrontational way. A fourth- or fifth-grade boy was being berated by a woman I did not recognize. Someone told the boy to move back into the lunch line and he complied just as one of the lunchroom attendants came out of the kitchen. She said, ‘‘Is this boy giving you a problem?’’ She grabbed him by the ear, yanked him out of the line, and headed with him
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toward the office. She dropped her hold on his ear after about ten feet and grabbed his arm. The other lunchroom attendant watched, with a big smile on her face. The children in the lunch line were also watching but none that I could see was smiling. A second-grade girl told the teacher that a boy had punched a hole in her paper. The teacher marched to his desk and yelled at him, ‘‘Get up.’’ The boy did not and the teacher began pushing his desk so that it would face the window. The desk caught on his chair but she continued shoving and everything in his desk fell to the floor. The teacher said to him, ‘‘You can pick that up after school today. When the bell rings, pick that up.’’ The boy continued to sit in his chair for a couple of minutes and then got down on the floor. He lay on the floor under his desk for a while and then began to pick up his things from the floor around his desk.
Why a particular child was chosen as the object of an adult’s disapprobation was not always clear: In a first-grade music class, the teacher barked the order, ‘‘You, come up to the front.’’ Rodney started to get up but a boy behind him also got up. The teacher said to him, ‘‘You, sit down. Do you have on a striped shirt?’’ The striped shirt was not mentioned in the initial command.
Nor was it always clear why someone was being reprimanded: The music teacher told the third-graders to sit in their assigned seats. One boy said that he did not have an assigned seat and was sent to the corner. I was eating lunch with the second grade girls. The art teacher, who had used the lunchroom for his art class the previous period, was putting away supplies while we ate. He turned to the girls at my table and told them to sit down and be quiet. He pointed at Donae and yelled directly at her. She looked stunned. During the spelling test, a second-grade girl accused a boy of cheating. She said he had a piece of paper he was looking at. The teacher told him to bring the paper to her and he said that he didn’t have anything. She said not to lie to her and he began to approach her slowly. He handed her a piece of toilet paper and claimed that that was all he had. The teacher did not believe him and took his test paper away from him. Another boy accused a different boy of cheating. The teacher chose to believe this as well and took his paper from him.
Throughout the day, then, students could expect to be singled out for criticism or to listen to fellow students being criticized, often quite harshly, by the adults who had power over them. The reasons for the adults’ negative reactions to them were not always clear. What became clear to the children, however, was that adults had very little sympathy for them and were not trustworthy. In addition to reprimanding individual students, adults upbraided groups of students: A first-grade teacher said to the children that the problem with ‘‘Classroom 120’’ is ‘‘that people do not know how to listen.’’
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I encountered five kindergarten or first-grade students standing outside the door to the main office holding trays. I stopped to ask them what they were having for lunch. As I left, their teacher came out of the office and said, ‘‘I told you not to talk. Can’t you stand for even a few minutes without talking?’’
Children, then, were often criticized as part of a group irrespective of their own behavior. Often the reprimands were drawn out over an extended period of time, with one incident of recrimination segueing into another: When the second-grade class came back from lunch the teacher was sitting at her desk eating an orange. One of the boys told her that five boys got in trouble in the lunchroom and were in the office. She began asking loudly, ‘‘Who?’’ She went to the blackboard to write their names. The boys came up with Douglas and Dimitrio. The teacher demanded, ‘‘Who else?’’ but they were the only two in her class. She told the class that the boys had made her look bad on the first day of school. About fifteen minutes later while the students were taking turns reciting a poem, Douglas came into the room with a note from the principal. Apparently he had been given the punishment of writing, ‘‘I will not spit’’ some number of times. The teacher told him that he had made her look bad; that she should make him write it a thousand times and send him home right now to write it. She forced him with her presence to a desk in the back of the room and told him to write. Shortly thereafter Dimitrio arrived and he got similar treatment. He was to write, ‘‘I will not talk.’’ She told them that two more problems and they’d get suspended. The third-grade teacher told the students to line up to go to art. The eleven girls lined-up against the west wall, the seven boys, facing the door. In line the boys shoved each other and talked loudly. The girls were less disorderly. The teacher yelled at specific boys and girls. Eventually she told them all to sit down and line up again. They did, twice. The teacher pointed out to them numerous times that they were missing out on art because they would not listen to her. We finally left the classroom but did not begin moving at once. She continued to berate the children. After several minutes she directed the leader to a spot about half way down the hall. After we paused there we were given permission to go on to the art room, where the teacher apologized loudly to the art teacher for the children’s late arrival and told her that she might not be able to do art with them because they were unruly. When the third-grade teacher returned to escort the children back to the classroom, she asked the art teacher if the children had been able to work or if they had had to sit the whole time.
Incidents in which children were reprimanded, then, often took a considerable amount of time and involved the whole class, not only those who were demonstrably at fault but also when no one was. The lunchrooms were oppressive settings for the students, especially for the boys. Although there were more boys than girls in the school, the girls’ lunchroom was half again as large as the boys’, which meant that it was less crowded. Five tables of twelve accommodated the girls, while the boys were more likely to use eight, although fewer during the first lunch because there
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were only a small number of kindergarten students. Once the children were in the lunchrooms or in line to pick up their food, their classroom teachers relinquished authority to lunchroom attendants and other members of the professional staff. Keeping order in the lunchrooms was very important to the adults in charge. The girls were supervised by one woman who almost never left them unattended while half a dozen men and women supervised the boys who, paradoxically, were sometimes left on their own. The children were routinely admonished not to talk to one another but simply to eat their lunches quickly and quietly: The lunchroom attendant told the first grade boys not to talk. She also told this to the kindergarten children sitting in the other half of the lunchroom. She made speeches, which she repeated. She didn’t want to see their mouths moving to talk. If they talked she would take their lunch away. She continued to threaten this. The boys around me were trying to eat without talking. The lunchroom attendant began her routine about being quiet and not eating until she said they could. She stood in the aisle surveying the boys periodically and, among other things, said, ‘‘Don’t make me take your lunch away from you.’’ ‘‘You’re not going to like it when you’re sitting here watching him eat.’’ She picked up one boy’s fruit cup and milk and lobbed them into the garbage can. She took a second grade student’s milk and tossed it in the garbage can, saying to him, ‘‘You keep that up and I’ll send you to eat with the girls.’’ She didn’t give the boys permission to eat until 30 minutes into the 40minute lunch period. During second lunch a teacher came in and began to tell the second- and third-grade boys to be quiet or they would not get their lunch. The boys were quiet with a few words spoken occasionally, softly. Nevertheless, the teacher continued his monologue about how they were not quiet, that they didn’t respect him. He singled out boys whom he accused of talking. To one he said, ‘‘Be quiet or you’re dead.’’ To another he said, ‘‘Be quiet or I’ll throw you out the window.’’ He said, ‘‘It’s fifty degrees outside and getting warmer and you aren’t going to be able to go outside because you can’t follow the rules.’’ He put a chair in the middle of the lunchroom and sat down to continue his monologue. The boys were sitting with their hands on the table and their heads down. The woman who served lunch came in to ask the teacher, simply as a point of information, if he was going to wait until the last ten minutes to give the boys lunch. The teacher told her that the boys were not following rules. He said that the state required that the boys get their lunches but that would not stop him from making them put them in the garbage once they had them. He said several times that it was nothing to him because he had already had his lunch. He left the lunchroom occasionally and the noise level increased as boys talked to one another, but it was still relatively quiet. Once when he was out of the lunchroom a second-grade boy called me over and said, ‘‘Tell him that we’re being good.’’
For the students, lunch was not a break from adult harassment.
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For these early elementary school students, then, school was not about learning, grades, or scores on achievement tests, but about enduring six hours under the thumb of faultfinding adults who had little respect for them and chastised them constantly, often unfairly. Others have written about the importance of discipline to adults who work in poor and working-class schools but earlier reports do not suggest this pervasive level of harassment. Harsh discipline is depicted as a relatively minor part of the school experience for most students, secondary to the lessons. In the school described here, harassment was not secondary. Continual accusations that the children were badly behaved extinguished enthusiasm for being a student. Assignments were often little more than an opportunity to be criticized for not paying attention or for making mistakes. The forty-minute lunch period, especially for the boys, was often an exercise in enduring adults’ exertion of power over them for no apparent reason. In short, to adopt without reservation the role of student would have meant thinking little of oneself and accepting the unjust use of authority.
CHILDREN’S RESPONSES TO OPPRESSION Children’s responses to the onslaught of these threats to self were limited. The power differential between adults and children meant that it was difficult to change the adults’ views of them. Occasionally children tried to win favor with adults. When the second-grade teacher told students to draw a picture on their name cards the first day of school, Marquis asked me to draw a heart for her. I compromised by drawing hearts on a piece of paper as a model for her. She also asked me how to spell the teacher’s name. Later I noted that she had written ‘‘I love you Mrs. Smith’’ in small letters on her name card, which she had decorated with hearts.
Sometimes children indicated that they did not care what adults thought of them: When it was time for the children to go the art teacher called their names in alphabetical order. Each child went to her desk, she looked at the mask, turned it over to put a grade on the back, and then the child got in line. I thought she gave Daniel a D. After he’d gone to stand in line I asked him if I could see his mask. He opened his hand to show me that he had crumpled it up into a ball. I took it from him and, when I uncrumpled it, discovered that he also had torn it in half. I confirmed that the teacher have given him a D. He took the mask back from me, crumpled it up again, walked over the wastebasket by the teacher’s desk, and threw it in.
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Neither of these strategies made impressions on teachers. The more common way that children responded, however, was simply to ‘‘shut down.’’ Throughout the fieldnotes, I used adjectives such as ‘‘passive,’’ ‘‘stone faced,’’ and ‘‘stoic’’ over and over again to describe the children when adults were talking to them. I described children as making no response, which, of course, was a response. Children who were interacting with one another animatedly often seemed simply to freeze when adults addressed or joined them.
LINKING OPPRESSION TO STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT Numerous frameworks have been developed to explain relationships characterized by unequal amounts of power. Rarely are they applied to children. The ‘‘new’’ sociology of childhood suggests that they are applicable and can be used to interpret children’s behavior. Characterizing the relationship between children and adults in the school as oppression leads to an explanation for the black–white test-score gap that is located in the social organization of the school in which one caste – adults – oppresses the other caste – children. There is a great deal of theory and research that addresses responses of those who are oppressed. Here, I offer two frameworks that link the oppression of children in the school with the failure of African-American children to achieve in low-income neighborhood schools. Thomas Scheff argues that emotions, particularly shame, are key to understanding social relationships (Scheff, 2000, 2003; Scheff & Retzinger, 1991). Shame ‘‘functions as a signal of threat to the social bond’’ (Scheff & Retzinger, 1991, p.5). For Scheff and Retzinger, ‘‘normal shame and shaming produce social solidarity, whereas pathological shame and shaming produce alienation’’ (p. 30). When acknowledged, feelings of shame act as effective social control. The person who has done wrong admits the mistake and the social bond is repaired. Unacknowledged shame, on the other hand, breaks the social bond and leaves participants in an emotional state from which there is no constructive escape. Adults routinely attempted to induce shame in the students. When a second-grade teacher gave the class an assignment, Ezekiel began working on it immediately and finished quickly. When he showed the teacher his paper she said sharply that he’d done it wrong: ‘‘You wrote big A’s not little ones. And your d’s and b’s are supposed to touch the line.’’
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The teacher’s critique of his work may well have induced shame, but his mistakes were ones that he could correct to redeem himself in her eyes. However, she went on to say, ‘‘You were so busy hitting people and talking that you didn’t do your work.’’ Even though Ezekiel was innocent of these accusations, he did not try to defend himself, but sat passively playing with one of his eyes as if he had something in it. She flipped his paper over and ordered him to do it again. Other students in the classroom had not yet finished writing the first column of words. Some had not even managed to get their names on their papers. Later the teacher told the girl who was sitting across the aisle from him, whose paper was no better than his, that she would give her a sticker because her paper was so good. Criticisms may have been intended to shame students, but because the adults’ views were often unduly negative, unwarranted, and unjust, students were more likely to be ashamed of being ashamed. This emotional state leads to anger, but to have expressed anger to an adult in the school would have been foolhardy. The alternative was to hold in one’s feelings, in essence to appear passive, to be stoic, to turn to stone, while exercising self-control. Scheff’s advice for avoiding unacknowledged shame, ‘‘to express one’s actual thoughts and feelings, but in a way that shows respect for the attacker,’’ (1995, p. 285) was not an option for them. Instead, ‘‘The energy required to control feelings of shame – giving up basic parts of one’s self in order to maintain an appearance of harmony’’ (p. 284) left the children described here with little energy for learning. Best’s explanation (1983) of why boys are more likely than girls to have difficulty learning to read supports this interpretation. In her research, she focused on the relationships among students in an elementary school and discovered an emerging status hierarchy among the boys. She observed that by the end of first grade, the boys were more concerned with being respected by other boys than by the teacher. In subsequent grades, the boys sorted themselves into a club of popular boys and outcasts. Boys who were excluded from the popular group were so consumed with dealing with their low status that they had little energy left for schoolwork. These were the boys who had difficulty learning to read. In contrast, the girls remained focused on the teachers until fifth grade. As a result, they continued to care about their status in the teachers’ eyes and were less affected by peer relationships. Best’s unpopular boys, in Scheff’s theory, are boys who must find a way to deal with shame. Repairing relationships was not an option for them because the popular boys were unwilling to reevaluate them. Unacknowledged shame, then, interfered with their ability to learn. According to Best, the teachers in her school were ‘‘good’’ teachers, which
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presumably meant that they were respectful and just. Best does present evidence that teachers were nicer to girls than to boys, which may have contributed to the girls’ willingness to trust teachers while the boys looked to one another. In the school described here, there were notable gender differences, but for neither girls nor boys were the teachers’ trustworthy allies. As another explanation I draw on a recent review of the literature that focused on the effects on teamwork when a member of the team is a ‘‘bad apple.’’ In their review, Felps, Mitchell, and Byington (2006) bring together disparate research findings to argue that when group members are unable to counter a bad apple’s negativity, violation of norms, and/or incivility through social control, they adopt defensive behaviors, which are intended to ‘‘protect and repair one’s own sense of autonomy, status, self-esteem, or wellbeing’’ (p. 187). Defensive behaviors include explosions, covert revenge, mood maintenance, denial, slacking off, and withdrawal. ‘‘When there’s no viable way to deal with a harmful person, but members are still strongly influenced by them, the only recourse is defensive self-protection’’ (p. 188). When members loose [sic] faith in the groups of which they are a part, it is called deidentificationy One of the major drives behind identifying with a collective is the desire to be part of something positive that enhances one’s own self-concepty As the group loses its positive ethos, members de-identify with the collective and categorize themselves more as an individual and less as a part of the group (p. 201)y Numerous empirical studies have found that negative feelings have a chilling effect on creativity for individuals and on groupsy A similar logic holds true for learning in groups. A perception of threat triggers defensive reactions aimed towards self-protectiony Groups composed of self-protective members will not feel safe, and so will be reluctant to do things like admit a knowledge deficit or ask for help in developing competenciesy (p. 204).
Although these authors are focusing on work teams in organizations, the responses of group members to a ‘‘bad apple’’ provide striking parallels to the behavior of the children in the inner-city elementary school that is the focus of this chapter.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This chapter argues that at least part of the explanation for black students’ marginal academic achievement is located in the social relations of the actors who constitute racially homogeneous, inner-city elementary schools. The case is made that the social organization of the school, controlled by
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adults, was so emotionally painful for these elementary school students that they adapted by expending their energy on self-protection rather than on learning. While children entering the school initially appeared to embrace the student role eagerly, it did not take long for students to recognize that this social context was not one that was likely to make them feel good about themselves. In fact, to incorporate student as a valued part on their identity would have meant self-denigration. In such an environment, extending the school year, a current popular proposal to improve student achievement, is unlikely to be effective. There is a rich literature in the social sciences on unequal power relationships that could be gleaned for insights into students’ behavior and achievement in schools. Available perspectives, however, are rarely tapped because of the predisposition to define children as so different from adults that they would not apply. The two frameworks applied here – shaming and dealing with a ‘‘bad apple’’ – are intended to demonstrate that conceptualizing children as essentially the same as adults until proven otherwise increases the potential to explain children’s behavior including, in this case, the black–white test-score gap. The results of the ethnographic research presented here suggest that the mechanism that shapes the black–white test-score gap is the oppressive nature of the relationships between adults and children in inner-city elementary schools that make up the ‘‘institutional practices that ultimately undermine academic achievement’’ (Wilson, 1998, p. 508). Enthusiasm for school and education extinguished at the start is difficult to recover in the ensuing years. Not learning to read well in early elementary school effectively rules out successful school performance in subsequent years in most subjects just as not learning to add, subtract, multiple, and divide makes learning higher-level mathematics impossible. In a carefully constructed analysis of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Cohort, Condron (2009) examined students’ gains in reading and math between entry into and exit from first grade to determine the degree to which nonschool factors and school factors affected social class and black–white gaps in reading and math. While nonschool factors accounted for the social class test-score gap, school factors accounted for the black–white test-score gap. He reports, ‘‘Attending a predominantly minority school (versus a predominantly white school) is the only factor that matters consistently for both reading and math’’ (p. 698). He concludes that ‘‘schools appear to exacerbate black/white disparities in learning even as they slow the growth of social class gaps’’ (p. 699). Condron cites as one limitation of his study, ‘‘its inability to
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demonstrate the mechanisms through which segregated schools produce disparate learning outcomes’’ (p. 700). He concludes, ‘‘Given the persistence of school racial segregation, uncovering the mechanisms through which it shapes black/white achievement disparities remains an important task for future research’’ (p. 701). This research focuses on only one school, but the nature of the relationships between adults and children described here has been documented in other ethnographic studies of low-income schools. A major difference between previous and current findings is the degree to which oppression of these very young students by the adults pervaded school life. This may be because the school was racially homogeneous, as was the case in 2000 for over 40% of black elementary students. The contrast between students of different races and social classes, available in many ethnographies, was unavailable. The black boys who were the Bad Boys in Ferguson’s racially integrated school (2000) may all be considered bad boys in racially homogeneous schools. Whether the findings reported here are applicable to other schools is, of course, an empirical question. Examining everyday school life from young children’s perspectives in a variety of schools would provide much-needed insight into the mechanisms and institutional practices that undermine and promote academic achievement. Adopting the perspective of young school children in research is not easy. At the very least such an approach requires taking children seriously, recognizing that they have agency, and acting strategically.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT Research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
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PART III CHILDREN’S RIGHTS
WAIVING PARENTAL CONSENT WHEN RESEARCHING AT-RISK YOUTH Timothy Stablein and Steven H. Jacobs ABSTRACT Purpose – In this chapter, we address the ambiguous nature of parental consent requirement decisions for the purpose of conducting minimal risk research of at-risk youth. Methodology/approach – We evaluate current guidelines, which are used to determine the appropriateness of parental consent waivers, review related literature, and offer a case study to understand some of the resulting dilemmas that arise when seeking approval and researching youth in potentially abusive and neglectful situations. Findings – We offer the researcher, practitioner, ethics committee, and policy maker new strategies to aid in the determination and application of parental consent waivers for minimal risk research participation among at-risk youth populations. Keywords: At-risk youth; informed consent; institutional review boards; minimal risk; parental consent
The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 205–226 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014014
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INTRODUCTION The ethics of medical and social science research with adolescents has become an increasingly prevalent point of discussion in the academic community (Alderson, 1995; Griffin, 1993; Morrow & Richards, 1996; Nicholson, 1986). A transformation in the legal and social conceptions of adolescent rights has led to an influx of literature concerning the definitions of mature minor, minimal risk, parental and informed consent, and the place of adolescents in research. Much of this literature has centered upon the ambiguous requirements which authorize researchers to waive parental consent for the involvement of minors in academic studies (Alderson, 1995; English, 1995; Levine, 1995, 2007, 2008; Meade & Slesnick, 2002; Nicholson, 1986; Rew, Taylor-Seehafer, & Thomas, 2000; Rogers, D’Angelo, & Futterman, 1994; Taylor, Lydon, Bougie, & Johannsen, 2004). Obtaining parental consent is largely a just, ethical, and important practice when involving vulnerable youth populations in medical and social science research. However, there are instances where the application of parental consent requirements for youth raises questions about the general utility of this practice, most notably when involving youth in minimal risk research. The subsequent problems that arise are often the result of ambiguities in federal regulations concerning the nature of abuse and neglect, which subsequently inform institutional review board (IRB) decisions (Levine, 1995, 2008; Meade & Slesnick, 2002; Seiber, 1992; Swauger, 2009). These inconsistencies have yielded a wealth of literature and debate concerning the ethics and utility of current parental consent requirements. The literature aims at defining a uniform set of criteria that stipulates practical and ethical needs for requiring parental consent for minors participating in research studies and illustrates biases that can result from such requirements. In this chapter, we review this literature and explore the nature of the current parental consent debate and the consequences of this requirement when researching youth in abusive or neglectful situations. To illustrate these issues, we offer a case example taken from the first author’s ethnographic study of street youth and young adults. A novel finding from the ethnography was that the street population was comprised of a heterogeneous mix of homeless and non-homeless youth and young adults (Stablein, 2009, 2011). Though others have observed a similar dynamic among youth and young adult street populations (see, e.g., Baker & Panter-Brick, 2000; Brannigan & Caputo, 1993; Caputo, Weiler, & Anderson, 1997; Karabanow, 2006; O’Sullivan, 2003; Plympton, 1997; Visano, 1990), as of yet,
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little is understood about this diversity and the intergroup quality of collective organization that emerges from their interactions. Interviewing the multiple groups of youth and young adults who participated in street life represented a novel and important contribution to the literature. However, as the non-homeless youth still lived at home, the question of whether or not to obtain parental consent arose. In the end, over 50 members of this diverse street population were interviewed and waivers of parental consent granted by the local IRB for interviews of non-homeless youth. The waiver for non-homeless youth was deemed justifiable because discussing participation with caregivers could exacerbate existing tensions in the home related to the minor’s engagement in delinquent activities on the street (see English, 1995; Fisher, Hoagwood, & Jensen, 1999; Meade & Slesnick, 2002; Phillips, 1994; Rew et al., 2000). Given that situations among housed participants were likely to be tenuous and on the verge of breakdown (Caputo et al., 1997; Karabanow, 2006), a waiver of parental consent would provide further protections to participating non-homeless youth who may have been experiencing abuse or neglect. Obtaining a waiver of parental consent also afforded the researcher a unique opportunity to study an unknown subgroup of street youth, as well as identify relationships and interactions across groups that would not have been possible had parental consent been required. We discuss this case in context to the existing parental consent debate, the interrelated concerns about abuse and neglect, and additional ambiguities which surround definitions of minimal risk research and mature minor status. We offer the researcher, practitioner, ethics committee, and policy maker new strategies to aid in the determination and application of waivers in questionable cases of abuse and neglect among these and other at-risk youth populations. It is our hope that we can inform the development of future research policy, practices, and protocol to reduce the potential for estrangement from parents in the course of minimal risk research participation and, in the process, protect youth’s rights to participate under their own volition.
THE PARENTAL CONSENT DEBATE Abuse, Neglect, and Questionable Cases Although the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) stipulates certain criteria for waiving the requirement of parental
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consent in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) (see below Protection of Human Subjects, 2009, 45 C.F.R. y 46), these provisions are, in effect, guidelines which are subject to case-by-case interpretation by local IRBs, rather than uniform regulations mandated by courts of law. DHHS guidelines set forth in the CFR provide a basis for adolescent rights and describe situations which justify a waiver of parental consent. However, Mead and Slesnick (2002, pp. 450–451) note: federal regulations and court decisions intended to outline ethical conduct for researchers and clinicians do not provide clear guidelines for working [particularly] with runaway and homeless youth. y Perhaps the most difficult issue to resolve when working with this population involves interpreting the guidelines that specify when parents must provide consent and when it is appropriate to allow consent from the adolescent alone. Current DHHS guidelines allow the adolescent to consent alone in cases of abuse and neglect.
Mead and Slesnick (2002), however, point out that these guidelines do not adequately define abuse or neglect. The resulting ambiguity of the current CFR motivate many IRBs to use recommendations offered more than 30 years ago by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in a report titled, ‘‘Research Involving Children: Report and Recommendations’’ (1977). Though somewhat outdated and considered mostly a historical document like that of the Belmont Report, IRBs are still apt to refer to the National Commission’s report in lieu of the less comprehensive CFR guidelines. Levine (1995) suggests that the National Commission’s guidelines were more encompassing, offering further examples of when and when not to allow waivers of parental consent. For example, this report takes into consideration the legal and functional competence of parents and guardians, the mature minor status of adolescents, and the use of third party legal advocates (see Levine, 1995; Levine, 2008; Seiber, 1992) and, thus, provides further guidance where the CFR falls short. Though each of these reports provide building blocks to further understand when parental consent waivers are justifiable, the lack of uniformity in their use and application creates a decentralized and disconnected doctrine upon which parental consent decisions are based. In general, IRBs are in agreement with the CFR and available research findings that homeless and runaway youth adequately represent a subsegment of the population with a high likelihood of abuse and neglect. As such, IRBs are thus apt to waive parental consent for homeless and runaway ‘‘mature minors’’ (emancipated from parents), who are solicited to participate in ‘‘minimal risk’’ research studies (see Rew et al., 2000; Risjord & Greenberg, 2002; Rogers et al., 1994). Permission to interview
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and study homeless and runaway youth, in particular, are based on these understandings, and thus allow researchers an opportunity to solicit interviews from marginalized youth who may have been abused and neglected, and, for a multitude of reasons, have limited or no contact with caregivers or institutions. Most IRBs tend to waive parental consent requirements for homeless and runaway youth to participate in minimal risk studies. However, as there is ambiguity in what constitutes abuse and neglect, determining the appropriateness of a waiver of parental consent for minors who are not homeless remains difficult (Meade & Slesnick, 2002). Such difficulties are especially pronounced when dealing with cases of questionable abuse or neglect or subtle cases of relationship strain, where youth may be estranged from parents or guardians in a variety of ways, but still participate in home and family life. It is these gray areas and lack of clarity in federal guidelines that lead IRBs to seek out alternative documentation to justify parental consent waiver decisions and limit the extent to which they can make uniform decisions about research regarding all at-risk youth (Meade & Slesnick, 2002). Questionable cases of abuse or neglect arise whenever the researcher is unaware of personal backgrounds and experiences of potential research subjects. Although the likelihood of past and present abuse or neglect may be clear among actively homeless and runaway youth, it is less clear among other youth involved in delinquent activities, such as those who participate in gangs, or street youth who are not yet homeless (Auerswald & Eyre, 2002; Baker & Panter-Brick, 2000; Brannigan & Caputo, 1993; Caputo et al., 1997; Finkelstein, 2005; Hagan & McCarthy, 1997; Karabanow, 2006; Lundy, 1995; Plympton, 1997; Visano, 1990; Wilkinson, 1987). Although many of these individuals may have histories similar to, and interactions with, their homeless and runaway street youth counterparts (Caputo et al., 1997; Karabanow, 2006; Visano, 1990), instances of past or present abuse or neglect may be more difficult to define and determine among these groups given the ambiguous and tenuous nature of their current living situations. The subsequent determination of an IRB to impose a requirement of parental consent for such cases may have two significant consequences. First, the requirement of parental consent may work to exacerbate problems that exist in already tenuous and volatile home life situations (English, 1995; Fisher et al., 1999; Meade & Slesnick, 2002; Phillips, 1994; Rew et al., 2000). When dealing with cases where youth are marginalized from home life and alienated from parents, further discussions about their involvement in delinquent activity, even in the case of participation in research about
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delinquent activity, may only work to increase tensions at home and subsequently harm participants (see also Boser, 2007). Second, the requirement of parental consent may produce a selection bias in sampling. Participants may opt in or out of a study depending on their desire or reluctance to inform parents or caregivers of their participation in research and the subsequent activities in question (Esbensen, Miller, Taylor, He, & Freng, 1999; Hill & Morton, 2003; Kearney, Hopkins, Mauss, & Weisheit, 1983; Rew et al., 2000; Tigges, 2003). Such selection issues can bias results, leading researchers to make inaccurate inferences about the population.
Minimal Risk, Mature Minors, and Reasonable Requirements Additional ambiguities in the definitions of minimal risk, mature minors, and reasonable requirements to protect subjects further compound the issue of waiving parental consent. The literature working to enumerate a set criterion for the involvement of adolescents in research emphasizes a cost– benefit approach, which respects the limited autonomy adolescents have in the legal and social spheres (Brock, 1994; Cornelison, 1998; Santelli et al., 1995). Although evident in each of the most common suggestions, cost– benefit analysis is used predominately when researchers emphasize that a study must not present the minor with anything beyond ‘‘minimal’’ or reasonable risk (Rew et al., 2000). A given research study is considered minimal risk if ‘‘the probability and magnitude of harm or discomfort anticipated in the research are not greater in and of themselves than those ordinarily encountered in daily life or during the performance of routine physical or psychological examinations or tests’’ (Protection of Human Subjects, 2009, 45 C.F.R. y 46, p. 4). In general, minimal risk studies do not present the participant with a greater risk than found in their day-to-day life (Hutz & Koller, 1999; Levine, 2007; Seiber, 1992). However, Risjord and Greenberg (2002) point out that minimal risk for one individual may be high risk for another, and therefore the term and definition is subjective, but not interpreted as such when applied loosely to varied segments of the adolescent population who subsequently have different experiences. The ability to judge risk is a main concern for IRBs when authorizing a researcher to waive parental consent. Acknowledging the inconsistent nature of adolescent development and risk, many researchers in recent years have employed the term ‘‘mature minor’’ in order to differentiate between adolescents who show the capacity for informed consent from those who cannot. Because the methodology for identifying a ‘‘mature minor’’ is
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limited and mostly ambiguous and vague (see Meade & Slesnick, 2002), most agree that at around the age of 15 adolescents become eligible for this classification (Rogers et al., 1994). Furthermore, Santelli et al. (1995) suggests that the capacity to make informed decisions through formal operational thinking is predicated on age only up to 11 (see Meade & Slesnick, 2002; Petersen & Leffert, 1995). After this age, both the adolescent and adult’s capacity to make an informed decision to participate in a research study is dictated by exposure to real life experience, which requires pragmatic decision making and competence in understanding (see Alderson, 1995). These capacities are not simply defined by cognitive development, and thus by age, but also by an individual’s life course and experience (Alderson, 1995; Coyne, 1998; Eiser, 1989; Koren, Carmeli, Carmeli, & Haslam, 1993; Santelli et al., 1995). However, Seiber (1992) notes that there is no clear legal definition of mature minor with respect to research participation, nor do governmental guidelines recognize an adolescent’s ability for abstract reasoning and formal logic (Meade & Slesnick, 2002). This discrepancy may ultimately lead to uncertainty among members of IRBs who will adopt more restrictive approaches to adolescent research (English, 1995). Moreover, the examination of an individual’s capacity to judge must be validated despite the inability of the parent or legal guardian to become involved without compromising either the safety of the adolescent and/or the authenticity of the study (Seiber, 1992). IRBs tend to agree with this notion and allow parental consent waivers in most cases if they find that they do not constitute a reasonable requirement to protect a subject (Mammel & Kaplan, 1995). Although both researchers and IRBs may differ in what they deem a ‘‘reasonable’’ requirement, federal guidelines stipulate and most IRBs tend to agree that ‘‘a subject population for which parental permission may not be a reasonable requirement, cited in the CFR, is neglected and abused children’’ (Mammel & Kaplan, 1995, p. 328; see also Rogers et al., 1994). On this issue, the CFR (Protection of Human Subjects, 2009, 45 C.F.R. y 46, p. 13) states: if the IRB determines that a research protocol is designed for conditions or for a subject population for which parental or guardian permission is not a reasonable requirement to protect the subjects (for example, neglected or abused children), it may waive the consent requirements y provided an appropriate mechanism for protecting the children who will participate as subjects in the research is substituted, and provided further that the waiver is not inconsistent with federal, state, or local law. The choice of an appropriate mechanism would depend upon the nature and purpose of the activities described in the
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protocol, the risk, and anticipated benefit to the research subjects, and their age, maturity, status, and condition.
King and Churchill (2000) explain that limits of parental authority and reasonable requirements to protect subjects ‘‘are enforced primarily through child abuse and neglect laws and social service agencies, but precisely where the limits lie is y vigorously contested in society’’ (p. 719). Disagreement within social and medical research literature about what constitutes a ‘‘reasonable requirement’’ is also evident, for example, in sexuality research (Mammel & Kaplan, 1995). Employing a cost–benefit analysis, researchers who are hesitant about subjecting minors to emotionally loaded questions that probe into their sexual history fear that adolescents may not be emotionally stable enough to handle an open discussion with a stranger especially if questions force the participant to recount troubled memories of sexual abuse (Levine, 1995). Levine also notes that this viewpoint emphasizes the need for both IRBs to approve questions prior to a study and additionally for researchers to provide participants with access to mental health professionals. Moreover, in cases of sexual abuse, parents or guardians are frequently implicated (Tyler & Cauce, 2002). In such cases, parental consent requirements for minors to participate in research in which parents/ guardians themselves are responsible for abuse may increase tensions between caregiver and youth and, at the very least, distort research results. In response to this dilemma, Rew et al. (2000) suggest that if minors are allowed to seek treatment for sexually related complications without parental consent such as pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, then they should be able and allowed to answer questions about these same issues without their consent (see Rogers et al., 1994). Both Rew et al. and Rogers et al. offer a valid suggestion, taking into consideration not only the issue of protecting youth from further harm but also of insuring against potential sampling bias that can result when including parents or legal guardians in decisions to participate in research. Parental Consent and Sampling Bias Statistical and sampling biases stemming from the requirement of parental consent is thoroughly documented in the social science literature (Ellickson & Hawes, 1989; Esbensen et al., 1999; Fletcher & Hunter, 2003; Hill & Morton, 2003; Kearney et al., 1983; Lueptow, Mueller, Hammes, & Master, 1977; Morrow, 1999; Rew et al., 2000; Tigges, 2003).
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In two school-based studies, for example, Esbensen et al. (1999) and Kearney et al. (1983) found that the requirement for both active and passive parental consent tends to result in sampling bias, frequently causing overrepresentations of whites compared to their minority counterparts. Building on Singer’s (1978) study of survey response and quality, which found that there was a correlation between low levels of education and high refusal rates, Kearney et al. found that requirements for parental consent resulted in low representation of Asians and AfricanAmericans. The Asian sample diminished due to a high refusal rate, while the African-American sample suffered from low response rates. Independent of racial and socioeconomic biases, Esbensen et al. also found that ‘‘at-risk’’ participants (Esbensen et al. define ‘‘at-risk’’ by demographic risk factors and by responses to attitudinal and behavioral measures) had significantly higher rates of nonresponse and refusals in studies requiring active consent than in those requiring passive consent. Together they suggest that minors, identified as ‘‘at-risk,’’ are underrepresented in studies that require parental consent, and the ‘‘at-risk’’ demographic cannot be expropriated from other factors such as race and level of education. The issue of parental consent and bias is further complicated in cases where youth are estranged or separated from parents or legal guardians. This is particularly important in research with homeless youth. For such cases, one suggestion has been to involve third party legal advocates in lieu of a parent or guardian to make decisions about involvement in research (see, e.g., Pears, Bruce, Fisher, & Kim, 2010). Third party legal advocates may, for example, be social workers or mental health counselors present in shelters or institutions who oversee the safety and care of minors who have been removed from or have left a home. Involving these third party legal advocates, which can objectively represent the interests of the minor, is a primary concern for many IRBs and is a central theme in the ethical debate (Risjord & Greenberg, 2002). Many researchers seeking to understand homeless youth, for example, do so through formal contact with social service agencies and homeless shelters. However, given that many homeless youth reject such services outright (Taylor et al., 2004), such requirements, though protective of youths’ interests, often limit the researcher to understanding those individuals who choose to seek out and enter into service centers. In such studies, researchers often miss gaining an understanding of youth not serviced by these programs or those who choose to remain below the radar of social service providers. Moving to the street to find potential research subjects who are actively homeless thus
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becomes a strategy to overcome these limitations. However, much of the literature which enumerates the criteria for waiving parental consent for minors requires the researcher to involve community institutions, such as shelters, group homes, or schools, as a substitute for parental oversight (Levine, 1995). This requirement of community involvement is arguably a secondary criterion and questioned for its effectiveness, since it could possibly impede on a participant’s privacy and, similar to concerns about caregivers who consent for their children, can further perpetuate biased data collection and research results (Hill & Morton, 2003; Morrow, 1999). Conclusions from Literature Certainly, for minors experiencing abusive or neglectful situations, marginalized from home and/or institutional participation, requiring consent of parents, guardians, or third party legal advocates to participate in minimal risk research studies can inhibit a researcher’s ability to gain representative or unbiased samples. Moreover, a requirement of parental consent for ‘‘at-risk’’ minors who are often already in precarious, abusive, and/or tenuous living situations potentially works to compromise those relationships and may exacerbate already strained relations (English, 1995; Fisher et al., 1999; Meade & Slesnick, 2002; Phillips, 1994; Rew et al., 2000). These are interrelated concerns that researchers and IRBs must address when deciding the necessity and consequences of parental consent requirements. As a result, there is a need to understand the varied experiences of youth in these cases and to determine one’s ability to make informed decisions about participation in a research study. Moreover, there is a need to understand the consequences of over-cautious approaches, especially in those studies deemed to be of minimal risk.
CASE STUDY: STREET YOUTH, PARENTAL OVERSIGHT, AND CONSENT From a logistical and ethical point of view, street youth and young adults offer a particular challenge to researchers wishing to understand their behavior and activities. The decision to require or waive parental consent in minimal risk research of street youth (under the age of 18) is central to this challenge and exemplifies some of the problems associated with parental consent requirement ambiguities.
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Researchers define street youth and young adults as those who engage in activities such as drinking, drug use, panhandling, scavenging, vagrancy, crime, and delinquency that occur in street locations (Caputo et al., 1997; Finkelstein, 2005; Hagan & McCarthy, 1997; Karabanow, 2006; Lundy, 1995; Wilkinson, 1987). Though homeless youth and young adults adopt these activities to survive and cope with life on the street, there is a general acknowledgement among many of these and other observers that not all young people who engage in street life are actively homeless (see also Baker & Panter-Brick, 2000; Brannigan & Caputo, 1993; Plympton, 1997; Stablein, 2009, 2011; Visano, 1990). This research shows us that many youth and young adults first experience street life while still living at home. Karabanow (2006) suggests that these non-homeless youth and young adults who participate in street life are also vulnerable to its pull, placing them at greater risk for running away or becoming homeless. For many, participating in street life and transitioning to homelessness often occurs over an extended period of time when a young person contemplates leaving home and befriends street peers to test the waters and make connections before they leave a problematic home situation. For the researcher seeking to understand street participation and the transitional nature of street life, the lines between having a home and being homeless become blurred. As a result, researchers must examine the lives of both homeless and non-homeless street participants, though most research in this area has been unable to do so. In addition, given the youth status of many participants, understanding the lives of these precariously situated individuals offer numerous challenges to the researcher. The first author was presented with many of these challenges when conducting ethnographic interviews and observations among homeless and non-homeless young people who congregated in one city square in the Northeastern United States (Stablein, 2009, 2011). The objective was to understand street life in the square and the lives of young people who participated. Of particular interest was gaining an understanding of their experiences and daily activities, the utility of participation, and the role that street peers played for one another in terms of socialization and survival. Interviews with 52 street participants (who congregated in the square) took place over one six-month period. Participants represented a mix of homeless and non-homeless youth and young adults between the ages of 15 and 30. Prospective interviewees were informed of their rights as study participants and assured that all data would be kept anonymous and confidential. Participants were presented with an information sheet about
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the study which outlined their rights as research participants and were required to read (or be read to) the information sheet and give verbal consent to be interviewed. In addition, all participants were provided with information about local service providers where counseling or help off the street could be sought. Participants received monetary compensation for their time in the form of a 20-dollar gift card to a local convenience store/ pharmacy.
Waiving Parental Consent for Non-Homeless Street Youth Issues related to parental consent came when formulating a plan to understand and interview the non-homeless portion of youth who were engaged in street life in the square. Many of these youth had frequent daily contact with caregivers and returned home each day after their visits to the square. We feared that a parental consent requirement for these youth to participate in the study would dissuade them from participation and exacerbate already problematic situations at home. Given these concerns, the first author submitted a research proposal to the university IRB requesting that he be granted a waiver of parental consent for any housed participants under the age of 18. The IRB agreed that participation posed a minimal risk to housed street youth, but requested that no individual under the age of 15 be interviewed (see above, see also Meade & Slesnick, 2002; Rogers et al., 1994). The IRB determined that requiring parental consent for these housed ‘‘mature,’’ yet under-aged minors, might exacerbate problems at home, since many of these young people came from troubled backgrounds and existed in transitional living situations (Karabanow, 2006). It was also possible that this group of younger non-homeless individuals could be at risk of running away and becoming homeless themselves. Their very participation in the homeless and street community in the square may have been a point of contention between parents/guardians and their teenage children. In an effort to minimize these tensions, or not add to them, this waiver allowed young people to participate in a minimal risk research study without raising concerns by parents or guardians about their involvement in the square’s street community. In this study, the waiver of parental consent offered a degree of protection to vulnerable youth participants. For example, interviews with housed street youth suggested that their participation in the square exacerbated tensions with caregivers. Housed street youth cited relationship strain and interpersonal problems with parents and guardians, as well as general feelings
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of animosity toward their caregivers, school environments, and hometown communities. Though they did not recount the kinds of severe abuse and neglect often cited by their homeless young adult counterparts, their anxieties and negative perceptions about home life and disagreements with caregivers and hometown communities were primary reasons that explained why so many housed youth came to the square and befriended homeless street peers. These common experiences among homeless and non-homeless participants fostered friendships across homeless lines (Auerswald & Eyre, 2002; Brannigan & Caputo, 1993; Caputo et al., 1997; Karabanow, 2006; Stablein, 2009, 2011; Visano, 1990). Data from interviews and observations also suggested that waiving parental consent did protect youth from further exacerbation of already tenuous relationships with caregivers. When non-homeless youth began to frequent the square, tensions with parents and guardians often increased substantially. There were several instances when caregivers came to the square to look for their children. On some occasions, caregivers forcibly removed the youth when found. One 15-year-old participant noted that she and her mother fought about coming to the square, noting, ‘‘she [her mother] doesn’t really want me around here too much.’’ When discussing relationships and fighting with caregivers, another 16-year-old participant made this same point noting, ‘‘basically like all the fights are surrounded around the square. They don’t like me coming here and they don’t like the friends I make here.’’ Obtaining parental consent to participate in this study likely would have exacerbated already existing problems at home related to hanging out in the square, which may have put many of these youth at further risk of running away. Moreover, given their tense relations with caregivers, many youth who did participate in the study may not have done so if they were required to inform parents/guardians and gain permission prior to an interview. As such, a parental consent requirement may have subsequently produced an overrepresentation of non-homeless interview participants who had favorable relations with their caregivers and an underrepresentation of housed participants who were fearful of discussing the topic with their caregivers. The waiver likely allowed for a more representative sample of non-homeless youth to be included than would have otherwise been possible. The waiver also allowed for representative inclusion of all subgroups of the street population. Requiring parental consent for non-homeless youth would likely have led to high nonparticipation rates among this group, leading to a significant mischaracterization of the group as a whole. Not only did non-homeless youth comprise a sizable proportion of the street
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population overall, but the interviews and observations often indicated that they were deeply integrated with their homeless peers and played an active role in maintaining the stability of the group. For example, non-homeless youth built friendships and had romantic relationships across age and homeless groups, and often provided assistance in the forms of food, money, and temporary shelter for the homeless members. Failing to include these youth, or including a limited self-selected sample of them, would have greatly obscured the relational nature of this diverse street community. Indeed, one of the most novel findings of this ethnography was observing the high degree of interaction and helping behavior between the homeless and non-homeless members. Had a waiver of parental consent not been in place, this important finding may have been overlooked (Stablein, 2009).
DISCUSSION The case described above highlights the importance of waiving parental consent to participate in research when that participation may negatively influence a minor’s relationship with a parent or guardian. We highlight problems with current IRB practices concerning youth who are likely to be in abusive or strained familial situations and who lack strong relationships with third parties. In addition, we raise questions about the potential problems related to sampling bias and diversity among populations of disaffiliated youth. Since many of the background experiences of youth participants were unknown prior to their interviews, the IRB that approved the research presented in this case study removed the parental consent requirement from the research protocol. We granted minors with questionable or unknown relations with parents and legal guardians an opportunity to participate in a minimal risk research environment without testing the limits of those potentially tenuous, abusive, or neglectful relations. Waving parental consent for minors in this study provided a rational and equitable solution to the dilemma we faced. Waivers of parental consent eliminated the problem of uncertainty about abuse and neglect among at-risk youth, and participants’ subsequent relationships with caregivers also removed the risk of our contributing further to family conflict. Doing so also allowed for a broader representation, and hence better characterization of the street population overall. Our dilemma, however, raised questions about the nature of parental consent requirements and the potential ambiguity of its application. This
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case also highlights how commonly held assumptions about a youth’s ability to make informed decisions often govern decisions about their right to privacy in research. We must scrutinize and reevaluate these assumptions given the changing role of youth and the circumstances in which they find themselves in contemporary society. This transformation in the sociopolitical approach to the ‘‘adolescent class,’’ accompanied with a change in the public perception of research, mandates an institutional reform of parental consent and reporting requirements (Levine, 1995). There is, however, a great deal of debate over whether or not young people have the right to make informed decisions about their participation in research without the consent of a parent or guardian (France, 2000; see also Masson, 2000). Moreover, ‘‘the meaning of parental consent is not always clear’’ (Hill, 2005, p. 71). Central to this debate are concerns over whether or not youth are mature enough to make such decisions and the nature of their decision-making capacity (Alderson, 1995; Coyne, 1998; Eiser, 1989; Koren et al., 1993; Levine, 1995; Petersen & Leffert, 1995; Rogers et al., 1994; Santelli et al., 1995). Second, are concerns over parental involvement and the risks they pose to the safety and interests of youth participants (Meade & Slesnick, 2002; Rew et al., 2000) and, subsequently, the integrity of a study (Ellickson & Hawes, 1989; Esbensen et al., 1999; Fletcher & Hunter, 2003; Hill, 2005; Hill & Morton, 2003; Kearney et al., 1983; Lueptow et al., 1977; Morrow, 1999; Rew et al., 2000; Tigges, 2003). In an effort to address some of these concerns, federal guidelines suggest that we grant abused and neglected youth a waiver of parental consent to participate in minimal risk research. These guidelines respect the nature of young people’s experiences and appropriately recommend granting waivers in cases where strained parental relationships subsequently distance youth from caregivers. These guidelines work to resolve the issue of parental consent in cases of estrangement from parents or guardians and/or involvement in problematic care-giving situations. However, they do not give a clear understanding of what adequately constitutes abuse or neglect among at-risk youth who live with and/or have contact with caregivers. Although homeless and runaway youth may easily fall into these categories, the nature of abuse and neglect is uncertain among other youth populations who may otherwise be estranged from their caregivers or at risk. In such cases, a decision to require or to waive parental consent rests upon local IRBs to determine. Given the ambiguity of these guidelines, it is reasonable to assume that IRBs across institutions will come to different conclusions with regard to what constitutes abuse, neglect, or risk (see Mammel & Kaplan, 1995). It is also reasonable to assume that IRBs will
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come to different conclusions about the viability of a given parental consent waiver (see also Dziak et al., 2005; Feeley, 2007; Katz, 2007, for a discussion of how IRBs come to different conclusions about similar proposals). Moreover, researchers may have difficulty justifying waivers if the youth population in question does not fit neatly into categories where cases of abuse and neglect are certain or clearly defined.
SUGGESTIONS Researchers continually report problems when interacting and attempting to gain social science research approval from IRBs (Fitch, 2005). Contemporary researchers face even greater challenges as they explore the nuances of increasingly contentious social problems and new methods for observing them (see, e.g., Beddows, 2008; Borgatti & Molina, 2005; Boser, 2007; Evans, Murphy, Grella, Mouttapa, & Hser, 2008; Johnson, 2008; Stoecker, 2008; Swauger, 2009). There is, however, a paucity of published dialogue outlining strategies for successfully gaining social science research approval. To remedy the disconnect between IRBs and social science researcher’s requests to conduct human subjects research with vulnerable populations, Evans et al. (2008) suggest that ‘‘researchers are better served by working collaboratively and proactively with their IRBs’’ (p. 1011). They add, ‘‘utilizing the appeals process and working closely to understand the viewpoints and responsibilities of IRB members will improve communications and facilitate future researcher-IRB interactions’’ (p. 1011). We advocate these approaches and offer further suggestions to facilitate IRBs in determining the necessity of parental consent waivers in minimal risk research studies. We have formulated a number of specific suggestions to help resolve the problem of parental consent waiver uncertainties and to improve policy, practice, and research protocols pertaining to vulnerable youth populations. First, researchers and IRBs would benefit from a revision of DHHS guidelines present in the current CFR in the following ways: 1. More clearly reflect the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subject’s recommendations on Research Involving Children (1977). An official policy guidance statement by the Office for Human Research Protections based on the National Commission’s recommendations would allow researchers and IRBs the extra guidance that they need to determine
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waivers in less clearly defined abusive or neglectful situations (see Levine, 1995, for a review of this comparison; see also Levine, 2008; Seiber, 1992). Katz (2007) suggests that ‘‘IRB interpretation of regulatory requirements has changed in practice over time’’ (p. 799). This may be because foundational documents like the National Commission reports were more encompassing and provided the practitioner with less ambiguity (Levine, 1995). Levine goes on to note, ‘‘one can find in the recommendations of the National Commission support for extending the types of research involving adolescents as subjects without the permission of their parents or guardians considerably beyond what is being done today’’ (p. 289). 2. Include more examples or suggestions to waive parental consent for populations or cases where abuse and neglect within a caregiver/child relationship is likely to occur. Since researchers and IRBs are given the task of identifying cases where waivers are justifiable, such a revision would further guide the process of identifying and allowing waivers in cases where abuse or neglect is situational, varied, or unknown among various populations that are at risk. Examples should include not only homeless and runaway youth but also other examples where youth may also be experiencing abuse or neglect within care-giving environments or at risk. 3. Establish a protocol for determining age guidelines for abstract reasoning and informed consent. 4. Provide definitions and/or a protocol for determining the mature minor status of vulnerable, at-risk youth populations. IRBs must also continue their work to extend parental consent waivers to include ambiguous cases of abuse and neglect and consider basing the decision to waive parental consent on situational factors, life course, and experiences of potential participants, as was done in the case presented above. They must continue to develop protocols to identify and protect youth populations who maintain parental ties, but who also align themselves or overlap with clearly identifiable delinquent groups. We also make two suggestions to extend the use of parental consent waivers to help reduce the extent to which participation in research inadvertently harms youth. These suggestions may also encourage youth to participate in research: 1. Extend the use of third party legal advocates: Though there are known biases which result from the use of third party legal advocates, their use
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provides a useful alternative to parent contact especially in cases where youth are estranged from caregivers or are asked to provide personal information on topics that they do not want to discuss with parents. 2. Allow waivers by association: When determining parental consent waivers in minimal risk research, we suggest that IRBs consider not only a youth’s parental associations but also close peer associations. If we know that a youth engages in peer groups of other youth who have more clearly identifiable histories of abuse and neglect, IRBs should consider providing blanket waivers to all participants in said settings. This would limit the risk of parental contact in cases where individual histories are unknown.
CONCLUSION Requiring parental consent for youth to participate in minimal risk research has significant implications for the social science practitioner engaged in a variety of field research settings. We hope that this review and these suggestions will help to decrease impediments in researching not only the varieties of street youth and young adults but also other deviant and delinquent youth populations, who may have tenuous or problematic relations both on the street and with parents and guardians. Requiring parental consent can exacerbate abuse and neglect youth may experience inside as well as outside of the home. Should youth under these circumstances seek parental consent from parents with whom they have strained relationships, as it may result in punitive consequences? The case for a waiver of parental consent particularly for those whom we suspect to be neglected and/or abused minors, and for those minors engaged in different kinds of delinquency, raises questions about the relative nature and definition of what is and is not minimal/reasonable/low-risk research participation and the definition of a mature minor. We must explore each of these topics further in order to develop protocols that are governed by more equitable research standards. A limitation to this study was that we conducted only one case study. Further research and systematic observation need to be conducted, as it will allow us to better understand the outcomes of parental consent requirements as well as waivers. This case study raises questions about the standards employed to merit a waiver in questionable cases of justifiable but otherwise undocumented or not yet established emancipation. These questionable cases challenge the abstract
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nature and application of parental consent requirements. Such cases necessitate a reevaluation of the parental consent debate and the taken-forgranted assumptions about the nature of these relationships, even in cases where youths are still in contact or housed with parents or guardians.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to thank Robert J. Levine, Kathleen Mammel, and the anonymous reviewers of this manuscript who offered helpful contributions and comments during its preparation, and Stephany Acosta for editorial assistance.
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Santelli, J. S., Rosenfeld, W. D., DuRant, R. H., Dubler, N., Morreale, M., English, A., et al. (1995). Guidelines for adolescent health research: A position paper of the society for adolescent medicine. Journal of Adolescent Health, 17, 270–276. Seiber, J. E. (1992). Planning ethically responsible research: A guide for students and internal review boards. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Singer, E. (1978). Informed consent: Consequences for response rate and response quality in social surveys. American Sociological Review, 43(2), 144–162. Stablein, T. (2009). Negotiating spaces: A study of street life, peer involvement, and homelessness in Harvard Square. Unpublished Dissertation, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT. Stablein, T. (2011). Helping friends and the homeless milieu: Social capital and the utility of street peers. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 40(3), 290–317. Stoecker, R. (2008). Challenging institutional barriers to community-based research. Action Research, 6(1), 49–67. Swauger, M. (2009). No kids allowed!!!: How IRB ethics undermine qualitative researchers from achieving socially responsible ethical standards. Race, Gender & Class, 16(1–2), 63–81. Taylor, D. M., Lydon, J. E., Bougie, E., & Johannsen, K. (2004). Street kids: Towards and understanding of their motivational context. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 36(1), 1–16. Tigges, B. B. (2003). Parental consent and adolescent risk behavior research. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 35(3), 283–289. Tyler, K. A., & Cauce, A. M. (2002). Perpetrators of early physical and sexual abuse among homeless and runaway adolescents. Child Abuse and Neglect, 26, 1261–1274. Visano, L. A. (1990). The socialization of street children: The development and transformation of identities. Sociological Studies of Child Development, 3, 139–161. Wilkinson, A. M. (1987). Born to rebel: Ethnography of street kids. Unpublished Dissertation, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA.
REMEMBERING THE CHILD PATIENT Renee Hosang ABSTRACT Purpose – This chapter has three major points. First, I present the legal context that guides pediatric clinical interactions in the United States. Second, I argue that pediatric care is incomplete if the child patient is not identified as a knowledgeable and serious resource, thereby illustrating the concept called child inclusion. Third, it recognizes the child as a research participant. Methodology – This chapter will present an argument for the concept of child inclusion by presenting limited data from research at a private clinic in the state of Florida, USA. It will present recommendations for the inclusion of children in the pediatric setting and comment on the childcentered method used for this research. The concept of child inclusion acknowledges the agency of a child in health care and places the child at the forefront of research. It presents qualitative data from ongoing research on indicators for child inclusion in a pediatric clinical setting, assuming that such indicators can only manifest in a partnership model of clinical interaction, where physician authority does not dominate clinical care and patients are actively involved in the negotiation of their health care.
The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 227–256 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014015
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Findings – I present recommendations for the inclusion of children in the pediatric setting and comment on the child-centered method used for this research. The concept of child inclusion acknowledges the agency of a child in health care and places the child at the forefront of research. This work calls for the child to no longer be in the background of pediatric care and social science research. Keywords: Child patient; legal context; research participant; child inclusion Helping children to understand their rights does not mean parents should push them to make choices with consequences they are too young to handle – (http://www.unicef.org/crc/index_understanding.html)
INTRODUCTION This chapter has three major points. First, I present the legal context that guides pediatric clinical interactions in the United States. Second, I argue that pediatric care is incomplete if the child patient is not identified as a knowledgeable and serious resource, thereby illustrating the concept called child inclusion. Third, it recognizes the child as a research participant. This chapter will present an argument for the concept of child inclusion by presenting limited data from research at a private clinic in the state of Florida, USA. It will present recommendations for the inclusion of children in the pediatric setting and comment on the child-centered method used for this research. The concept of child inclusion acknowledges the agency of a child in health care and places the child at the forefront of research. This chapter calls for the child to no longer be dissolved into the background of pediatric care and in social science research. Child inclusion is a relatively new concept for clinical interaction modeling because historically research has presumed an adult framework. It is argued that this framework is not compatible with pediatric clinical interactions because the patient is not an adult but a child. Pediatricians (also other clinicians and nurses) and parents need to shift focus to the child patient by presuming that the child can be involved in the clinical interaction. This presumption is not in accordance with the normative perception of the child. The laws that guide the norms governing clinical interactions with children view the child as vulnerable and incompetent.
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Historically, these norms have been contested and are continually done, providing various precedents and exceptions to child competency (ability to be involved in health care). Pediatric clinical interactions are integral to the therapeutic system; to understand the implications of child inclusion, the legal and ethical boundaries need to be addressed as well as the various debates surrounding the competency of a child participating in the clinical interaction.
LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS – UNITED STATES The idea that the child is more than just property is a modern concept, coming out of the Industrial Revolution. It marked a period where children were removed from the labor force and mandated into the educational system; it was not until 1967 that children were declared ‘‘persons’’ under the U.S. Constitution. Although, these changes did signify a shift in the perspective of children, it ignored the child as a thinking human being, without the ability to have independent thoughts and emotions. Therefore, present day Federal and State laws (exceptions are discussed) view the child as inherently incompetent, also known as the ‘‘incompetence doctrine.’’ There have been various cases contesting this doctrine, and the outcome sets up various precedents for exception. In the United States, there is a fervent debate over a general lack of children’s rights, but specific to health care, much of the debate concerns consent and refusal of medical treatment. Although I am not specifically contesting consent or refusal of medical treatment by minors, the laws that are in place are what guide physicians during the clinical interaction. These laws guide the biomedical culture that governs the behavior of general practitioners and pediatricians. In addition, even though this work does not specifically address the medical decisionmaking rights of child patients, the proposed concept of child inclusion does imply that children garner a greater degree of autonomy than what is presently afforded to them. It is a general theme in the United States that minors are incompetent, immature, and not experienced enough to give informed voluntary consent; as a result, they are to be placed in parens patriae (Walker, Brooks, & Wrightsman, 1999, p. 143). Parens patriae is also known as police power which gives the state the right to intervene in the interest of public health or when it is in the interest of the child. Translated, parens patriae means parent of his or her country; the state is regarded as sovereign, serves in a capacity as a provider of protection to those unable to care for themselves; it is a doctrine by which a government has standing to prosecute a lawsuit on
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behalf of a citizen, especially on behalf of an individual who is under a legal disability (Black’s Law Dictionary). In the United States, children are considered under legal disability. From the perspective of the State, it is its responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves, and children fall into this category. Fundamentally, the State is concerned with the sanctity of life for children and other legally disabled members of society. Parens patriae does not automate the hand of the State into the lives of children. It is the norm of United States society to surrender authority to the parent unless the life of the child is being threatened or neglected. In general, parents have authority and guardianship of children. It is legally recognized that parents can make medical decisions for their children. The State will not interfere unless it is determined that the life of the child is being fatally jeopardized. ‘‘Minor children ordinarily must rely on their parents to make treatment decisions for them. The state will interfere with the parents’ decisions only if the decision would constitute abuse or neglect’’ (Rosato, 1996, p. 5). In matters of health care, the relationship between the State, parent, child, and medical community has been routinized in various ways. The law of parens patriae defers to parental authority and it is based on two basic presumptions. First, as referred to earlier, parents have what children lack – ‘‘maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment required for making life’s difficult decisions’’ (Hanisco, 2000, p. 904). Second, the ‘‘natural bonds of affection’’ provide the parents with the capacity to behave in the best interest of the child and parents should raise their children as they see fit (Garfield, 2004). Therefore, parents become the initial reference point for all decisions concerning the child. In the case of medical care, parents have full authority over children even if a child disapproves or is uncomfortable with a particular course of medical treatment (Hanisco, 2000, p. 904). Parental authority is challenged only when the State believes that the parent is not behaving in the best interest of the child (Garfield, 2004, p. 91). Exceptions to parens patriae are emancipation and Abraham’s law. Emancipation ‘‘is the legal process by which a child is released from the control and authority of his or her parent;’’ it is custom that emancipation occurs automatically at the ‘‘age of majority’’ of 18 in most cases (Hanisco, 2000). Therefore, when a minor reaches 18, the parent has no legal responsibility to the child. Therefore, the child can make his or her own money and live separately from the parent. Similarly, an ‘‘emancipated minor’’ is an individual under the age of 18 who is married, enlist in military service, attain contraception, become pregnant, and become a parent. Such a minor can experience such liberties from parents, but there are nuanced exceptions.
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Minors can give consent if he or she is a parent, is married, divorced, has a sexually transmitted disease, is living independently from parents, and a child or minor who still lives with a parent, known as an un-emancipated minor, must demonstrate ‘‘sufficient intelligence to understand and appreciate the consequences of the proposed surgical or medical treatment or procedures, for himself [or herself],’’ and in medical emergencies (Mnookin & Weisberg, 1989, p.458; see also Institute of Judicial Administration: Juvenile Justice Standards, 1980). Abraham’s law in Virginia enabled a minor of 14 years or older to refuse lifesaving treatment so long as the minor is mature enough, has considered all the treatment options, and the parents are in agreement with the minor that the refusal is in the best interest of the child (Carpenter, 2009). This case represented a new dimension to child autonomy in the United States. It set the precedent for a 14-year-old to refuse treatment. This was new ground for child rights, as it paved the way for greater autonomy for children, but the law contained three conditions. There are three basic conditions to this law which under examination continues to fuel the debate over increased autonomy for children in health care situations; first, the child has to be considered mature; second, all treatment options should be known; third, parents need to be in agreement with the child. There are three relevant questions regarding this matter. First, how do we define maturity in terms of children being able to participate in conversations regarding their health? Second, do children have therapeutic privilege such that information about them is not divulged to other parties. And third, what happens when the child is in disagreement with parents and state? Roe v. Wade to Illinois Supreme Court tackles each of these questions. First, when observing clinical interactions, it is not surprising to see a pediatrician maintain focus solely on the parent, as these adults typically view the child as immature. The assumptions are that children lack maturity and are inexperienced in such settings. As a result are placed on the periphery of the interaction. Roe v. Wade, Carey, and Planned Parenthood were cases that fought for the privacy of minors, and contested the said presumptions – giving individuals 14 to 18 years the same right to privacy as adults. Choosing or denying a course of treatment, and/or the ability to participate in the clinical interaction, is still considered under the helm of parental or state authority. It is important to note that cases such as Planned Parenthood v. Danforth and Carey v. Population Services International provide minors the right to consent to an abortion and contraception, respectively, once maturity can be proven. If not, consent is reverted to the parent (Ewald, 1982, p. 706). However, in numerous parts of the United States, there are many who are advocating for a doctrine called the ‘‘mature minor.’’
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Mature minor cases challenge the parental authority doctrine for choice of a course of medical treatment by minors. In such cases, the minor’s competency is based on the condition that either the parent or the court agrees with the minor’s choices or preferences. This is especially true for cases regarding consent to particular medical treatment. In cases of refusal or dissent to medical treatment, if the parent agrees with the minor, then proving competency is the burden of the parent and child/minor; when a child/minor refuses treatment and the parent disagrees, proving competency shifts to the child/minor only. The mature minor doctrine is fiercely contested in these situations, but there are three distinct practices that courts have used in the past to rule on child competency or maturity: the subjective standard, substituted judgment standard, and best interest standard. Subjective standard requires that the patient/minor or someone on the minor’s behalf provides clear evidence of a directive, a specific course of action, and the patient’s wishes must not be too far from the onset of the patient’s condition (Austin, 2007, p. 160). Therefore, having conversations about what should be done if your heart were to stop with your friend will not necessarily be considered a clear directive (Austin, 2007, p. 161). Substituted judgment standard is not as strict as the subjective standard in that the court presumes that a minor patient could make directives in a more competent situation like having a conversation with a parent or relative about what should be done in case of an emergency. Therefore, the wishes of the minor child can be inferred and age, side effects from treatment, possibility of suffering, religion, and patient’s prognosis with or without treatment are all considered (Austin, 2007, p. 162). Best interest standard takes into consideration if continued treatment would relieve suffering or improve patient’s condition, the quality of life of the minor, dignity of the minor patient, and the level of pain relief (Austin, 2007, p. 164). According to Austin, this standard is ‘‘inherently vague and unpredictable’’ in its application but seems to be the best option for a minor child who is considered incompetent (2007, p. 164). It is acknowledged that children (0–16 years) do still require certain protections, for all things considered we live in an adult world. I argue for the middle ground on child rights. What does this mean? It means that the intent is not to withdraw the rights of parents or to supersede the ‘‘natural bonds of affection’’ parents have for their children or deny the fact that parents have their children’s best interest at heart. It also means that this research is not meant to advocate for a mature minor doctrine, but there is a presumption that children can participate in the clinical setting both actively and passively and are competent individuals. The concept of child inclusion
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does not disband the rights of parents, or interests of the State, but when a child is the patient, the focus shifts to the child. From an applied sociological perspective, the notion of child inclusion, the degree to which a child is involved in the clinical interaction, is directly affected by the legal context. In other words, a physician or pediatrician may not include a child in the clinical interaction because he or she was not trained to do so. Pediatricians are trained to recognize parental authority or parens patriae, thus protecting the physician or pediatrician of fault.
CLINICAL INTERACTIONS When physicians and patients meet in the clinical setting, it represents a microcosm of interactions, where both their worlds are engaged and are negotiated by each member for a particular outcome. Physicians want their patients to seek recommendations when necessary and ‘‘not to just accept whatever treatment their local doctor offers’’ (Ferguson, 2005, p. 1130). Physicians want patients to learn about their condition, talk to other patients, track down new treatments, ‘‘and have the intelligence’’ to quickly catch on to what is told to them (Ferguson, 2005, p. 130). Physicians face structural problems, they are being squeezed between managed care and skyrocketing costs, ‘‘forcing them to see more patients and allowing less time for developing relationships with their patients’’ (Hausman, 2004, p. 414). Patients want short waits, longer doctor interviews, better telephone accessibility, to be treated with respect, and to be given explanations (Lazarus, 1988). Patients have inadequate insurance, rising health care costs, want to be part of the decision-making process (Sleath, Rubin, Campbell, Gwyther, & Clark, 2001), want specific medications, and want to spend more time with the physician than with paper work. One can conceptualize the challenges physician and patients potentially face, both on an individual and structural level. In fact, physician and patient interactions, in general, have been consistently referred to as problematic (Lazarus, 1988, p. 34). In other words, both physicians and patients have expectations, needs, and structural obstacles that they both negotiate when interacting with each other. This ‘‘problematic’’ nature is not a new characterization, but is a definite impetus for inquiry. Many have illustrated this ‘‘problematic’’ nature in a variety of ways. Despite this problematic nature, decades of social science research have resulted in noticeable improvements to physician–patient interactions and have contributed some basic models for understanding how clinical
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interactions are negotiated. Researchers have come up with three models of clinical interaction. These are the physician-centered, patient-centered, and partnership models. It should be noted that these models are structured from the perspective of adult patients and adult physicians. It is not well understood if these models can be applied to the pediatric clinical setting. Few have studied how children think about the clinical setting, their physician, their illness, and children’s ability to participate in medical decisions (Tates & Meeuwesen, 2001; Clowers, 2000; van Dulmen, 2004). The physician-centered model takes the approach that ‘‘any medical action focuses on the disease rather than on the sick individual’’ (Daghio et al., 2003, p. 283), and maintains the view that there is a ‘‘monopoly of knowledge not easily accessible to the public and its claim to a public service outlook that legitimizes professionals’ command over the practitioner–client relationship, and institutionalizes client obligations to trust professionals and comply with their prescriptions’’ (Haug & Lavin, 1981, p. 213); noncompliance on the part of the patient can imply that the patient is not working toward recovery or coming out of the sick role, therefore being deviant. In addition, the physician-centered model does not focus on a patient’s contribution to the clinical interaction. In fact, it neglects the contribution of the patient by relinquishing command to physician expertise. The concept of patient centeredness is defined as the way in which a patient’s ill health is seen not in terms of pathology ‘‘y but in terms of the unique individuality of the patient’’ (van Dulmen, 2004, p. 195). This model ‘‘y stresses the importance of understanding patients’ experiences of their illness and any relevant social and psychological factors. It involves doctors employing active listening skills in order to encourage patients to express their agendas, attempting to understand patients’ points of view and expectations, and working with patients to find a common ground regarding management’’ (Stevenson, Barry, Britten, Barber, & Bradley, 2000, p. 830). The patient-centered model differs from the physician-centered model in that it acknowledges the contributions of the patient to the clinical interaction. The patient has more involvement and is not a ‘‘social supplicant’’ as viewed from the physician-centered model; illness is not seen as deviance, but as something that can be managed. Noncompliance is not viewed as deviant but as an opportunity to find common ground in treatment management with the patient. A drawback to this model is the potential for patients to demand particular prescriptions without the guidance of a physician. The partnership-centered model describes the physician and patient relationship as one where ‘‘the doctors and the patients share all the steps of
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the decision-making process, both expressing their views, preferences and valuesy shared decision-making, in which patients and health professionals join in both the process of decision making and ownership of the decision madey ’’ (Daghio et al., 2003, p. 283). It is similar to the patient-centered model in many ways, such that the patient is not automatically deemed a ‘‘bad patient’’ for not complying totally with the prescriptions of the physician. The partnership-centered model is dissimilar in that the patient becomes equally active in the decision-making process of managing his or her own illness. A patient can express dislike for particular medications, present new or alternative therapies which will be taken into consideration by the physician. Alternatively, partnership-centered models leave room for active participation by the child patient, but it does not automatically mean that the child patient will be directly involved in the decision making or treatment management with the physician. It does mean that the possibility remains open for patient involvement in the treatment process. As Gabe, Olumide, and Bury (2004) suggest, this model provides the framework for collaboration in pediatric clinical interactions. As they state, ‘‘opportunities for partnership in pediatrics [sic] are thus shaped by the perspectives of the different actors and their power to influence the outcome of the consultation’’ (Gabe et al., 2004, p. 1074). Therefore, there is opportunity for an adult-to-adult-to-child participation in a clinical interaction. Participation of the child patient during a clinical interaction can provide tremendous positive opportunities. Street, Edward, Robert, Kravitz, and Haldet (2003) write, ‘‘patients often are more satisfied with care given a better understanding of their health conditions and treatment options, are more strongly committed to therapeutic regimens, and even experience greater health improvement when they are more actively involved in medical encounters and when their physician are more informative, supportive, and take into account the patient’s perspective or health’’ (p. 609). Although the assumption made by Street et al. is an adult-to-adult interaction, it is reasonable to argue that children can achieve such an experience when they are included in the clinical interaction. Although physicians are recognized as cultural agents of biomedicine and their perspectives on illness/disease will be guided by such, it does not necessarily mean that patient-illness narrative is incompatible with the physician and therefore placed on the periphery of the clinical interaction. I do not call for completely shifting power of the clinical relationship into the hands of the patient while leaving the physician a subject of patient prescriptive desires (a critique of the consumerist model), but for
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empowerment through partnership building where there is a flexible dynamic or exchange of information that embodies the illness experience of the patient and where a middle ground for all participants can be established. According to Hook (2006), ‘‘empowerment and improved patient outcomes were the most frequently reported consequences’’ of partnerships (p. 140). The notion of partnership building is derived from an adult-to-adult model of clinical interaction but is retrofitted with the concept of child inclusion, the degree to which a child is included or participated in a social interaction – in this particular case, a clinical interaction. Arguably, the partnership model provides a framework where children can become part of the clinical interaction, building a relationship with the clinician/pediatrician in a guided manner. ‘‘The mechanisms for effectively educating and transforming busy health care providers into competent partners with the desire and skills to foster shared knowledge, shared power, patient autonomy and shared decision-making in not known’’ (Hook, 2006, p. 141); however, the concept of child inclusion offers some insight into how children in particular can become part of the clinical interaction. It is possible for pediatricians, clinicians, parents, and children to share power during a clinical interaction.
THE CHILD PATIENT Alexandra Maria van Dulman (1998) shows in Children’s Contribution to Pediatric Outpatient Encounters that the major contributions of children during the clinical interaction are in the form of social talk and laughter but little in the exchange of medical information. As van Dulman finds that ‘‘although pediatricians asked a lot of questions, they only directed a small portion of the information at the child. There would seem to be a contradiction, in that children are capable of providing information, yet not sufficiently capable of receiving information’’ (1998, p. 569). van Dulman adds that it appears that it is the view of the pediatrician that education and management of illness should be left up to the parents. The irony of present day child policies is that chronic disease such as asthma, which is the number one cause of hospitalization among children in the United States (National Institute of Health, Data Fact Sheet, 1999, p. 3), requires the child’s involvement in his or her own care which is crucial to the child’s well-being and recovery from asthmatic attacks. That is, part of the medical treatment involves asthmatic children and their families identifying
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‘‘which activators bring on the child’s attacks, and to make adjustments to avoid or minimize problems in the child’s environment and activities’’ (Clark, 2003, p. 45). Children must therefore be encouraged to actively take part in clinical interactions, and to feel a sense of ownership regarding their overall care. According to Allison James (2004, p. 156): Child health policy does not address children’s own health needs primarily because these ‘needs’ have been usually understood in relation to the prospects they hold out for a healthy adult life in the future, rather than in relation to children’s present health concerns as children. This has made children marginal as health care consumers in their own right, confirming their status as non-citizens. Such a perspective is reinforced through recourse to views of ‘the child’ that place incompetence, rather than competence, at their centrey . This construction of ‘the child’ has meant that, in the past, children and young people’s rights to access particular kinds of health services and to direct involvement in decision-making about their own health care has been neglected.
It is important to know the value of the child’s contribution to clinical interactions for ‘‘children are social actors who participate in the social world and whose knowledge and experience are worthwhile for their own sake and for insights they offer in to the condition of childhoody . Children’s knowledge of the state of childhood is found to be essential to the realistic planning of services for children’’ (Gabe et al., 2004, p. 1076). Nova, Vegni, and Moja (2001) show in a qualitative analysis on children’s contribution to the clinical interaction that although quantitatively a child two to six years of age has limited number of contributions, they are active and try to communicate with the adults of the clinical interaction about ‘‘aspects of the subjective experience regarding the visit or the sickness’’ (p. 331). Nova et al. (2001) define the subjective experience as expressing feeling, explaining the cause of the disease, and tries to anticipate the procedure of the clinical visit. For this reason, it is important to include the child in clinical interactions, for it is an opportunity in which a child’s feelings and expressions about illness can be considered by both pediatrician and parent. It is argued that children want to be and should be encouraged to be actively involved in the clinical interaction. Coyne shows that ‘‘when children acquire knowledge about their condition and are more involved in their care, they are more willing to co-operate with treatment and endure painful treatments more patiently, appear less upset and recover better’’ (2006, p. 63). Findings from Coyne’s research shows that children want to be consulted, they want to be part of the general decision-making process about their care, and they want their opinions and suggestions for their treatment and care to be respected (2006, p. 65).
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In order to present a deeper understanding of pediatric clinical interaction, the views of the child have to be integrated into framework of pediatric clinical interactions. It is absolutely important that there be a reevaluation of the role of the child in his or her own health, childhood perceptions of health and illness, U.S. child policies, and clinical interactions with children. As Tates, Elbers, Meeuwesen, and Bensing point out, ‘‘the perspective of the child as an active agent y is in line with the growing recognition of the need to consider children [as] active contributors in their own socializationy ’’ (2002a, 2002b, p. 13). Although under legal terminology, children cannot make their own clinical or medical decision, it is important that children (ages 2–17) and adults express related feelings, thoughts, and expectations about illness and treatment, and share alternatives for treatment during clinical interactions if needed. A child’s contribution can be as important as a parent’s. Austin argues that just ‘‘allowing children to exercise legal rights [to selfdetermination and personhood] may help them to develop decision making competencies relating to legal issues and life choices and gradually to assume adult like responsibilities’’ (2007, p. 166). In brief, I will present some data that is based on pediatric clinical interactions. These interactions were observed and transcribed, and themes were developed based on the natural flow of the interaction. The following is a table illustrating the types of inclusion which were developed solely on observation of clinical interaction; specific cases were selected based on age variation (nine months, five years, and eight years). Due to space limitations, most of the data will be limited. My intention is to provide some evidence that will provoke future research, display competency on the part of the child as patient, and provide some recommendations.
The Child: Participant in Research and Pediatric Clinical Interactions After observing clinical interactions with pediatrician, parent, and child at a general pediatric private clinic, for two hours, twice a week over six months, I gather that there can be two very basic types to child inclusion with subtle variations that I call types – passive and active. Passive inclusion is clinical interaction that tends to be initiated by the pediatrician. The interaction tends to be framed around non-biomedical talk, positive body language, and calling the child by name. Active inclusion is clinical interaction that tends to be initiated by the pediatrician but can be also initiated by the parent. This interaction tends to be framed around biomedical (illness discussion, treatment
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and medicine discussion) and non-biomedical talk, positive body language, and calling the child by name; decision making can be formulated as part of active child inclusion as cited by other researchers but was not a dimension of this research. The following chart illustrates the subtle variations (in terms of types) of child inclusion that were observed at least once (Table 1). The variations between passive and active child inclusion are due in part to the child’s age and the initiator of the clinical interaction. Types 1, 2, and 3 are passive child inclusion, but type 1 is marked by newborn to the 11-month age group with usually the pediatrician initiating some direct interaction with the child which begins socialization process for what it means to be a child patient, albeit the interaction remains non-biomedical as is expected. Type 2 varies from type 1 in that the child patient is now two to six years of age. This is an age group that can communicate definitively through body language. In addition, the initiator of clinical interaction with the child can be either the parent or pediatrician. A common characteristic between type 1 and type 2 child inclusion is the non-biomedical frame that is maintained during the interaction; this is similarly observed for type 3 child inclusion. Even though there is greater speech development, child inclusion remains passive with a general non-biomedical characteristic. Types 4 and 5 active child inclusion are specifically different from passive child inclusion in that the child can be the initiator of the clinical interaction and the child can become a part of the medical dialogue that usually occurs between adult participants. Type 4 active child inclusion means that a child who is two to six years of age can be an initiator of a clinical interaction. Type 5 active child inclusion means that a child who is six years and older can be an initiator of a clinical interaction. Through interactional analysis and thematic analysis of particular case studies offers a deeper look into the variations of child inclusion. Case 1: Nine-Month-Old Cody Cody is a 9-month-old boy who visits the pediatrician with his mother for a well check; he is due for some vaccinations. This is a parent-centered interaction; much of the dialogue takes place between the adults (pediatrician and parent). However, the pediatrician and parent do engage in passive child inclusion with the young child, as can be seen from the transcript of both the adults, especially the pediatrician gives the child eye contact, positive body language, gestures, and casual conversation toward the child. This encounter is about 15–20 minutes long. As a parent-centered interaction, the pediatrician does contribute a significant portion of the interaction with the parent.
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Table 1.
Types of Child Inclusion.
[NB ¼ newborn, C ¼ child, Ph ¼ pediatrician, P ¼ parent] Type 1: Passive Age: NB to 11 months Initiator of interaction: Ph Developmental capabilities: Eye contact, smiling, child is too young to verbally participate in interaction Observed characteristics: Nonreciprocated verbal interaction, nonverbal interaction, physician gives eye contact with child, physician calls child by name, physician gives child positive body language, physician had casual conversation with child, all biomedical interaction takes place with parent Type 2: Passive Age: Two to six years Initiator of interaction: Ph or P Developmental capabilities: Sufficient eye contact, body language Observed characteristics: Physician gives eye contact to child patient, physician calls child by name, physician gives child positive body language, physician has casual conversation with child, physician speaks with parent about problem, diagnosis, and medical treatment Type 3: Passive Age: Six years and older Initiator of interaction: Ph or P Developmental capabilities: Sufficient language skills, body language, and eye contact Observed characteristics: Physician gives eye contact to child patient, physician calls child by name, physician gives child positive body language, physician has casual conversation with child, physician speaks with parent about problem, diagnosis, and medical treatment Type 4: Active Age: Two to six years Initiator of interaction: C, P, Ph Developmental capabilities: Talking – two- to four-word sentences, eye contact, and body language Observed characteristics: Includes all the characteristics of passive child inclusion and physician asks child to state the problem, physician talks to child about medical treatment, physician asks child to start examination, parent asks child permission to start examination, parent responds only when the physician/pediatrician cannot understand the child, parent responds only when the physician cannot understand the child, parent encourages child to ask physician questions Type 5: Active Age: Six years and older Initiator of interactions: C, P, Ph Developmental characteristics: Clear conversations, eye contact, and body language Observed characteristics: Includes all the characteristics of passive child inclusion and physician asks child to state the problem, physician talks to child about medical treatment, physician asks child to start examination, parent asks child permission to start examination, parent responds only when the physician/pediatrician cannot understand the child, parent responds only when the physician cannot understand the child, parent encourages child to ask physician questions
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Parent-Initiated Clinical Interaction
[Ph ¼ pediatrician, C ¼ child, P ¼ parent] Ph – so how are you been my love? P – Fine, fine, we haven’t seen you since, a long time. We usually come in the morning to see Dr. K. Ph – Oh, so yuh come in the morning, so yuh dump the old lady [parent laughs] that’s alright with me. Never mind honey, that’s fine, As long as you are coming, Dr. K is a great help to me y P – Well I go to work too so y Ph – Exactly, so that’s why she is essential. You can get here 8:30, 9:00 and get out for work an hour later. So today you’re off work [small laugh] P – No {indistinctive answer} Ph – it’s ok, so yes as long as you are coming, morning or night. I am just glad you are still in my practice. P – [small laughter] Yeah!! Say I’m nine months Dr. S [gesturing with baby]. Ph – Nine months, and pretty eh! P – he was five pounds when he was born! Positive Body Language
[Ph ¼ pediatrician, C ¼ child, P ¼ parent] Ph-C [Shifts attention to baby and starts kissing him] Wow he is edible man, he is definitely edible, I could just bit them thunder thighs. P – Everybody bite him up. Ph – He’s looking at me -C she’s strange [parent is laughing]. I am strange darling, I am a little strange [whispering tone] [At this point examination begins]
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P – Dr. S this little boy is so strong, even when we changin’ his diaper, he is crunchin’ to get up y Ph-C – don’t you see the muscles darlin’ he is like a little Hercules and pretty like Charles Atlas, look he is. [parent and doctor laughs as he tries to off of the examination table] P-C – Stay down Cody Ph-C – let’s see the pigee wigee, [singing] I got to check the little pigee wigee, yeah, yeahy P-Ph – he won’t stay still Ph – everything’s good, we are going to try to pull this back a wee bit. P – Awwh Ph – That’s enough for now before he gets angry at me. Always pull forward ok P – yeah
Casual Conversation
[Ph ¼ pediatrician, C ¼ child, P ¼ parent] Ph-C – don’t cry baby, don’t get mad. So he beatin me, he swing his hand and nob me in the mouth. P-C – Why you beating Dr. S? Ph – thank you for knocking me in the mouth P – oh boy he lookin’ at her [the observer, me] Ph – he’s got an eye for the ladies P – Dr. S, I not scared of nobody [gesturing the child] Ph – he ain’t, he ain’t scared of no body, He’s got an eye for the ladies. Where your pegs? [baby coos]
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Case 2: Five-Year-Old Boy JP JP and his mom visit this office also for the first time. The main reason for this visit is a routine checkup. JP’s mother was recommended by someone in her workplace. JP is a dynamic little boy and from the context that his visit was a ‘‘well check’’ accommodates any degree of inclusion that can be observed. Also from JP’s visit, his interaction shows elements of complimentary references, willful child inclusion, non-biomedical play, and physician encouragement can be seen. Willful inclusion describes a shift in the direction of the interaction on the part of the child. By interjecting his/her perspective, he/she shifts the gaze away from the parent to himself or herself. Complimentary References
[Ph ¼ pediatrician, C ¼ child, P ¼ parent] Ph – what’s his name? P – JP [pseudonym] Ph – JP Ph-C – you got a nice name, I like it. JP! - P – JP has never been here? P – No this is our first time. Ph – how come he knows my name? And he’s so friendly.
Willful Child Inclusion
[Ph ¼ pediatrician, C ¼ child, P ¼ parent] Ph – Hello pretty lady. How are you? [referring to mother] -C – Hello darling Ph – ( ) – Isn’t that a cute little fellow Ph-P – she is very striking isn’t she P – Thank you
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Ph – How long have you had your hair? [in reference to the dread locks] P – about seven years Ph – my son had his about 10 years before he cut it. C-Ph – Hi Dr. S. [practically interrupts the conversation between his mother and physician] Ph – Hi sweetie pie, how are you? C – huh Ph – How are you, you alright? How many years? – How old are you? P – How old are you? C – five Ph – five, you so sweet, alright my love. – I apologize for the wait, everybody is tied up. Nobody is fussing but I am aware that it is not as quick. Cause everybody needs shots and this and forms and blood work
Non-Biomedical Play
[Ph ¼ pediatrician, C ¼ child, P ¼ parent] C – Is it raining? Ph – yes it is, you want to see C – yes Ph – let me show you, I don’t want you to get wet [as Dr. opens the door]. I love the rain, man. That means I just see only patients and everybody elsey I hope I get home before 10 O’clock -C – JP, I know that I said that I am in a playful mood,
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but very soon they are going to start asking me if I want to spend the night here or go home and get the job done. Come up here. Spring mount, spring mount!
Physician Encouragement
[Ph ¼ pediatrician, C ¼ child, P ¼ parent] Ph-C – yes sir. – would you like to lie on your back my little prince? My little prince! – See that, I want you to open your mouth C – ahh Ph – I want to look at your teeth and tell if you have been brushing them C – yes Ph – nice! morning and night and I think you have. Open mouth sweetie ahh good job -P – he has been brushing it, lovely. P – everyday Ph – very good! -C – lay down sweetie Ph – beautiful ears, beautiful ears mister JP [in whispering fun voice]. Now I want to look at your beautiful eyes. You can sit up [letting him know that it was ok to do so. You’re good sitting up darling.
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Case 3: Eight-Year-Old Boy, Chad Chad is an eight-year-old boy of Jamaican descent. He lives with both parents but visits the pediatrician with his mother, who revealed in the interaction that they live in Palm Beach which is approximately 40 miles from Plantation, FL. Chad is well-mannered, well-spoken boy and obedient, who seems to have a lot in his head. When I interviewed Chad, his answers were clear and his mother seemed very comfortable with my conversation with Chad. Chad visits the pediatrician for problems with his tonsils which was indeterminate until his visit. Chad’s case is another illustration of willful child inclusion. Despite the adult flow of the interaction that takes place, Chad places himself in the interaction. Through Chad’s interjection of his fears the night before, his perspective is now placed into the dialogue which would be otherwise unknown. As seen with Chad, both the physician and parent refocused their attention on him. Chad’s interjection was directed to him mom, which gets the attention of the pediatrician ultimately providing some information about the series of events leading up to illness. Through Chad’s tenacity, he tries his mom again, ‘‘but did you,’’ compelling her to answer him. Willful Child Inclusion
Ph ¼ pediatrician, C ¼ child, P ¼ parent] Ph-C – on your back sweetheart Ph-P – tell me about Mr. Chad P – Last night, I know I was really tired but he went to bed and he told me that he had a temperature, I didn’t check because I just thought that he wanted to relax because school started for him on Tuesday in Palm Beach and Ph – you live in Palm Beach? P – well it’s been a while, we’ve been back and forth Ph – back and forth P – he got up this morning, he had a temperature but it went down a bit, he had a sore throat, his neck he said and his stomach was hurting and he said that his stomach had stopped actually so Ph – mhm
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P – I figured that it must have been his tonsils Ph – mhm P – but then he said a boy who came in school and sat next to him yesterday that wasn’t well, yuh know Ph – mhm, so he started school this week eh, P – yes Ph – so we are going to get him well and send him to school P – I’m like couldn’t ‘ve this happened last week? C – Mom, last night did you hear me screaming? [interrupts conversation between parent and physician] Ph – were you screaming sweetheart? P – why were you screaming? Ph – your chest was hurting? P – I didn’t hear you so I must have been really tired. P – [laughs] C – But did you? P – no [water runs] P – was that when you came over? C – no
The Questionnaire: Harnessing the Perspective of a Young Child In the above cases, two of the cases involve children who are five years of age and older. Through their interaction with pediatrician and parent, it is seen that children are capable of becoming part of the clinical interaction, contributing their feelings and thoughts in both a nonbiomedical and biomedical context. Children, even as young as five, can express their feelings and communicate thoughts about their clinical and illness experiences, once they are asked in a manner that is appropriate to them. The presentation is an illustration and discussion of an interview protocol that was administered to five-year-old JP, who was previously mentioned.
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Michelle Aldridge and JoAnne Wood in Talking about Feelings: Young Children’s Ability to Express Emotions describe a Harter and Whiteshell’s five levels of emotional development. Based on this scale, level zero represents those of mean ages 5.2 who have developed single representations for separate emotions such as happy, sad, and scared; level one represents those of mean ages 7.3 who show the first appreciation of the coexistence of different emotions; level two represents those of mean ages 8.7 who are able to express the two ‘‘same-valence’’ feelings (happy and glad) but are unable to recognize ‘‘opposite-valence’’ feelings (happy and sad) on different targets; level three represents those of mean ages 10.1 who can express opposite- and same-valence feelings only on different targets but not on the same targets; level four represents those of mean ages 11.3 who are able to describe how the same target can evoke ‘‘opposite-valence’’ feelings (a child can be happy for getting a gift but be mad if it is not what he or she wanted). Therefore, it is valuable in having children self-label the faces. Selflabeling allows children to define the terms of their experience and they are not boxed into a predetermined answer that does not really represent how they actually feel. Also based on the age of the child, labels can range from simple to very sophisticated. As Aldridge and Wood have argued the ‘‘emotion-descriptive’’ vocabulary of very young children, six years and under tend to be impoverished (1997, p. 123), but as children get older, emotion-descriptive vocabulary become more sophisticated, allowing for ‘‘opposite-valence’’ feelings. Even though five-year-olds have limited emotion-descriptive vocabulary, they can express feelings such as happy, glad, hurt, unhappy, sad, good, and bad, which are still valuable to the communication process and development of young children as social actors and participants of health care. mad
mad
funny
bad
happy
happy
happy
sad
These labels were created by JP. Therefore, these are his interpretations of the faces. For each of the questions, JP applied a particular face. As a fiveyear-old, JP’s emotion-descriptive vocabulary is arguable limited with emotions ranging happy, funny, mad, sad, and bad – five emotion
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descriptors for eight faces. However, he is still able to communicate his opinion of each question. JP’s answers are in accordance with the overall purpose of the visit. JP visited the pediatrician for a well check; therefore, it was expected that he would not be feeling ill. His interpretation of his situation is in harmony with adult perceptions of the situation – the pediatrician and his mother do not perceive him as being sick. JP is able to differentiate between when he is ill and when he is not. Based on his answers, his feelings are very distinctive from each other. Under the theme of ‘‘willful child inclusion,’’ JP has purposefully interjected himself into the dialogue. Based on his answer to this question and his actual behavior during the interaction, this question seems to be a reasonable measure for a child’s preference during a clinical interaction. The following questions were asked before being seen by the pediatrician: 1. How do you feel now? happy 2. When you are sick how do you feel? mad
bad
3. Would you like to talk to the doctor? YES
NO
4. Would you like to tell the doctor how you feel? YES
NO
5. Would you like to ask the doctor questions? YES
NO
Would you rather if mummy or daddy tells the doctor how you feel? YES
NO
6. How does talking to the doctor make you feel? happy
happy
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7. I think the doctor will make me feely affection These questions were asked after seeing the pediatrician. 8. The doctor made me feely . Happy 9. Doctor Straw makes you feely . funny
happy
10. After I saw Doctor Straw I feely . happy 11. Talking with Dr. S makes me feely happy 12. I like Dr. S a loty YES
NO
13. Did you get a chance to talk to Dr. Straw? YES
NO
I remember JP to be a very energetic boy who sang while his mother and the pediatrician spoke at length about his medical history. JP, like some of the other children I met at this office, displayed what I have labeled willful inclusion where they have deliberately interjected themselves into a conversation by two adults. Through triangular data collection, I find that if placing this questionnaire in the context of the transcript, JP has perceived his behavior correctly. The answer to the question: ‘‘Did you get a chance to talk to Dr. S?,’’ has the response ‘‘yes.’’
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In the questionnaire, he stated that he wanted to speak to the doctor; he perceived that he was able to speak and these few segments of interaction illustrate his contribution to the clinical dialogue. To place the transcript in context, much of JP’s willful inclusion was initiated during the dialogue with adults; however, when the examination began, there was no need for JP to deliberately impose himself on into the interaction; the pediatrician communicated with him directly which was illustrated by the minimal contributions of the adult parent. Roberts and Sarangi (2005) argue that discourse is not just a way of looking into ‘‘inner physcological states or more general notions about beliefs, attitudes or behavior’’ (p.632), it is that ‘‘language is a way, and often the way, in which many everyday activities are conducted. Language does not just relect or express intentions or decisions; it makes them. In insititutional encounters, talk is work’’ (p. 632). As such Roberts and Sarangi develop a strand of discourse analysis called theme-oriented discourse. One theme identified is called ‘‘personal social identity’’. Personal social identity ‘‘affects how we get along together in an encounter and how we judge each other. Shared ways of speaking or finding something in common can oil the wheels of the interaction and create a positive assessment of the other’’ (Roberts & Sarangi, 2005, p. 634). JP’s response to ‘‘I like Dr. S a loty ’’ can be arguably linked to his positive assessment to the non-biomedical play and willful child inclusion which lead to more socio-emotive talk that may not have taken place if not interjected by him. From the perspective of Roberts and Sarangi, personal social identity and rhetorical devices could have been used to display authoritative status (in some cases, this does happen), but when there is direct interaction with the child, despite the lack to biomedical talk, socio-emotive talk can be used to depolarize the child and the pediatrician.
IMPLICATIONS It is my intent to lend some insight into the therapeutic experience and to highlight the need to gradually evoke the presence of the child into the pediatric clinical interaction. The absence of a child’s contribution in the clinical interaction does not necessarily lead to negative parental perception of the clinical interaction. The parent-centered approach this pediatrician takes lends to a pleasing outcome for parents. Parents usually feel that their concerns were satisfied and questions were answered. In JP’s case even though his mother disagreed with the statement that her overall experience in the clinic had been excellent, on the same questionnaire, she agreed with
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the statements I feel that I had an excellent meeting with the pediatrician, I feel that my concerns were addressed by the pediatrician, I feel that my questions were answered by the pediatrician, and I feel that my child got excellent care. Even though the pediatric interaction tends to be so adult centered, the lack of child involvement does not affect the perception of the parents. This is not to demonize adult interactions within the pediatric setting but to point out that one, a child’s contribution can be so easily overlooked and two, medical institutions are yet to frame talk in such a way that (it is directed toward the child) it becomes significant to the perception of the adults and children involved in the clinical interaction.
RECOMMENDATIONS How do pediatricians deal with cross-cultural or varying perspectives of the role of the child? Develop listening and partnership building skills. The job of a physician is to facilitate health care – in the case of a pediatrician, it is to facilitate health care for children. In some cases, there will be a young child who is vocal and will be very directive, other children may be rely on the parent to lead the interaction, and for others there will be a tendency to disappear into the background as the parent takes the lead. For discussion purposes, these scenarios are really boiled down version of the diversity of cases that a physician can encounter; however, the questions becomes how does a physician deal with such varying cases and still provide effective care to child patients. The recommendation is to let the child lead the interaction. Always let the child be the initial reference point: So Bill [child] what’s wrong today? Or So Bill why are you here today? There must be a serious expectation that the child will answer, but do expect that parents in good faith will be eager to answer the question for a child: His ears hurt. Or We’re here for a checkup.
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In this case, confirm with the child, simultaneously keeping the child as a reference point: Bill, your ears hurt? Can you show me? Or Oh, you’re here for a checkup Bill? Checkups are a wonderful time to get to know the child, allowing the physician and the child to get to know each other even for five minutes. Five minutes can be a lifetime, particularly for new patients or patients who are nervous or anxious about a visit. On occasion, a physician may learn about particularly useful to a diagnosis. Pediatricians are not aware of their place in the eye of the child. Therefore, these dialogues help the child situate the physician. For some children, this dialogue would be similar to one they can have with a friend, for other, it can be like ‘‘pulling teeth.’’ Physicians should not be dismayed by this and continue to genuinely get to know their patients. Dialogues with child patients allow the physician to develop a history that can be documented and reference at another time. At the moment of examination – whether for illness or checkup – the child should once again be referenced: So Bill, ready to check your ears or Bill, can I check your ears please – I will be gentle In most cases, a child will assent to an examination, but there are times when a child may not wish to be examined. It is recommended that the physician spend some time making the child comfortable in dissent: Bill, I know that you are uncomfortable and I know that your ears hurt, but it is important that I look into your ears so that I can help you. I know that you want your ears to stop hurting – right! Do you want your ears to stop hurting? In addition, the physician can ask the child to describe the pain or describe what is being felt in his ears. Simultaneously, the physician can welcome added information that the parent can provide. In general, it is important that the child is asked to be examined. When treatment or medicine is prescribed, both parent and child are to receive an explanation. Bill, Mom is going to buy you some eardrops, okay! You need to take two drops [may show what two drops look like], four times a day, at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and before bedtime.
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Do you understand? Could you repeat what I have told you? [An attempt will be made to repeat and the physician can guide the patient along] Okay, good, now if there are any problems let me and mom (or/and dad) know. Now, any questions for me? By shifting focus to the child during this part of the interaction, the physician facilitates in empowering the child. Making him or her feel included in their own health care and encourages a self-directed approach in future visits. A child patient can now expect that medication or treatment will be explained to him or her and can preconceive some questions. This interaction practice during pediatric clinical encounters encourages child patients to be responsible, attentive, and empowered, not just within the care of their health but in other areas of their lives. General practitioners and pediatricians have an opportunity to positively influence a child’s overall well-being.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks go to Doctoral Evidence Acquisition Fellowship offered by the University Graduate School at Florida International University, and to the participants who are crucial to the completion of this research, and to mi familia de cinco.
REFERENCES Aldridge, M., & Wood, J. (1997). Talking about feelings: Young children’s ability to express emotions. Child Abuse and Neglect, 21(12), 1221–1233. Austin, A. (2007). Medical decision and children: How much voice should children have in their medical care? Arizona Law Review, 49, 143–169. Carpenter, C. M. (2009). The mature minor exception and the provision of medical treatment, The American Association of Nurse Attorneys Tampa Bay Article. The Florida Nurse: Nurse Attorney Notes, p. 13. Clark, C. (2003). In sickness and play: Children coping with chronic illness. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
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Clowers, M. (2000). Urban female teenagers’ perceptions of medical communication. Adolescence, 32(39), 571–585. Coyne, I. (2006). Consultation with children in hospital: Children, parents’ and nurses’ perspectives. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 15, 61–71. Daghio, M. M., Ciardullo, A. V., Cadioli, T., Delvecchio, C., Menna, A., Voci, C., Guidetti, P., Magrini, N., & Liberati, A. (2003). GP’s satisfaction with the doctor–patient encounter: Findings from a community-based survey. Family Practice, 20, 283–288. Ewald, L. (1982). Medical decision making for children: An analysis of competing interests. Saint Louis University Law Journal, 25, 689–733. Ferguson, T. (2005). Online patient-helpers and physicians working together: A new partnership for high quality health care. British Medical Journal, 321, 1129–1132. Gabe, J., Olumide, G., & Bury, M. (2004). ‘It takes three to tango’: A framework for understanding patient partnership in pediatric clinics. Social Science and Medicine, 59, 1071–1079. Garfield, G. (2004). Enabling responsibility adolescent autonomy and the teen HIV crisis in the United States. Journal of Medicine and Law, 8, 87–100. Garner, B. A. (Ed.) (1999). Black’s law dictionary (7th ed.). St. Paul, MN: West Group. Hanisco, C. (1999–2000). Acknowledging the hypocrisy: Granting minors the right to choose their medical treatment. New York Law School Journal of Human Rights, 16, 899–932. Haug, M. R., & Lavin, B. (1981). Practitioner or patient – Who’s in charge? Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 22, 212–229. Hausman, A. (2004). Modeling the patient-physician service encounter: Improving patient outcomes. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 32(4), 403–417. Hook, M. (2006). Nursing theory and concept development or analysis. Partnering with patients – A concept ready for action. Journal of Advance Nursing, 56(2), 133–143. Institute of Judicial Administration: American Bar Association. (1980). Standards relating to rights of minors. FL: Ballinger Publishing Company. James, A., & James, A. L. (2004). Constructing childhood: Theory, policy and social practice. UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Lazarus, E. S. (1988). Theoretical considerations for the study of the doctor–patient relationship: Implication of a perinatal study. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, 2(1), 34–58. Mnookin, H. R., & Weisberg, K. D. (1989). Child, family and state (2nd ed.). New York: Little, Brown and Company. National Institutes of Health. (1999). Data Fact Sheet: Asthma Statistics. Available at http:// www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/prof/lung/asthma/asthstat.pdf Nova, C., Vegni, E., & Moja, E. A. (2001). The physician–patient–parent communication: A qualitative perspective on the child’s contribution. Patient Education and Counseling, 58, 327–333. Roberts, C., & Sarangi, S. (2005). Theme-oriented discourse analysis of medical encounters. Medical Education, 39, 632–664. Rosato, J. L. (1996). The ultimate test of autonomy: Should minors have a right to make decisions regarding life-sustaining treatment? Rutgers Law Review, 49, 1–104. Sleath, B., Rubin, R. H., Campbell, W., Gwyther, L., & Clark, T. (2001). Physician–patient communication about over-the-counter medications. Social Science and Medicine, 53, 357–369.
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Stevenson, F. A., Barry, C. A., Britten, N., Barber, N., & Bradley, C. P. (2000). Doctor–patient communication about drugs: The evidence for shared decision making. Social Science and Medicine, 50, 829–840. Street, R., Edward, K., Robert, A., Kravitz, R. L., & Haldet, P. (2003). Beliefs about control in physician–patient relationships. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 18, 609–616. Tates, K., Elbers, E., Meeuwesen, L., & Bensing, J. (2002a). ‘I’ve come for his throat’: Roles and identities in doctor–parent–child communication. Child Care, Health and Development, 28(1), 109–116. Tates, K., Elbers, E., Meeuwesen, L., & Bensing, J. (2002b). Doctor–parent–child relationships: A ‘pas de trios’. Patient Education and Counseling, 48, 5–14. Tates, K., & Meeuwesen, L. (2001). Doctor–parent–child communication. A (re)view of the literature. Social Science and Medicine, 52, 839–851. van Dulman, A. (1998). Children’s contribution to pediatric outpatient consultations. Pediatrics, 3, 563–568. van Dulmen, S. (2004). Patient centeredness. Editorial. Patient Education and Counseling, 5, 195–196. Walker, N., Brooks, C., & Wrightsman, L. (1999). Children’s rights in the United States: In search of a national policy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
PARTICIPATION AND PROTECTION OF YOUNGSTERS WITH SERIOUS BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS IN NORWEGIAN CHILD WELFARE SERVICES Ingeborg Marie Helgeland ABSTRACT Purpose – Young people exhibiting serious behavior problems represent an enormous challenge for municipal child welfare services in Norway. In working with these youngsters, it is vital to create opportunities for them to participate in the decisions affecting their lives. The study aims to explore the dilemmas involving issues of participation on the one side and protection on the other: it is one where the child welfare worker is being required, on the one hand, to provide youths with an opportunity to participate in decisions affecting them while at the same time being required to protect those youths in their care from harming themselves in various ways. These two concerns of participation and protection are spelled out specifically in Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children of which Norway is a signatory. Methodology – This study draws from a qualitative reanalysis of interview data from a 15-year longitudinal study of 85 child welfare The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 257–285 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014016
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clients in Norway. They were followed up at three points in time: first when they became clients (age 14–15), next when they were young adults (age 20), and finally when they were 30 years old. All of these 85 informants had initially come to the attention of child protection authorities owing to the severity of their behavior problems. Findings – The chapter describes how these young people experienced both participation and protection of the child welfare services at the time they were provided and later on when they had become adults. One important finding of the study is that, as adults, their opinions had changed and they then believed that the protection usually in the form of guardianship earlier provided to them as youngsters had been beneficial to them. Keywords: Participation; protection; youth; behavior problems; child welfare; longitudinal study
BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS In recent years, notions of user participation and cooperation have gained a strong position within child welfare and social work in Norway and elsewhere (Jack, 1997; Levin, 2004; Reich, 2010; Roche, 1999; Seim & Slettebø, 2007). In contrast to paternalism, this kind of participation refers to human values nearly everywhere universally applauded. These include respecting the responsibility of each individual for her/his own life, freedom of choice, and the unique value of every human being. Paternalism, in contrast, involves ignoring or minimizing these values while making decisions for others from a position of power and authority. Many studies have shown the negative outcomes once youngsters begin being truant from school, using drugs and alcohol, and engaging in criminal activity. This research shows that chances are great that children and youth involved in these kinds of ‘‘multiproblematic’’ behavior patterns are later likely to pursue deviant careers punctuated by school failures, sustained economic problems, psychological problems, substance abuse, etc. (Helgeland, 2007a, 2007b, 2010; Kyvsgaard, 1998; McGuire, 2002; Nagin & Farrington, 1992a, 1992b; Patterson, Forgatch, Yourger, & Stoolmiller, 1998; Robins & Rutter, 1990; Rutter, Giller, & Hagell, 1998; Sampson & Laub, 2003; White, Moffitt, Earls, Robins, & Silva, 1990). Given this
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background, it is extremely important to learn how youth brought to the attention of child protection agencies for truancy, substance abuse, and criminal acts experience their participation in major decisions about their lives when first made by child protection workers. It is equally if not even more important to learn how they view these experiences later in life when they have become adults. In addressing these issues in this chapter, a main focus will be on one central dilemma shared by many child welfare workers involved in decisionmaking processes affecting young people having serious behavior problems. This is the dilemma involving issues of participation on the one side and protection on the other: it is one where the child welfare worker is being required, on the one hand, to provide youths with an opportunity to participate in decisions affecting them while at the same time being required to protect those youths in their care from harming themselves in various ways. These two concerns of participation and protection are spelled out specifically in Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children of which Norway is a signatory. In order to explore these dilemmas empirically, the study reported on in this chapter draws from a reexamination of materials drawn from interviews with clients of the Norwegian child protection services at three points in time over a 15-year period: first when they were clients, next when they were young adults (age 20) (Helgeland, 1989; Helgeland & Waal, 1989), and finally when they were 30 years old (Helgeland, 2007a, 2010). All of these informants had initially come to the attention of child protection authorities owing to the severity of their behavior problems. None of the informants were asked directly about their experiences of participation or nonparticipation in the decisions made; however, they were asked directly about whether they agreed or disagreed with the decisions made when they were interviewed at the study’s first interview session when they were 14–15 years of age. The main aim of this reanalysis of the life history interview data drawn from these three different points in time was to gain an understanding of how the informants experienced their participation or lack of participation in decisions made while they were wards of child welfare services and how they later evaluated these decisions when looking back on them as adults. The study also draws on data from the child welfare system about decisions made and practices carried out in the case of each of the informants. This data was collected in the course of interviews with social workers as well as analyses of social reports and meeting documents in two periods from 1981 to 1984 and from 1986 to 1988 (by the author of this chapter).
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The key analytical questions addressed when examining these data were: What are the consequences for youths with serious behavior problems when child welfare services are more concerned about ‘‘participation’’ than ‘‘protection’’? How do youngsters at-risk experience the ‘‘protection’’ wielded by child welfare services? Do they regard it as forced compliance, or guardianship, or paternalism? These questions touch upon both the decision-making processes of initiatives that were chosen by the authorities as well as the socialization processes built into the initiatives. These questions are also about time, and how informants change perspectives and provide earlier occurrences with new meanings that are dependent upon age and life experiences. At the time when these youths participated in child welfare initiatives (the first part of the 1980s), the Norwegian law governing Child Welfare of 1953 was in force. It stipulated that children who were 12 years of age and older were to be heard in child welfare proceedings about them and that their opinions and concerns were to be taken into account depending upon their age and maturity1. The youths first interviewed for the longitudinal study were about 14–15 years of age when they had come into contact with the child welfare services, and at that time workers were obliged to follow the 1953 law when it came to the participation of youngsters in decisions affecting their own lives. It should be noted that in Norway, the child welfare services are charged with the responsibility to take care of both children exposed to maltreatment and endangerment at the hands of adults and those children engaged in criminal activities and substance abuse. This responsibility is in effect until these youngsters reach the age of 18.
The Buskerud Project The 85 youths in this study, all participated in child welfare initiatives in a project that was carried out from 1981 to 1985 in the county of Buskerud, which may be seen as a typical Norwegian county. It has 215,000 inhabitants, ranking it ninth in population out of Norway’s 19 counties. It has three main urban districts, the largest with approximately 50,000 inhabitants as well as many smaller villages and rural districts. A distinguishing feature of Buskerud, compared to the other Norwegian counties, is the close proximity (50 km) of its largest town to the Norwegian capital Oslo. Consequently, compared to other provincial Norwegian towns, drugs are more readily available and teenagers can more easily become
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involved in drug abuse and prostitution here than in other more remote counties. The project launched in the 1980s in this county, designated as the Buskerud project, was one of the several in a national program entitled ‘‘Alternative to the imprisonment of youth,’’ which were inaugurated by the proposition to raise the legal age from 14 years to 15 years for prosecution of criminal conduct (Parliamentary Report no. 50 (1977–78), on criminal policy). The main aim of the project was to provide information about the use of alternative strategies within the child welfare system to deal with 14-year-old lawbreakers2. It provided three types of services (NOU, 1985, p. 3). 1. Counseling services for municipalities: The project offered counseling for child protection workers in the municipalities and suggested realistic and preferable alternatives for helping youngsters at-risk. Fifteen teenagers, all evaluated as having the least extensive problems, received this type of help. 2. Reinforced local initiatives: The project provided parents with supervision to help them develop further skills needed for dealing with their troubled teenagers who were still living at home. The project also worked on developing alternative school programs and job training for these youngsters. Nineteen youths participated in these initiatives. 3. New-start initiatives: For youngsters where the above alternatives were not considered appropriate and where there was a need for round the clock care, the project initiated three housing options. The shared goal of all three was to provide them with a new start in life. These included up to three-four years placement in strengthened foster homes where one parent in each family received a full salary; drug-treatment collectives for substance abusing youths (Finstad, 1990); and strengthened traditional long-term institutions for children and youth within psychiatry, schools, and child welfare agencies (Ericsson, 1998). The more serious the problems, the more intensive and time consuming was the help provided to these youngsters in what was called ‘‘new-start’’ initiatives. Altogether 51 teenagers received new-start initiatives. What was new at that time within the Buskerud project was the establishment of a short-term institution for youngsters having serious behavioral problems. Here each youngster could live up to eight weeks while her/his situation was being evaluated. During this stay, resources within each youngster’s family and neighborhood were identified and staff worked together with each youngster and her/his family to try to find a good solution for the situation. At this time, local initiatives within school and
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work were discussed, potential foster parents identified, and applications were made to adolescent long-term institutions and drug-treatment collectives. The social workers in the short-term institution tried to engage the youngsters in dialogues about what each of them thought about her/his situation and in so doing attempted to help them find out what was necessary for charting a more positive path in life. At any given time, the short-term institution could have up to four youths living here, though those youngsters viewed as having the least serious problems could live at home with their parents and get local help. The typical characteristics of the situation for the youngsters in the Buskerud project were as follows: they shared relatively long and extensive histories of truancy and other problems at school, lawbreaking behavior, substance abuse, and vagrancy. A majority of them had experienced neglect and other extensive deficiencies in the care they received as children. Most of them forcefully protested whenever adults intervened in their lives. They were adamant about making decisions about their lives and reported feeling most important when together with older youths in gangs involved in criminal acts and substance abuse (Helgeland, 1989). They reported feeling more mature than their peers. Some were also speaking of how ‘‘doing wrong things’’ was common among youths (Jansen, 2010), and viewed child welfare agencies as their enemy – especially for their actions as agents of the state having the power to remove them from their homes (cf. Reich, 2010). Given these kinds of problems, a central aim of the Buskerud project was that work with these multiproblem youngsters would have to include cooperation and integration of efforts among workers in the child welfare system as well as representatives from psychiatry, the police, and the school system.
Data Materials and Methods Used In the longitudinal study, extensive qualitative and quantitative data materials were collected at three different points over a 15-year time span. The materials reanalyzed in this chapter are drawn from the life history interviews. The initial set of informants consisted of 85 ethnic Norwegian adolescents who had been identified by consensus among various agencies (i.e., child protection workers, teachers, and police) as having the most serious behavior problems in Buskerud County at that time. All were in the age
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range of 12 to 16 years with the majority aged from 14 to 15 when first referred to the project. One-third of these youngsters were girls. More than 90% of the boys and nearly 60% of the girls had been in formal and informal contact with the police. Nearly 95% had been truant from school and had serious conflicts with teachers and other pupils at school. About 75% had serious drug problems. At this time (T1) none of these youngsters had yet to receive a psychiatric diagnosis3. Three fourths had grown up in low-income families headed by parents who had few educational attainments beyond elementary school. Two-third of these youngsters had parents with alcohol problems. About half of the girls reported being sexually abused. These adolescents were contacted at three different times during the course of the study: T1 before the interventions launched by the Buskerud project (when they were approximately 14 to 15 years old), and T2 and T3 after the invention (when they were 20 and 30, respectively). At T1, 50 youngsters were interviewed (30 by the author and the remaining 20 by two other researchers). At T2 when they were 20 years of age, 33 were interviewed (all by the author). At T3 when they were 30 years old, 60 were interviewed (44 interviews by the author, the others by two master degree candidates). At T3, more resources than earlier were available and it was then possible to conduct more follow-up interviews. In addition to the interviews, supplementary data were collected about these 85 individuals from official crime statistics at T1, T2, and T3; survey data from social security offices at T3; from social welfare reports; interviews with social workers, police officers, and foster parents at both T1 and T2. The final data collection (T3) included life history interviews with all 60 informants. They were asked then about their experiences growing up and their experiences with the various child welfare agencies and programs in which they had participated. They were also asked to tell in detail how their lives had progressed. In conducting these interviews, a goal throughout was one of trying to be open to the voices of the informants, i.e., the way in which they understand their own histories and present situations. This kind of approach can be thought of as being an inferior interviewer and as practicing a ‘‘bottom-up’’ perspective of trying to position oneself in the place of the informant and to be open to that position’s surrounding terrain (Smith, 1990). The ethical questions involved in making contact with and visiting these informants years after their involvement in the Buskerud project have been treated in a separate article (Helgeland, 2005). It should be noted in this respect that the Norwegian Science Data Services, the body dealing with
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ethical concerns in research as well as other issues like informed consent, approved this contact with the informants. The Life Situations of the Informants When They were 30 Years Old At the time of the T3 interviews, when the informants were 30, almost two-thirds of them were living rather ordinary Norwegian lives (80% of the women and almost half of the men): they were not abusing drugs and alcohol, engaged in criminal activities, or prostituting themselves. They either rented or owned their own homes, and their friends and acquaintances also lived ordinary lives without drugs and criminal activities. Most received the money they needed to support themselves from the wages they collected from their jobs. Some received social security payments and a small number were receiving incomes from social welfare offices. One-third of the 85-group, however, had continued their careers as substance abusers and lawbreakers begun when first coming to the attention of the child welfare system as youngsters. Eleven of those had died as a result of drug use and criminal activities. Logistic regression analyses of the outcomes of the Buskerud project have shown that two initiatives in particular – strengthened foster homes and drug-treatment collectives – were instrumental in providing a great number of youngsters in the project with chances to redirect their lives in more socially positive directions. At the same time, the analyses indicated that local initiatives providing various forms of guidance and help as well as traditional institutions for treating and housing youngsters having behavior problem did not have the same degree of success in helping youngsters in the project. Additionally, relationships with partners who had no history of substance abuse and criminality also had a positive role in redirecting the lives of these young people (Helgeland, 2010). Looking at Participation at Two Points in Time As earlier noted, this chapter’s main objective is to examine how the youngsters in this project understood their participation in decisions made about their lives when they were 14 and 15 and then how they later understood their participation in these decisions when they were adults. This has been carried out by doing a qualitative reanalysis of the transcribed interviews that were earlier made in following up the participants in the Buskerud project.
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The time dimension is an essential element in this examination, since the informants may have a different understanding of their participation as youths when looking back at the age of 30 to that period of their lives. In this respect, it is important to note that a retrospective narrative will be influenced by the interpretation of the narrator in the same way that a ‘‘here and now’’ narrative can also be influenced. A retrospective narrative telling about how things were at an earlier time may forget or consciously omit some things, while others will be emphasized or exaggerated. In addition, it is likely that the emotional aspects of such retrospective narratives may be reduced. The passage of time may work to reduce the intensity of feelings connected to former events and this may make it possible for the narrator to provide a more nuanced version of former occurrences. Also, the passage of time may make it possible for a narrative looking back in time to see more sides of a situation than earlier. It should also be noted that similar influences affect the interpretations made by the author as a researcher who had been involved throughout the entire history of the Buskerud project. Both her own as well as the informants’ interpretations of events and situations have to be understood in light of the meanings of various discourses valid at different times when the interviewing took place.
Analysis The interview texts presented here are representative examples reflecting how the narrative materials have been analyzed and interpreted. An attempt has been made in analyzing these data to move back and forth from an indepth perspective to a broader view. In addition to employing this oscillating focus, the analysis has also aimed at moving from reflections upon the texts to theory and then back again to the texts which have been scrutinized line by line. It is worth mentioning in this respect that the author/researcher possesses more information than what is available to the reader. This is one of the problems connected to the analysis, interpretation, and presentation of qualitative data. In contrast, even though presentations of quantitative data involve a similar set of issues involving what is not shown to the reader by researchers, the data presented in articles and books can be organized in tables that everyone can read. Numbers take less space than words and may be able to summarize what a great number of words would be needed to communicate. One way of attempting to overcome some of these problems
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in the analysis presented here is through the use of representative examples and metaphors summarizing how the data have been interpreted.
Participation The concept of participation may be understood as including taking part in concrete decisions, here and now, at a particular point in time and in a particular situation. Additionally, participation may be understood as a process, which exists over a period of time. Both of these understandings can be seen as being end points in a continuum as well as being two separate discursive understandings. One end point reflects a procedural and legal understanding that involves allowing the youngster to decide what she or he wants here and now, without taking notice of the youngster’s historical and present context. The other end point is an understanding of process within a sociocultural learning perspective (Cole, 1996; Lave & Wenger, 2003; Mead & Morris, 1934/1967), where decisions are seen as being a part of the interactional process which varies and changes and which is contextually conditioned. In this study, I have scrutinized the ways in which youths have experienced the process of participation. Participation means part-taking in decisions and activities together with others, or in other words, part-taking in a process of interaction. The participation of children and youth within child welfare services is not primarily about allowing them to make their own decisions. Astrid Strandbu has shown in her study of the participation of children in the family council model in Norway that being heard is what is important and not necessarily being allowed to decide for yourself (Strandbu, 2007). Her findings parallel earlier findings from a study of children in care carried out by Nigel Thomas (Thomas, 2000) who asked children at-risk to rank what was most important to them in participation processes involving them. What they ranked highest was the right to be listened to and heard as well as the right to present their opinions. Being able to decide was much less important for them. In the first interviews at T1, most of the youngsters did not see the seriousness of their own situations. In their narratives at the time, they saw their behavior as a way for helping them feel more important, to be more popular, or a way to forget bad experiences and conflicts with parents and teachers. In one sense, they were reporting what was important for them ‘‘to be where things happened’’ as youths in a recent study of school participation put it to two researchers (Asbjørnslett & Hemmingsson,
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2008). In the T1 interviews, most of the youngsters reported being satisfied by participating in a group having the same negative attitudes and antisocial behaviors as themselves. They lived in situations and in ways where they seemed incapable of seeing the short-term and long-term consequences of their actions. At that time, these kinds of attitudes required much work on the part of child welfare workers – first and foremost to make contact with and then become acquainted with these young people. Once contacts had been established, the main concern of the workers was to negotiate with the youths to find out what was needed to help them to change their life situations. Cutting previous bonds and taking over the formal responsibility for youths, when the youths themselves and their parents were against an intervention of this kind, was a very difficult undertaking the workers wished to avoid. One of the main goals of the workers was to get youngsters to feel they were a part of the decisions being made. Using findings from an analysis and interpretation of the interview texts when the informants were youths and later when they were adults, the following section presents representative patterns highlighting these situations and especially the dilemmas child welfare professionals experienced in trying to practice simultaneously the two principles of participation and protection. This section will then be followed by representative patterns of statements by youths who did not wish to become wards of child welfare but were forced to accept this decision and who then adjusted positively to these changes and eventually redirected their lives in socially acceptable paths. 1. ‘‘I want to decide for myself. I want to live my own life as I myself choose.’’ – listening to and waiting for decisions by youths This pattern is characteristic of youngsters who protest and who demand the right to make decisions of their own. Although child welfare services are making efforts to establish contact with them, the youths want to live their own lives. They are adamant that if anyone is to make decisions on their behalf, it is not to be the child welfare agency. The only people who have any legitimacy on that score are their parents, who, similar to child welfare service workers, often experience that they are powerless to do anything about the misbehavior of their children. At that time in their lives, a number of youngsters were constantly moving around even though they ostensibly were living at home and were being ‘‘followed up’’ by child welfare workers. It was uncertain what these youths were doing in their spare time – especially in the evenings and nights. Professionals employed by schools, psychiatric services, and child welfare
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agencies negotiated time and again with these youngsters and tried various local initiatives, such as placements on sailboats having programs for wayward youths, fully paid vacations, alternative schools, and offers of employment. At the time, there was a discourse shared by some professionals that youngsters should be allowed to choose their own activities and that efforts should be made to ensure that they were active participants in their own lives. But this did not always lead to positive solutions for young persons involved in drug abuse, criminal behavior, and prostitution. On the contrary, in spite of participating in these kinds of local initiatives, many of them became even more strongly bonded to their antisocial environments and participated actively in socially deviant and often self-destructive activities. Their bonds to mainstream youth environments became less and less important. In the end, the child welfare system existing at that time often gave up on these youngsters. Caseworkers and other professionals became exhausted by trying and not being able to find any satisfactory ways for improving the lives of these young people. Often the youngsters themselves were blamed for this owing to their chronic failures to show up for scheduled appointments and their refusal to engage in negotiations about their lives. One additional factor creating a kind of fatalism among some professionals was that once youths reached the age of 18 years, they would then cease to be the responsibility of child welfare services. Some of these youths held firmly to their understanding of their life situations throughout their contacts with child welfare services. They believed that it was acceptable to live as they were living, even though they continued to attend sessions and participate in conversations with child welfare services. In a number of respects, the following account about a youngster given the pseudonym ‘‘Elaine’’ illustrates the pattern thus far described.
The Story of Elaine’s Relationship to Child Welfare Services Elaine entered a drug-abusing environment at the age of 13 not long after her middle-class family had arrived in town, and after her older sister died from a drug overdose. (At T3 when she was 30, Elaine recalled that her meaning of life at that time was to take over the heritage of her elder sister.) Elaine skipped school, used drugs, and stayed out all night with her new friends who were also misbehaving. One of them became her boy friend. Those child welfare workers given responsibility for Elaine’s case had frequent meetings and negotiations with her where they tried to get her to talk about her situation, desires, and needs. She failed time and again to
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honor the agreements the workers had worked out with her about school attendance, work, and leisure-time activities. When first interviewed at the age of 14 (T1), Elaine had refused all attempts by the workers to gain her cooperation. Elaine reported then that she was not in need of any form of help. During the interview, she blamed her mother for getting the welfare agency concerned with her: ‘‘I am involved in this because my mother is hysterical,’’ she argued. Six years later when again interviewed (T2) at the age of 20, Elaine said that a lot of people had tried to make decisions for her, but without success. She declared that she alone decided for herself and that she was good at fighting for what she wanted as well as fighting against what she did not want to do. Elaine regarded the professionals responsible for her case in the child welfare system as a rather impotent group of people. Some of them who tried to make contact with her were very nice, Elaine said, but added that she simply did not want anyone to get mixed up in her life. Looking back six years earlier when she was 14, Elaine recalled that she then was using drugs constantly and had begun to inject heroin into her veins. She moved away at that time to go to school in Sweden for a year. There she got a job with the help of her father’s firm and began living alone in a furnished room. Soon, however, drugs began steering Elaine’s life and she quit her job to return to her hometown where she found another job. After two months at that job Elaine was fired. Drugs once again had gained the upper hand. At that point, the outreach program of her hometown contacted Elaine. The professionals staffing this program at that time in the early 1980s were very skeptical about contacting child welfare services when youngsters were using drugs and misbehaving. Their opinion was that the young people acting this way should choose for themselves if they wanted help from the child welfare system. The outreach program staff listened to Elaine’s account of her problems, and were, she felt, a very good support to have at that time. They helped her, she said, to realize that she had to figure things out on her own. It is possible that she could have received some help earlier, Elaine admits, but she also says that she may not have been ready to accept help in any form during that stage of her drug dependency. Elaine views herself as being rather stubborn, and she reported even though she was at that point very much weighed down by her addiction to drugs, she still was able to present herself to others as someone living a normal life. Elaine claims that she was always using this ability to keep her head above water but admitted, in retrospect, that the charade she was constantly performing was tiresome and that her lifestyle had become a very heavy burden for her to bear. The turning point
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in her life, she reported, began when her mother contacted with a collective providing a drug-treatment program for its residents, who were all drugabusing youngsters. Looking back at that time, Elaine told that she was extremely glad that her mother refused to give up on her and eventually found a way for her to get into treatment. She added, however, that it was best if persons themselves were motivated to get help for their drug problems and that being forced into treatment did not work. A central theme in Elaine’s narrative at 20 as well as when she was 30 was that it was right of the child welfare system not to have intervened at an earlier stage to force her to move into a drug-treatment program. She describes herself as being very independent and strong and that she would never have given in to the wishes of the child welfare authorities if they did not coincide with her own desires. Consequently, the only decisions the welfare workers could make about her were ones that she had agreed to in advance. Her main project then had been to resist whatever the child welfare services suggested to her that she did not like. What Elaine does not speak about in her narratives are her experiences with drug addiction and criminality. Though it is difficult to say with certainty, these might have been avoided if the child welfare services had taken control and responsibility for her life and placed Elaine in a drug-treatment collective or therapeutic community at an earlier point in her life. In retrospect, she recalled that while she was more or less determining what she would accept from the welfare workers, her drug use was increasing. Those charged by the welfare system with the responsibility for Elaine’s protection and care gave her numerous chances to take responsibility for her own life and to identify her needs. The professionals engaged in many conversations with Elaine at that time, but no real trusting relationships between these adults and her ever emerged. The only adults that Elaine trusted were the youth outreach workers, but at that time in the outreach program’s history, they did not want to cooperate with child welfare services. Their operating principle was to be on the side of the youths with whom they were in contact. Consequently, all of their conversations with those youngsters were confidential and not shared with other public or private persons and agencies. In many ways, they were working against child welfare services and as such supporting Elaine in her insistence upon being independent and not wanting to move into a treatment collective. At the same time, the child welfare workers did not want to make a decision that Elaine did not agree to in advance even though her mother supported the idea of forcing Elaine to enroll in the youth collective treatment program. Time passed and Elaine eventually relented and entered into the program of her own accord.
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The Buskerud project showed that there were a number of youngsters, like Elaine, who insisted upon their right and freedom to live in accordance with their own desires. They resisted allowing child welfare services to make decisions on their behalf. Later when they became young adults, they defended their need to be free to define their lives and those of their families. A main theme shared by many of their narratives focused on resisting suggestions and more direct interventions made by child welfare services about their lives. The patterns shown in these kinds of tales told by some informants provide a basis for raising the following questions: When is the limit reached for participation and decision-making based upon cooperation when youngsters are in danger of increasing their drug dependency and their ties to criminal gangs? How long should child welfare services attempt to promote initiatives that are based upon agreements with youngsters who show no positive changes in their behavior? These questions raise, on the other hand, a set of other equally important questions: When is it legitimate to make decisions on behalf of other people? What have adults done to prepare youths to participate in decision-making? Negotiations are about helping people to reach good decisions and/or to reach agreement. This issue touches upon the responsibilities of adults and their legitimacy as authorities. When it comes to young drug users and lawbreakers, these youngsters and adults rarely agree about the seriousness of the situation. Both sets of actors define the situation differently and this quite naturally leads to different views regarding what needs to be done. The young people interviewed in this study generally believed that they could stop using narcotics whenever they wanted to do so, but not when adults wanted them to do so. These adults defined the situation in another way. As professionals, they were worried about the situation these youngsters found themselves in and believed that something had to be done before developments become so negative that they could lead to permanent physical, psychological, and social damage. And to prevent this, they attempted to negotiate with the youths. It is here where child welfare services face a major challenge, since longterm negotiations with youths who have serious behavior problems can easily develop into a kind of variation on a ‘‘cat and mouse’’ game. The most important goal for the youngster involved in such a game is to avoid getting caught in the ‘‘claws’’ of child welfare services, while they can make themselves ‘‘more important’’ by engaging in asocial and often selfdestructive lifestyles. For child welfare professionals, this often means evaluating just how long they are prepared to play this game, which for
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youngsters may include an escalation in drug use and tighter bonds to peers whose lifestyles revolve around crime, substance abuse, and other forms of serious misbehavior. It is clear that many youngsters like Elaine need to be protected from lifestyles they have chosen for themselves. Their voices need to be heard, but they carry little weight if professional child welfare workers practice the principle of protection as defined by the UN Convention on Children and adopted by the Norwegian legal system in statutes governing child protection services. This set of laws requires these services to intercede to protect children and youth from socially negative developments that may endanger their lives and futures, yet they contain only a few general outlines about how this is to be done. In the main, decisions involving protection of this sort are subject to situational evaluations taking cognizance of the particular characteristics of the case at hand. Earlier findings drawing from studies of the Buskerud project (Helgeland, 2007, 2010) have shown that in cases where parents and other supportive adults have the resources and energy to apply the care and control measures that are needed over several years, local initiatives may be adequate and help the youth to find a positive path in life. However, when parents are worn down by trying to deal with the chronic misbehavior of their children and/or have physical, psychological, or substance abuse problems of their own as well as possessing few resources, Norwegian child protection agencies are mandated to assume parental responsibility. They are then required to put a stop to the serious behavior problems of youngsters before these become incorporated into the identities of these youths. These interventions, research has shown, demand a great deal of long-term efforts to effect changes in the ways these young people act as well as their identities. The next pattern to be presented involves those young persons who have been required owing to the principle of protection invoked by child protection workers to leave home against their will, but who have changed their minds as time has gone by. Evidence from the longitudinal study showed that many youngsters sharing the experience of resisting being removed from their homes later showed positive adjustment, particularly those who moved to strengthened foster home and collectives/therapeutic communities providing treatment for drug addiction. What do these youths have to say about the process of adjustment they experienced? 2. ‘‘At first I didn’t want to, but then I changed my mind’’ This was a frequently appearing pattern among the young people involved in the Buskerud project. A number of these youths were removed from their
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childhood homes to become wards of the child protection system despite their wishes to stay with their families. In most cases, however, their postmoved adjustments were positive ones. Most of them coped rather well in their new surroundings, which were strengthened foster homes or drugtreatment collectives for youths. The findings from the study of the fate of these youngsters showed that those who moved to social formations most resembling families fared best. In the drug-treatment communities, they lived together with adults and like the strengthened foster homes, a degree of continuity and stability was achieved in relationships between them and the women and men providing them with care (Helgeland, 2007, 2010). In characterizing their stays in these groups, youngsters reported that there they to a certain degree were able to negotiate their way to agreement with the adults and that they experienced that their voices were heard. Consequently, as time passed, trusting relationships between the adults and them developed. All in all, these young people agreed that they found it meaningful to live in these places. They reported feeling it was safe for them to live there and that the adults providing them with supervision and support really did care about them. They also reported that they had learned a lot in their new surroundings, most important of all, how to live an ordinary life without using narcotics. This included getting up in the mornings, going to school or to work, eating dinner together, watching TV together, engaging in pleasant evening conversations, and going to bed at a reasonable hour. However, there were setbacks; some youngsters ran away and managed to obtain drugs while living in the foster homes and collectives. But most of the runaways returned on their own or were brought back to their homes. When asked in the interviews what factors they felt had contributed most to improvements in their lives, many told of being together with adults who had a sense of humor and engaged them in activities of various kinds, but who at the same time insisted that certain rules of conduct were to be followed. According to Lave and Wenger (2003) who have studied social learning processes, learning occurs when one engages in social activities within a community. The newcomers to the community are not expected to be able to master everything at once, but little by little expectations increase as well as their knowledge and competencies. Gradually, the youth becomes a part of the community and experiences a feeling of belonging. A key factor in this process involves youngsters experiencing positive feelings when engaging in common activities and social interaction in the community. From a symbolic interactionistic perspective, we develop because of our interactions with others. Our interpretations of the way in which others see
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us and evaluate us contribute to the way in which we see ourselves (Mead & Morris, 1934/1967). Charles Horton Cooley helped to visualize these processes with his concepts primary group and the looking-glass self. A primary group can be a family, friends we have at work, at school, or in recreational activities. A primary group consists of those people to whom we are closest, those who mean most to us, and to whom we can openly speak. His perspective on the looking-glass self begins by pointing out that we all have an idea of how we behave in the presence of other people. However, we also all have an idea about the way in which other people judge us. From these two sets of ideas we create a sense of ourselves which is more or less positive or negative (Cooley, 1909). Ordinarily, we are more concerned about the way in which people in our primary group judge us than we are about the judgments of others. These people become those whose opinions and feelings about us are significant ones: they become our significant others (see, for example, Blumer, 1969[1986]). The importance of having adults who are there for them and who became their significant others was a central characteristic in the life histories of the youths in this study who managed to find a positive path in life to follow. Their significant others were the people they want to be like and people to whom they listened. The opinions that these significant others had about what the youths in their care did became extremely important to these youngsters (Helgeland, 2007, 2010). They reported learning to trust these caring adults by participating together with them in numerous activities. In the course of these, they reported experiencing these adults as caring women and men who showed that they had their best interests at heart. This is illustrated in the following account about a young woman in the Buskerud project given here the pseudonym ‘‘Carita.’’ The Story of ‘‘Carita’’ Carita, a 15-year-old girl, was placed in a collective home for youths because of her addiction to heroin. At that time, she was a member of a criminal gang of other teenage girls. She had skipped school for several months and spent her nights hanging around in the town. At the time of a follow-up interview (T2) when she was 20, Carita recalled the difficulties she had adjusting during her first months in the collective: It took me a very long time to decide to stay there. I called home once a week and said that I didn’t want to be there. My mother was desperately unhappy and confused. She went to child welfare services to try to convince them to let me return home. She
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convinced child welfare to send me home and called to tell me. But after that telephone conversation with my mother I began to rethink the matter. I decided to stay, but I can’t say exactly why. I felt very safe at the collective. The people working there really seemed to care about you and they seemed to understand how you were feeling.
During the T3 interview when she was 30 years old, Carita recalled: I made a decision when I was placed in that collective home. I fought against it for a very long time. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I needed help. But in time I realized that I did. My mother was an alcoholic at that time and I began to think that I should give the collective home a chance. I wondered if I would be able to complete my schooling. I thought about my existing network of friends and contacts. That is when it occurred to me that it would be best to remain. I wanted to get my life in order, even though I didn’t want to admit that I had problems.
Like Carita, most of the youngsters reported that they were initially opposed to staying in foster homes and collectives where they had been placed. But as time passed, they became better acquainted with the adults who were in charge of their care. In addition to becoming better acquainted with the adult staff at the collectives, they also got to know the youngsters who had been living there for some time. As in Carita’s case, their initial opposition to living in these places sometimes gradually and sometimes suddenly ceased and they begin to give their placements a chance. This was the case for Carita as well as many others interviewed. Once their opposition ceased, they decided to give their new homes a try. Carita speaks positively about her experience of being listened to and being cared for by the adults in charge of the collective where she was placed. She reports that they together with older youngsters who were members of the collective provided her with a reality check. This she describes as realistic feedback about the way she had been living and the problems she had been experiencing at home. Making the decision to stay seems to have been a turning point in Carita’s life. At least, this is how she understood her life story when reflecting upon her past in the course of interviews with her when she was an adult. Carita made a focused and ultimately successful attempt to reorient her life: this resulted in a job, a new set of friends, and in time, an education. In one way, Carita’s story is also about learning how to see things differently with a new set of lenses after a stay in a collective. As an adult, Carita views things and events in her life radically different than when she was a young teenager, owing to her stay in the collective and greater experience and understanding about life since her stay there. Her story is about taking responsibility for her own life in cooperation with the adults who lived and worked in the collective and who also cooperated with child welfare services in Carita’s hometown. In other
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cases, such as that involving the youngster in the project with the pseudonym ‘‘Bob,’’ the choice of remaining in a placement may be based upon a set of rather simple events.
The Story of ‘‘Bob’’ As a young teenager, Bob initially was much opposed to the idea of being placed in a strengthened foster family and he had made up his mind that if placed there, he would run away. At that time, his family life was filled with conflicts, violence, and parental drug abuse. While growing up there, Bob experienced a severe lack of essential care. After being truant for months from school while running together with a gang of older boys who sniffed glue and drank, Bob had become a well-known acquaintance of his hometown’s police. When interviewed at the age of 30, Bob looked back at that time and remembered one event having a decisive role in his life: The child welfare services had decided to place me into a foster home located far from my hometown. I did not want to live there. I decided to run away, but when I arrived my foster parents began playing Ludo with me, and I decided to stay.
The fact that his new foster parents wanted to play board games with him convinced Bob that they were genuinely interested in him. Following that initial experience when he felt that these adults were willing to engage in activities that he liked, Bob began to adjust himself to the idea of living with his new foster parents. However, he did test them by running away a few times at the beginning of his placement, but each time, his foster parents found Bob and brought him home. The fact that his foster parents made the effort to look for him and to bring him home was seen in a very positive light by Bob. It showed, he reported, that they really cared about him. Bob stayed with his foster parents for four years and after that in a nearby furnished room for three more years. At the interview when he was 30, Bob told of having daily telephone conversations with his foster father and that he was free to borrow their holiday cottage and car whenever he wished. Bob reported feeling that he was a fully accepted family member, and no longer felt that he was just a peripheral participant in family life, which were his first feelings about being placed in foster care. The exact turning point in his thinking about the foster family was their invitation to join him in playing Ludo. Looking back at that event 15 years later, Bob viewed it as an invitation to join the family community. This was the beginning of the caring and trusting relationship
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with his foster parents, which played a major role in redirecting his later life. He experienced then being asked for his opinion, but he recalls that they had to be strict with him then and set limits for him – especially at the start of his stay. While Bob’s experiences in the foster family accepting him as a valued member clearly had much to do with the new and positive direction his life took, the experiences as a member of a strengthened foster family for the youngster called here ‘‘Robert’’ were of a much different character.
The Story of ‘‘Robert’’ Robert did not want to be placed in a foster home, but was given support by his social studies teacher at school to tackle his new situation. As he recalled that period of his life when interviewed at the age of 30: I did not agree to be placed in a foster home. I wanted to continue to live with my grandparents, where I was very free. I spent 14 months in a foster home and did not like being there. I do not remember what it is that went wrong. My foster parents were nice and they tried to make it work but I was difficult. I view the matter differently now that I have children of my own. I don’t dare think about what might have happened if I hadn’t been placed there, even though I was against it at the time. Because of the placement, I was separated from my gang, and was removed from a drug-abusing environment. I criticized the entire Buskerud project from top to bottom at the time, but I now think that it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Robert’s social studies teacher was a member of the child welfare services group organized by the Buskerud project given responsibility for Robert’s welfare. The teacher often visited Robert in his foster home and they talked together there, on car trips and at a local cafe, too. At that time, Robert felt that his foster parents were too strict and that they really did not listen to what he had to say. His teacher, on the other hand, Robert viewed as someone who understood and listened to him. This teacher convinced Robert to make the best of his placement in the foster family and to complete his schooling. And even though he really did not thrive in the foster home, Robert managed to do both. When he was finished with his schooling and moved out, his teacher helped Robert to find another place to live and a job. Robert’s life story changed significantly during the period from his adolescent before reaching the age of 30. The feelings of being inferior, lonely, and confined characterizing much of his youth disappeared. Looking back on that time, Robert felt that he had gained greater knowledge and a better perspective on life to see that his foster parents and other responsible
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adults had much to give him but he was unable to see it at that time. As an adult, Robert stayed in contact with his former foster family and arranged to visit them in the summer with his children. He even made plans with them about the videos they had made of him when he lived with them and Robert now wants to view the videos together with them and his own children. Even though his foster parents were unable to develop a good relationship with Robert, his stay in their home served an important function. He was removed from his former comrades, who were marginalized drug –abusers, and he finished school. The good relationship he had with his social studies teacher helped him to stay the course. The teacher was able to help Robert to accept the basic social realities of his life. The relationship Robert had with child welfare services ended well. His narrative as an adult reflects his agreement with the decisions that were made on his behalf when he was a minor. In talking about that time, his focus is not about who made the decisions in his past but that the decisions that were made for him by the adults in charge were good ones. He felt as a 30 year old that these adults took responsibility for him in the same way that he now takes responsibility for his own children. Robert’s narrative is similar to those told by Bob and Carita in that all three relate stories of success in redirecting lives in positive directions. He now believes that it was a good thing that his opposition to being placed in a foster home was ignored. He has a positive view of child welfare services and of his former foster parents. He believes that both these sets of adults took responsibility necessary to keep him away from a drug-abusing self-destructive environment. These adults saw to it that he attended school and spent time with a circle of new friends and acquaintances who did not abuse drugs.
Are Shifts in Attitude Dependent on How Lives Have Developed? Are the changed attitudes toward child welfare services voiced by Carita, Bob, and Robert also shared by those in the Buskerud project whose lives went in an opposite direction where the problems they had as youngster with substance abuse and criminal misbehavior intensified as they grew older? The answers to this are varied, contradictory, and manifold. The informants like those already discussed who were placed outside their homes against their will, but who later took a positive tack, report as adults their satisfaction with these decisions. On the other hand, some of the informants who did not fare so well as adults voiced dissatisfaction with the decisions removing them from their homes. They told tales about experiencing a
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totally lack of participation and never being heard. These informants as adults continued to blame the system. Others within this group, however, reported that child welfare workers had tried to help them and that they felt their voices were heard. But even though their lives have not worked out well, they do not blame the child welfare system, but instead blame themselves for their situations as adults. Interestingly, informants whose lives have developed in opposite directions but who had played the ‘‘cat and mouse’’ games with child welfare workers still tell as adults amusing histories about these episodes.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS Participation or Protection In light of what has thus far been presented, what can be said about the consequences for youths with serious behavior problems when child welfare services give priority to ‘‘participation’’ rather than to ‘‘protection’’? As exemplified in the case of Elaine for the first pattern found in reinterpreting the data, it is very difficult and complicated for child welfare services to connect with youths who have strong wills, no desire to negotiate, and wish to maintain their freedom despite the consequences. (When, in addition, their parents are also not willing to cooperate, it is extremely difficult.) Following up a youngster who is seldom at home and on the streets is a time and energy consuming task for a child protection worker. The first step is to establish contact with this youngster so that she or he can begin to develop confidence in relating to the adults working in the child protection system. It is not necessary that the adult has to be ‘‘cool.’’ The findings from study of the Buskerud project clearly show that the key ingredient for gaining participation from youngsters is their experience of being listened to and of knowing that their ideas, desires, and fears are being heard. The study also shows that their need for protection is something that youngsters seldom recognize at the time when it is most pressing. This, the interviews at T2 and T3 clearly show, is something they recognize when older at a time when their formal contacts with child protection have come to an end. Experiences with ‘‘Protective’’ Decisions What do the reevaluations of the findings from the study have to say about how youngsters experience decisions made by child protection agencies to
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‘‘protect’’ them? These decisions, it could be argued, are forced on these young people by paternalistic institutions claiming to be acting on behalf of the youths themselves. Youths placed in reinforced or strengthened foster homes or in treatment collectives generally told at their interviews that the placements were made against their will at the time, but that they often changed their minds. This took place as a rule when they became acquainted with adults and recognized that they wished them well. These developments were then further reinforced by experiencing that these adults provided them with opportunities to join in and to gradually become full-fledged participants in the families and collectives. In later interviews when referring to these processes, informants told about encountering adults who were stronger than themselves and who they came to accept as being authorities in their lives. They experienced – often for the first time in their lives – adults who had the time to talk to them and who also supported them in tackling their schoolwork. These adults taught them how to participate in as well as carry out the chores of everyday life. In addition, the adults also invited these youngsters who were their wards to join them in taking part in enjoyable social activities. In later interviews, the informants recalled feelings of being safe with these adults, which again was for many of them a new feeling when in the company of adult men and women. For these youths, participation and protection were mixed together and it was difficult for them to separate the two when asked to do so in the interview situations. One recurrent theme appearing in the reinterpretation of the data from the Buskerud project involved how developmental support from adults worked in various ways to help youngsters become ‘‘bigger’’ or more mature in socially acceptable ways. It seemed that making oneself larger or older for these youths often was related to using one’s freedom and autonomy in a responsible manner in line with the social order. These processes of increasing freedom and autonomy occurred at the same time that these youngsters needed to have someone set limits for them as parents are expected to do. These simultaneous and seemingly contradictory processes show that developmental support for youngsters being placed into care is not an either/or dichotomy, but rather is a process which involves a constant interplay between providing care and applying control on the one hand and opportunities for autonomous activity and participation on the other. The autonomy allowed to youngsters in this process is one limited by several considerations: the age of the youth, the areas where it is appropriate for youths to make their own decisions, and how and in what kind of manner autonomy can be practiced.
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Helping Interpretations of Decisions Made by Child Welfare System One issue related to the questions discussed in the foregoing, that needs to be addressed, involves how to help youngsters interpret the decisions made by child welfare workers on their behalf. The study’s findings show that a key ingredient in these interpretive processes for youths is the support offered by adults who these youngsters trust. If this is present, the chances are increased that youngsters will be able to see how a situation can be good for them in the long run. As earlier described, the outreach program for youth in her community supported Elaine in her rejection of negotiations with child welfare services as well as their suggestion that she apply to live in a youth collective. The members of the outreach team supported instead Elaine’s wishes to be independent. They acted upon their own definition of the situation which gave her protests legitimacy and which enabled her to fight against changes imposed on her by others. But their support, as earlier described, helped Elaine continue using drugs. A contrasting example of adults acting outside the child protection system is represented by Robert’s social studies teacher who provided support to him to stop using drugs and to finish school. Even though Robert would have preferred to live elsewhere, his teacher managed to convince him that in order to finish his schooling and cease abusing drugs, it was necessary for him to continue living with the foster family. In retrospect, Robert says that he could not have been able to do these things on his own without the help, advice, and encouragement of his teacher and the additional support provided by the foster parents.
Participation is a Process that Takes Time In working with youngsters showing serious behavior problems, changes do not happen overnight. Positive change takes time to occur and youngsters need time to adjust to the situations represented by placements away from their homes. They need time as well to realize that some time in the future, these placements will end and that they will have to fend for themselves. As the findings presented here have indicated, participation in these temporal processes is much dependent upon the youngster’s understandings and correct interpretations of situations, experiences, and the surrounding world. The findings also make clear that youths in these situations need to be given a reason why their opinions and wishes are not going to be upheld. They need time and support to be able to accept the formally made decisions
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that are made on their behalf, before and after the fact. Actions can be full of contradictions and must be seen as an occurrence in a process that cannot be fully seen or predicted. This can be expressed in different ways that change over time. Sometimes youths are seen and heard and their wishes are respected, while at other times this is not the case. The analysis shows that the participation of youth is a process that occurs over time. Most of life’s decisions for all of us are taken gradually, while we are in the process of development, and where we slowly become conscious of them. We are more or less unaware of the ways in which we adjust to decisions made by others. One can move back and forth between perspectives and try to work out the different alternatives and consequences of actions that are taken. Decisions develop gradually, based upon the way we define and understand our situation and the influence of those we trust, talk with, and listen to in our everyday lives. The experiences we have in the process of growing up will naturally create a basis for our own participation and self-determination. In applying these processes to the young people whose lives we have been discussing, it seems clear that a key factor in their lives is the trust they have in their adult guardians. This kind of trust is not something that blossoms overnight but needs to develop at its own tempo over time in the process of interaction and by doing things together.
Maternalism? The analyses make clear that child welfare services sometimes have to take a stand and insist upon being guardians who are responsible for the well-being of a youth. The question whether these types of decisions are paternalistic or not is of secondary importance. What is of utmost importance is that youngsters must be protected from danger, even if this means forcing them to live somewhere against their will. In fact, considering the large number of women working in child welfare services, perhaps rather than paternalism, the concept we should be using should be maternalism. This may be a more fitting term in relation to the issues involved in child protection because it seems to imply making decisions on behalf of others with the intention of providing them with protection and care (without delving more deeply now into gender-specific dimensions of the concept). The results of the Buskerud project have shown that in many cases these decisions to take responsibility for the youngsters were correct ones. The study also shows that youngsters can learn how to adjust to decisions made on their behalf, when they are provided with an ordered existence and become participants in a community, with opportunities to
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gradually find a positive path in life. It matters little whether this community is a strengthened foster home or a youth collective organized to combat the drug abuse of its inhabitants. The analysis also shows that when these youths become adults and look back on their lives, they overwhelmingly support the idea of guardianship for youngsters at-risk. Participation as a Social Learning Process The process of participation can also be seen as being a social learning process, where the actions taken by a youth, step by step, lead to adjustment to the social order existing in the wider community. The placement becomes a venue for negotiation, argument, and discussion, where the youngster is sometimes heard and other times not, and where she/he may be able to think about and gradually test out different choices over time. It is not always easy to make decisions when one lacks an overview of the alternatives possible for one’s own situation. This study shows that if child welfare services are able to provide a youngster with that overview, this then will likely contribute to generate a learning process and positive development. The study indicates that child welfare services should not loosen its grasp all too quickly in the face of criticism and not so well-founded beliefs that social learning processes will occur on their own. Looking back on the results of the Buskerud project, it is clear that young persons at-risk need a stable caring environment over many years, before they are ready to move out on their own. Providing complete autonomy to these youngsters is quite simply a recipe for disaster. When these youngsters grow up, it is likely that they too, like the adult informants interviewed, will point to the need for youths to have guardians and opportunities to participate in well-grounded frameworks of trust, support, and care.
NOTES 1. At present, the UN Convention on the Rights of Children and changes in the Norwegian Law Governing Children and the Norwegian Law Governing Child Welfare Services of 2003 provides the same rights to children upon reaching seven years of age. The UN Convention on the Rights of Children of 1989 stipulates that children have the right to participate in decisions affecting them (Article 12). In Section 31 of the Norwegian Law Governing Children, weight is placed upon listening to children before decisions are taken on matters of personal importance for the child. Children and youths who are contacted by child welfare services also have this right according to the Norwegian Law Governing Child Welfare Services. 2. In part due to the results of the Buskerud project, the minimum age for the incarceration of a minor was raised to 15 years of age in Norway in 1992.
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3. The diagnose-discourse was not ‘‘modern’’ at that time, in spite of the leader of the project was a psychiatric. Today probably many of the youth would have got the ADHD diagnose.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to thank Professor Michael Seltzer, Oslo University College, for his very valuable editorial help and advice. I also thank the reviewers for their important comments in revising this chapter.
REFERENCES Asbjørnslett, M., & Hemmingsson, H. (2008). Participation at school as experienced by teenagers with physical disabilities. Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 1-9. Blumer, H. (1969[1986]). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Cooley, C. H. (1909). Social organization. New York: Scribner. Ericsson, K. (1998). Gender, delinquency and child welfare. Theoretical Criminology, 2(4), 445–459. Finstad, L. (1990). Den betalte familie. Oslo: Pax A/S. Helgeland, I. M. (1989). En etterundersøkelse av ungdom i Buskerudprosjektet. Oslo: Barnevernets utviklingssenter. Helgeland, I. M. (2005). Catch 22 of research ethics: Ethical dilemmas in follow-up studies of marginal groups. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(4), 549–569. Helgeland, I. M. (2007a). Ungdom med atferdsvansker blir voksne. Hvordan kommer de inn i et positivt spor? Oslo: Unipub. Helgeland, I. M. (2007b). Unge med alvorlige atferdsvansker blir voksne. Hvordan kommer de inn i et positivt spor? En oppfølgingsstudie over 15 a˚r. Unpublished Doctor thesis, University of Oslo, Oslo. Helgeland, I. M. (2010). What works? A 15-year follow-up study of 85 young people with serious behavioral problems. Children and Youth Services Review, 32(3), 423–429. Helgeland, I. M., & Waal, H. (1989). Kan vi hjelpe ungdom med atferdsvansker? Can we help adolescents who have behavior problems? Tidsskrift for Den norske Lægeforening (14), 1509–1512. Jack, G. (1997). Discourses of child protection and child welfare. British Journal of Social Work, 27, 659–678. Jansen, A. (2010). Victim or troublemaker? Young people in residential care. Journal of Youth Studies, 13(4), 423–437. Kyvsgaard, B. (1998). Den kriminelle karriere. Copenhagen: Jurist- og økonomforbundets forlag. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (2003). Situert læring-og andre tekster. København: Reizel.
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Levin, I. (2004). Hva er sosialt arbeid? Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. McGuire, J. (2002). Integrating findings from research Reviews. In: J. McGuire (Ed.), Offender rehabilitation and treatment. Effective programmes and policies to reduce re-offending (pp. 3–38). Chicester, UK: Wiley. Mead, G. H., & Morris, C. W. (1934/1967). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nagin, D. S., & Farrington, D. P. (1992a). The stability of criminal potential from childhood to adulthood. Criminology, 30, 235–260. Nagin, D. S., & Farrington, D. P. (1992b). The onset and persistence of offending. Criminology, 30, 501–523. NOU (1985). White paper: Programs for adolescents with behavior problems: Opening for a variety of initiatives (p. 3). The Ministry of Social Affairs, Oslo. Patterson, G. R., Forgatch, M. S., Yourger, K. L., & Stoolmiller, M. (1998). Variables that indicate and maintain an early-onset trajectory for juvenile offending. Development and Psychopathology, 10(3), 531–547. Reich, J. (2010). Children’s challenges to efforts to save them: An ethnographic examination of children’s interactions with child protective social workers. Symbolic Interaction, 33(3), 412–434. Robins, L. N., & Rutter, M. (1990). Straight and devious pathways from childhood to adulthood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roche, J. (1999). Children: Rights, participation and citizenship. Childhood, 6(4), 475–493. Rutter, M., Giller, H., & Hagell, A. (1998). Antisocial behaviour by young people. The main messages from a major review of the research. London: Cambridge University Press. Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (2003). Shared beginnings, divergent lives. Delinquent boys to age 70. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Seim, S., & Slettebø, T. (Eds). (2007). Brukermedvirkning i barnevernet. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Smith, D. E. (1990). Texts, facts and femininity exploring the relations of ruling. London: Routledge. Strandbu, A. (2007). Barns deltakelse og barneperspektivet i familiera˚dsmodellen. Tromsø: Universitetet i Tromsø. Thomas, N. (2000). Children, family and the state. London: Macmillan. White, J. L., Moffitt, T. E., Earls, F., Robins, L., & Silva, P. A. (1990). How early can we tell? Predictors of childhood conduct disorder and adolescent delinquency. Criminology, 28(4), 507–533.
DO ECE PUBLIC POLICIES CONSIDER YOUNG CHILDREN’S AGENCY? A STUDY IN SA˜O PAULO, BRAZIL$ Maria Letı´ cia Nascimento ABSTRACT Purpose: The present study is derived from a research project, which aimed to verify how the ECE public network in the state of Sa˜o Paulo understand young children’s agency. Despite ECE national guidelines, some municipalities have decided to use standard textbooks, developed and commercialized by private educational organizations in the format of booklet series. These materials, referred to as Private Systems of Education (PSEs), are the same for all children, based on the idea of normal development and learning. Methods: The question that guided this inquiry was: why are these materials used? The research was organized in three stages: (1) identification of public educational networks within the State of Sa˜o Paulo that were using the PSEs in ECE; (2) analysis of the compatibility between the materials offered by $ The State of Sa˜o Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) funded the research Early Childhood Education: using booklets for early childhood and its implications for the recognition of children as developing subjects (2008–2010).
The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 287–305 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014017
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PSEs and the ECE national guidelines; (3) interpretation of why these materials are used, considering the new conceptions of childhood and ECE presented in legislation and recently published research. Findings: Concerning policy-making, the research provides corroborative evidence for how difficult it is to implement a new law. Data also revealed that some municipalities were unprepared to take over ECE. Children’s agency, in its turn, is far from the pedagogical proposals. The use of PSEs indicates a contrast between the potential of children and the opportunities that are offered to them. Thus, playing and interaction have no relevant place in everyday education. Keywords: agency; curriculum; early childhood education; public policies
INTRODUCTION Over the past 20 years, studies on early childhood education (ECE) in Brazil have grown in quantity and quality. This can be explained by (1) the promulgation of the 1988 Brazilian Federal Constitution, which established the right to education from birth, and defined cre`ches1 and preschools as social and educational rights; (2) the research in/on ECE and its importance for the development of young children; (3) the strong social pressure by women involved in social movements to get more cre`ches and preschools; (4) international laws like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) that provided a new social place for children and confirmed their right to protection, provision, and participation; (5) research in the fields of sociology of childhood and anthropology of children, which recognize children as social actors; (6) experiences, as the pedagogical and cultural project developed and implemented in Reggio Emilia’s schools, based on the image of a child who learns and grows in social relations with others. These factors have been decisive for the considerable increase in the literature on early childhood in the last two decades, and help us understand children’s agency or capacity to think and act on their own accord. In Brazil, the publication of the National Educational General Act (LDB), law number 9394, in 1996, included ECE in the national education system and determined that (1) ECE is composed by cre`ches and preschools, and it is the first stage of formal education (Articles 29 to 31); (2) Teachers must be qualified in higher education, considering the secondary school as a
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minimum2 requirement for working with ECE and early years of elementary education (Article 62); (3) Educational systems and schools are autonomous for the development of educational proposals for their communities, provided that they respect the national curricular guidelines (Articles 12 and 14); (4) Formal education becomes decentralized, that is, the municipalities are responsible for ECE, elementary and secondary school (Articles 11 and 183). These determinations caused public debate, research, and (re)formulation of policies to meet the new requirements. While the municipalities (re)organized municipal educational systems and developed municipal policies in response to legal requirements, the Ministry of Education’s secretariat of basic education defined curriculum proposals under the name of ‘‘parameter’’ or, in the case of ECE, ‘‘reference,’’ respecting different educational realities. The National Curriculum Reference for Early Childhood Education (RCNEI), organized in three volumes, was developed in 1998 under the supervision of experts, for advising the planning, development, and evaluation of educational practices and the construction of educational proposals, which shall contribute to children’s development of positive selfimage, independence and confidence in their abilities; self-discovery and understanding of the potentialities and limits of their bodies; observation and exploration of the environment, contributing to its conservation and transformation; the use of multiple languages to express their ideas, feelings, needs, and desires and to construct meanings and knowledge, and, most importantly, playing (Brazil, 1998, p.63). The first volume contains the ECE conceptions and principles,4 the second one focuses on the children’s self-construction process, and the last one is directed toward the construction of children’s different languages and presents movement, music, visual arts, oral and written language, mathematics, and society and nature as objects of knowledge. Also in 1998, the National Council of Education established the National Curricular Guidelines for Early Childhood Education (DCNEI) which, besides guiding the syllabus proposals and educational projects, established paradigms for the conception of care and education programs. According to this document, children must be respected in their rights, and all pedagogical proposals shall promote education and care practices, enabling the integration of the physical, emotional, affective, cognitive/linguistic, and social matters, in purposeful activities. Both documents – the RCNEI and the DCNEI – have a similar conception of childhood and early childhood education, that is, they stress the agency, interests, and experiences of young children, but just the second one is mandatory. The RCNEI, however, is more well known because it was distributed to all Brazilian municipalities.
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In parallel, private educational organizations – whose expansion, it could be argued, was a reflection of educational policies and the clear expression of the neoliberal philosophy impressed on the expansion of the number of schools, and their alleged quality – elaborated pedagogical materials addressing the needs of private schools. The efficiency of these materials5 was proved by the success of the schools that adopted them. Most private systems of education (PSEs) decided to commercialize them more and more, including the public networks of education.6 Little by little, the PSEs became enterprises and most of them developed ‘‘packages’’ of contents, offering materials for children’s use (booklets), teachers’ guidelines (handbooks to show how the booklets can be used), teacher trainings (with regular meetings and courses), and some PSEs offer management training and specialization courses for ECE’s coordinators as well. What is the nature of the relationship between public educational networks and private proposals? Why are public ECEs using these proposals? What are the characteristics of the materials offered? Are these materials compatible with the concept of children’s agency? These questions have been formulated when Sa˜o Paulo’s press started to report7 that 25% of the municipalities in the state of Sa˜o Paulo bought the PSEs for use in their public educational networks. The question that guided this inquiry was why are these materials used? The investigation, funded by the state of Sa˜o Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), was conducted from 2008 to 2010 in three stages: (1) identification of public educational networks within the state of Sa˜o Paulo that were using the PSEs in ECE; (2) analysis of the compatibility between the materials offered by PSEs and the ECE national guidelines; and (3) interpretation of why these materials are used, considering the new conceptions of childhood and ECE presented in legislation and recently published research.
RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT In order to identify which municipalities used PSEs, an electronic questionnaire was sent to gather data about the municipal ECE networks – number of daycare centers and preschools, presence or absence of coordination in these educational institutions, the qualification of teachers, and the development of the pedagogical proposal and which official documents support this proposal. The state of Sa˜o Paulo has 645 cities, organized in 15 administrative zones. From 6448 questionnaires sent, 147 were answered, from September
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Table 1. Population Administrative Zone 1 2 3 3a
4
Identification of Respondents’ Municipalities Which Use the PSEs. Less Than 5 Thousand Inhabitants
5 Thousand to 20 Thousand Inhabitants
20 Thousand to 100 Thousand Inhabitants
Ariranha Auriflama
Mirassol Votuporanga
Ipaussu
Sabino
6 7
Serra Azul
10 11 12 13 14
More Than 100 Thousand Inhabitants Arac- atuba
Orindiu´va Guarani d’Oeste Indiapora˜ Itaju Alvinlaˆndia Pedrinhas Paulista
5
8 9
291
Jumirim
Charqueada
Joano´polis
Avare´ Lenc- o´is Paulista Pederneiras Descalvado Santa Rosa do Viterbo Cerquilho Brotas Capivari Socorro
Indaiatuba
Pilar do Sul Juquitiba
Source: Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics – IBGE.
2008 to January 2009. Just 29 used PSEs, which is approximately 20% of the respondents’ municipalities (Table 1). Most of the respondent municipalities used official documents to design their proposals for young children education. However, one may question the consistency between these documents and the use of PSEs simultaneously, an issue that will be discussed further on in this chapter. The research aimed to identify and characterize each municipal educational network, confirming and obtaining complementary information about the education provided in daycare centers and preschools and about the professional team responsible for implementing the pedagogical practice. In addition, the questions about the curricular guidelines requested an indication of the documents that supported their policies. The data were
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Table 2. Municipality Avare´a Brotas Cerquilho Descalvado Indaiatuba Indiapora˜ Joano´polis Juquitiba Lenc- o´is Paulista Serra Azul Socorro a
Selected Cities.
Administrative Zone
Population (Source: IBGE, Population Count 2007)
PSE
5 9 8 6 10 3 12 13 5 7 10
80,026 20,996 34,769 29,533 173,508 3,880 10,671 27,777 59,366 9,107 33,080
Anglo/Entrelinhas Pueri Domus COC/NAME COC/NAME (UNO) On study COC/NAME Objetivo Positivo (None) Positivo COC/NAME OPET
Names of the cities or of PSEs are not translated.
gathered through interviews with the ECE responsible authorities. These interviews were conducted in the period May–December 2009.
Definition of Municipalities’ Selection Initially, the 29 cities that use the PSEs would be interviewed, but this was rendered impossible to do because of the incompatibility between the research schedule and the availability of the subjects. The criteria used to select the municipalities were (1) population size, (2) location in the administrative zones, and (3) use of different systems of private education. The final list is shown in Table 2. Despite differences in population, economic activity, and number of cre`ches and preschools in operation, most of these cities have prosperity in common. Just Serra Azul has a low budget, according to its Secretary of Education. The municipalities selected are small (3,380 inhabitants), medium (29,533 inhabitants), and big (173,508 inhabitants) and the selection covered 9 of the 15 zones of the state of Sa˜o Paulo. Besides, the selection of cities tried to keep the same proportion of incidence of PSEs among the 29 respondent municipalities. Before presenting the data on private educational systems, it seems interesting to show the number of children enrolled in ECE in the public educational networks visited, shown in Table 3.
0 0 0 0 0 18 0 42 616 0 137 813
Avare´ Brotas Cerquilho Descalvado Indaiatuba Indiapora˜ Joano´polis Juquitiba Lenc- o´is Pta Serra Azul Socorro Total
607 99 634 192 2,035 23 168 118 476 0 256 4,608
Urban Cre`che Full Time 1,030 518 798 650 3,782 92 220 468 1,638 268 336 9,800
Urban Preschool Part Time 429 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 72 0 108 609
Urban Preschool Full Time 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 33 33
Rural Cre`che Part Time 14 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 29
Rural Cre`che Full Time
Enrollments at ECE, by Kind of ECE.
Source: School Census/2009 – National Institute of Pedagogical Studies – INEP.
Urban Cre`che Part Time
Municipality
Table 3.
33 32 7 0 0 0 0 56 0 0 244 372
Rural Preschool Part Time 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8
Rural Preschool Full Time
2,121 664 1,439 842 5,817 133 388 684 2,802 268 1,114 16,272
Total
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Data on ECE To guarantee the reliability of the data, two municipalities were excluded: Indaiatuba and Juquitiba. This was necessary because these municipalities acknowledged the use of PSEs in their responses to the questionnaires but do not use them, in fact. The first city because it claims not to have found a suitable system yet, and the second one because they no longer use a PSE. Thus, the information will refer to nine cities: Avare´, Brotas, Cerquilho, Descalvado, Indiapora˜, Joano´polis, Lenc- o´is Paulista, Serra Azul, and Socorro. About the public networks of ECE, the interviews revealed a high demand for ECE, particularly for cre`ches, and the main economical investments go into building new schools. Interviews also showed that there is a significant difference between daycare and preschool: preschools have qualified teachers to all groups of children, whereas cre`ches have different professionals working with children – pages, monitors, nursery assistants, recreationists – not necessarily meeting the schooling qualification required by the LDB.9 This data is probably the effect of the historical difference between cre`che and preschool forged in the different conceptions of services designed for children from zero to six years old until their incorporation into the system of education (Kramer, 1995; Kulhmann Jr., 1998; Rosemberg, 2002; Oliveira, 2002; Nascimento, 2006). Since 1988, all children regardless of their social, economic, or family situation have the right to attend the same kind of early childhood program. Three cities, however, have qualified teachers to work with zero- to three-year-old children. Note that the PSEs offer training to teachers, not to all professionals.
The Booklets Offered by PSEs As the interviews revealed, the use of PSEs date to the 2000s: Cerquilho and Descalvado, 2000; Brotas and Socorro, 2004; Joano´polis, 2005; Lenc- o´is Paulista and Avare´, 2006 and 2008; Indiapora˜ and Serra Azul, 2008. This suggests that although the 1990s was the decade of the recognition of ECE as an integral part of education, the next decade was characterized by the commercialization of PSEs as pedagogical proposals for daycare and preschools. This seems to mean that commercial enterprises spotted a potential market and a 10-year period was enough to respond to legislation, by producing and distributing their materials.
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What do the booklets present as pedagogical activities? The material examined10 is directed to three-year-old children. Each booklet has activities for two months and is organized into two books: book I (oral language, body language, and visual language) and book II (mathematics, science, and important dates). All activities are printed in two typefaces, round letter and cursive style. Each page has a fill-in blank to write the child’s name. The booklets present neighborhood and school as monthly themes. The activities proposed are (1) oral language: listening to short stories and poems, talking about picture-only stories; (2) body language: tearing paper, cut-and-paste exercises, puzzles, mazes; (3) visual language: drawing, painting, cutting; (4) math: the color red, drawing the number one and a circle, and big/small, stand/sit, in/out notions; (5) science: water, fall, body hygiene, and taste (sweet/salty); (6) important dates: Carnival, Fall, Easter, Animal’s Day. The last activity of book I is a ‘‘reading passage,’’ which presents an image and requests children to write their own version of what is happening in the scene. In this case, there is a girl’s image on the swing, a heart, the words ‘‘play in,’’ and a picture of another child in a sandbox, at a playground; book II ends with mazes and activities to mark ‘‘the materials that exist in your school.’’ The booklet claims that every language must be developed through projects, but part of the material reflects the notion of entertainment and is designed in the format of children’s magazine; part reflects the notion of readiness for school and has the format of standard textbooks. This kind of activity was introduced in Brazil in the 1970s, when the preparatory period focused on repetitive activities to develop cognitive skills and learning to read and write was a way of lowering the high incidence of school failure (Kramer, 1995). The notion of readiness is related to the conception of the universal child, that is, an ideal representing what is common to all individual subjects in the same developmental stage.11 According to Jenks (2005, p. 24), ‘‘The fact of natural [development] process overcomes the value of real social worlds. And the normality of actual children becomes scrutinized in terms of the norms predicted by developmental psychology.’’ As Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence (2003, p. 67) state, ‘‘In this construction, the child is frequently reduced to separate and measurable categories, such as social development, intellectual development, motor development.’’ The focus on readiness for school reinforces the schoolifying of the early childhood years. This approach confirms the notion that young children develop basic knowledge and skills in a continuum, and this should be
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reflected in the organization of elementary schools, kindergarten, and prekindergarten (OECD, 2006). Although Murphey and Burns (2002) argue that readiness for school is not simply a matter of alphabetical knowledge, or even letter-sound correspondence or other predominantly cognitive accomplishments. It includes social–emotional abilities, dispositions to learning and communication skills, motor development, and physical health. This conception reinforces the ‘‘preprimary tradition’’ (Bennett, 2005), that is, a teacherdirected approach according to which the ‘‘children’s performance is often benchmarked and assessed via prescribed targets generally pertaining to cognitive development’’ (Dahlberg, 2009, p. 229). Data revealed that cre`ches and preschools use the booklets, but they are prevalent in preschool, according to information obtained, indicating its use even with the three-year-olds.
Compatibility Between PSEs and ECE Guidelines About the pedagogical orientation, despite the fact that most municipalities referred to the official documents in the questionnaire, the RCNEI is the effective guide to the public networks. This document is controversial and presents ambiguity in (1) its nature – is it a reference or a handbook? – and (2) the concepts of childhood and ECE objectives present variation ‘‘ranging between criticism to certain views and the reproduction of patterns’’ (Cerisara, 1999, p. 37). One may ask whether the main purpose of the RCNEI is to establish a conception of childhood and ECE or a curricular organization in areas of knowledge, as oral and written language, movement, nature and society, and so on. Even though some Brazilian researchers have criticized the RCNEI because of its ambiguity (see Cerisara, 1999; Rocha, 1999; Vasconcellos, Aquino, & Lobo, 2003), it has a clear official position: children are social actors, protagonists in their process of socialization and learning. However, the analysis of the PSEs showed that there is a clear difference between the RCNEI and the booklets: the former presents suggestions of activities (objectives, content, and didactic orientations) and the latter defines the teaching of specific school-related skills, such as learning the alphabet, numbers, colors, and so on. It is possible to question the inconsistency between the concept of children’s agency and the adoption of PSEs, which are based on the notion of universal child. In the interviews, when asked about this matter, all the
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educational authorities said there was no inconsistency. This statement suggests two hypotheses: (1) the RCNEI has not been read in its entire extent and (2) it is used just to demarcate areas of knowledge adequate to young children, a possibility strengthened by the Socorro’s educational team: ‘‘the RCNEI clearly states what we have to work within the different age groups, and the material puts it into practice.’’ Probably, the RCNEI’s concepts go unnoticed or/and it is used due to its organization in areas of knowledge, named to please the teachers, and to camouflage the anticipation of schooling, that is, the dominant notion of education as transmission and reproduction of content knowledge. Despite the fact that this interpretation takes on characteristics of speculation, it is worth mentioning because it suggests how concepts can be manipulated and transformed into commodities. Why do public networks use private, commercial materials in ECE? The interviews offer four main reasons: (1) the teachers are not prepared, they lack experience, and they lack readiness to design appropriate activities for ECE (Avare´, Indiapora˜, Joano´polis, and Lenc- o´is Paulista). Thus, in addition to providing the materials per se, the systems offer guidance/ monitoring in using them, answering questions, suggesting how to develop the activities and how to evaluate the children. Another reason seems to be the fact that (2) the booklets correspond to the curriculum proposed by the pedagogical project of the municipality, which, in turn, is taken from the RCNEI (Brotas, Descalvado, and Lenc- o´is Paulista), particularly its third volume. It may be added that (3) the system offers flexibility in terms of content – and form, as in Descalvado – according to the needs of the municipality (Cerquilho, Indiapora˜, and Lenco´is Paulista). The understanding information that booklets guarantee the minimum content or that through the use of these materials children have a continuation/standardization of contents (Avare´, Brotas, Cerquilho, Joano´polis, and Socorro) reinforces the importance of cognitive knowledge to these public networks. The networks have yet another reason: (4) the use of the same PSE in a public and in a private school supposedly makes these two institutions similar, a resemblance with a highly political connotation (Descalvado, Lenc- o´is Paulista). Families become more satisfied and may monitor the performance of their children (Avare´, Descalvado, Indiapora˜, Joano´polis, and Lenc- o´is Paulista). It is interesting to note that when Descalvado broke with the adopted PSE, families pressured the Department of Education and the municipality replaced it after six months, according to the interview. The political force, perhaps more than the pedagogical one, also appears in the
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testimony of Joano´polis’ Secretary of Education, when referring to the potential improvement in standards achieved by the local government in the Index of Basic Education Development (Ideb12): ‘‘I’m afraid that if we take away the booklets the Ideb will fall.’’ How could she respond to a fall in the index as a result of deleting the system? Once more, it may be argued that the ‘‘readiness for school’’ model is powerful because it holds out the promise of educating children to enter primary school already prepared to read and write, and able to conform to normal classrooms procedures (OECD, 2006). The interviews revealed that the objective of ECE, in general, is to prepare young children for the elementary school: Serra Azul recognizes it; Descalvado works with psychomotricity as a support for the development of concepts, skills, and abilities; Joano´polis emphasizes the development of motor coordination and habit formation. In all of these municipalities, the content is provided by PSEs. According to OECD (2006, p. 59), ‘‘one can distinguish two approaches [of early childhood pedagogical practices and traditions] across countries’’: (1) The preprimary tradition (Bennett, 2005, p. 64) which focuses on cognitive goals: ‘‘The emphasis placed in more focused skills and school-like learning areas, e.g. mathematical development, language and literacy skills, with children’s life in the centre and the range of experiences offered to them playing a more secondary role’’; (2) The social pedagogical tradition (Bennett, 2005) with broad developmental goals: ‘‘physical and motor development, socio-emotional development; personal and social skills; artistic and cultural development; and authentic [through lived situations] approaches to literacy, number and science thinking’’ (OECD, 2006, p. 63). In this sense, data indicated that the first approach is still the choice of the municipalities, so ‘‘the natural learning strategies of young children – play, exploration of outdoors and freedom of movement, relations and discussions with other children within the classroom – are not encouraged’’ (OECD, 2006, p. 62). Nonetheless, children’s play is present in the statements. Avare´ highlights play, movement, and symbolic thought in daily activities; Indiapora˜ reinforces that younger children have the opportunity to experience the fun and play (while older children are evaluated according to the technical criteria provided by the method, which assesses reading proficiency in age-related levels); Serra Azul offers an ‘‘educational play through small projects [y] which integrate learning through play and the content-driven booklets. For example, circles on the ground, working with geometric shapes and logical blocks.’’ Playing and interaction as axes of teaching practices, according to the current DCNEI
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(2009, Article 9), or as the basis for understanding social relations among peers, according to social studies of childhood, have no place in everyday education. Maybe many teachers are not prepared yet to meet the needs of the very young and still prioritize the training of skills required for school. Public networks, compromised with the PSE, seek to ensure a certain pedagogical identity, which appears in the remarks made concerning the organization/composition of the material offered and how it is complemented: Avare´ reports that there is a plan of activities which includes both booklets and play; Brotas says teachers have autonomy to work with other contents; Cerquilho points out an environmental project developed simultaneously; Indiapora˜ has a drama project; Lenc- o´is Paulista says teachers develop pedagogical situations to complete the use of the booklets; Serra Azul emphasizes that teachers do not rely exclusively on the material, developing small projects. The only municipality that presents a critique of the system is Avare´, indicating that the use of booklets results in mechanical work, which leaves no space for creativity. Still, the municipality keeps the adopted PSE.
SOME CONSIDERATIONS The interviews have shown that children’s agency – and their desire and curiosity for learning – is not the main objective of these nine municipalities. Young children are not seen as co-constructors of their learning, and the data showed little evidence for Dahlberg’s conclusions (2009, p. 230): [y] recent ethnographic research related to the field of sociology of childhood challenges the idea of viewing children as passive recipients of pre-constituted and unquestionable knowledge transmitted by teachers with a privileged voice of authority and a privileged relation to the meaning of knowledge.
According to the educational authorities interviewed, the adoption of the PSEs is caused especially by poor teacher training. At the same time, the material ensures that children have daily activities, preparing them for elementary school. Despite several national and international studies conducted and published in the last decade, or the documents issued by the Ministry of Education, or the legislation which presents a clear conception of childhood and ECE, some public educational networks of the state of Sa˜o Paulo have the development of readiness for school as an important aim, which justifies the use of PSEs in ECE. One could argue that this preparatory or anticipatory nature is an answer to official evaluation
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through standardized tests like ‘‘Provinha Brasil.’’13 In this scenario, there is a genuine ambiguity in the system of education that, on the one hand, proposes to consider the characteristics and needs of each educational environment (Brazil, 1996, Articles 12 and 14), and, on the other hand, evaluates every child by the same standardized test. ECE is different from primary school, as Rocha (2001)puts it, [y] while school has the student as subject and its main object is teaching in different areas through classes, daycare and pre-school have as object the educational relations, locked in a collective living space in which the child from 0 to 6 years of age is the subject (or until the moment he/she enters school). (p. 31)
This approach considers children play and social development, reinforcing children’s agency. Thus, it is difficult to conceive of ECE as preparation for the subsequent stages of education; it has its own characteristics and involves both adults – teachers and families – and children themselves in proposing projects and meaningful, relevant, and contextualized activities. This is the main purpose of the recent updated publication of the DCNEI (2009) that defines the curriculum in ECE as a set of practices that seek to articulate children’s experience and knowledge and the society’s cultural, artistic, scientific, and technological knowledge. Such practices are accomplished by children in social relationships with peers and teachers and affect the construction of their identities (Brazil, 2009a, p. 6). It is also relevant to consider the social studies of childhood in acknowledging that children shall be recognized as a specific group that produces and reproduces social life. This means recognizing children as active people in the ‘‘construction and determination of their own social lives, the lives of those around them and the societies in which they live’’ (James & Prout, 1997, p. 8). In other words, it means understanding children as co-builders of society (Christensen & Prout, 2005; Dahlberg et al., 2003), as social actors. As Mayall (2002) states, ‘‘it is clear enough, without carrying out formal research studies, that children are social actors, that is, they take part in family relationships from the word go; they express their wishes, demonstrate strong attachments, jealousy and delight, seek justice’’ (quoted by James, 2009, pp. 40–41). As a matter of fact, social relationships and agency are present in children’s lives. An ECE guided by this conception of childhood suggests: [y] a curriculum sustained by relationships, interactions and educational practices purposefully focused on the concrete experiences of everyday life, to learn the culture, the living space of collective life and for the production of narratives, individual and collective, through different languages (Brazil, 2009b).
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This suggestion is very similar to OECD’s definition of broad developmental goals, which, in other words, suggest children agency as the core of ECE. In this sense, the framework presented in the interviews poses an enormous challenge to build a truly meaningful ECE. There is a deep contradiction between the need for positive numbers in elementary school and the development of the identity of ECE. As Moss (2008, pp. 227–228) points out, This fundamental difference of orientation is reflected in other key areas: curriculum (detailed prescription, or short framework); learning (focus on learning and skills in areas useful for school with clear and mainly cognitive learning goals, or a focus on broad developmental goals and a holistic approach); methods of working; and the education and concept of the professional worker (teacher or pedagogue).
Thus, the question that arises is what is the probability of building a pedagogical project and, yet, keeping the ‘‘partnership’’ with the PSEs? Convinced that (1) their teachers are poorly prepared/have little experience in working with ECE; (2) the curriculum proposed by the ‘‘RCNEI’’ is appropriately organized in the booklets content; (3) there is flexibility in the PSEs materials, adapted according to local or regional needs; and (4) the community appreciates and endorses the work, the Secretaries of Education believe that the ‘‘partnership’’ with the PSEs is not only possible but positive. However, no or little thinking goes into answering for whom this may be positive. Finally, as Sa˜o Paulo’s press reported in 2007, 25% of the municipalities of the state of Sa˜o Paulo adopted booklets, and that the PSEs have increased their activities as synonymous of efficiency and quality. The research worked with 20% of respondent’s municipalities. Results confirmed that ECE is in serious danger, despite all the research produced and published, the ‘‘National Curricular Guidelines for ECE’’ and the legislation. It means that the conception of the universal child prevails over children as subjects, as social actors, and as co-participants in their processes of socialization and learning.
CONCLUSION Do ECE public policies consider young children’s agency? Concerning policy making, the research provides corroborative evidence for how difficult it is to implement a new law. On the one hand, it can be explained by the fact that Brazil has around 5,500 municipalities; on the other hand, data revealed that there is a strong culture of preschool as a training of skills
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required for school. Moreover, there is a misunderstanding about RCNEI’s orientations, which contributes to different interpretations of its content. In this sense, any official guideline – even a ‘‘reference’’ – must not be ambiguous and should strongly stress its conception of childhood and ECE. Data also revealed that some municipalities were unprepared to take over ECE. Instead of developing pedagogical proposals, they bought PSEs without questioning the interests, intentions, and practices of such companies or critically reviewing the educational standard of quality of their materials, that is, the authorities did not evaluate the material pedagogically, ethically, or administratively, considering their own necessities. Children’s agency, in its turn, is far from the pedagogical proposals. The use of PSEs indicates a contrast between the potential of children and the opportunities that are offered to them. Although the booklets suggest project work and claim their activities provide opportunities for the development of verbal and nonverbal language (such as body language and musical language), the content examined shows that the activities develop cognitive skills, reading, and writing. Thus, playing and interaction have no relevant place in everyday education. With the ultimate goal of providing quality education for our children, the research, in combination with other studies that investigate ECE, could be helpful to promote debates and provide alternative proposals, eventually leading to an improvement of ECE.
NOTES 1. In this chapter, cre`che and daycare are synonymous and refer to similar educational institutions. 2. Due to the characteristics of the Brazilian context, the law admits that professionals with the secondary school diploma may work in ECE. 3. The municipal educational systems include: I – the institutions of primary, secondary, and early childhood education maintained by the municipal government; II – the educational institutions created and maintained by the private initiative; III – municipal education offices. 4. Children’s dignity and rights shall be respected concerning their individual, social, economic, cultural, ethnic, religious differences; children’s right to play, recognized as a particular form of expression, thought, interaction, and communication; children’s access to sociocultural goods, expanding their expression, communication, social interaction, thought, ethics, and aesthetics development; children’s socialization through their participation and integration in diverse social practices, without discrimination; attention to essential health care related to survival and development of their identity (RCNEI, v. 1, p. 13).
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5. These materials often focus on language/literacy and cognition/general knowledge areas, probably trying to ensure that all young children acquire basic knowledge and skills to move on to elementary education, as this research indicates. 6. ‘‘Teaching with trademark’’ and ‘‘teaching with a brand’’ are terms used for these systems to denote quality and accountability. Such a denotation of the brand arouses an illusion that the ‘‘system’’ sold to public schools is the same that is offered in private schools of the sellers or their affiliates (Tredici, 2007). 7. The first news is from January 2006, when the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported that there were 129 municipalities using the PSEs. 8. The capital, Sa˜o Paulo, was out of the research scope, because of two main reasons: first, no booklet is adopted by this educational system; second, the focus of the research lies on inner cities. 9. The LDB foresaw by 2006 all working educators in ECE must have, at least, a secondary school level certificate or must have been prepared by in-service training (LDB, Article 87, y4). 10. Alvarenga’s research report (2010). 11. Based on Piaget’s theory, ‘‘even though Piaget himself never put much stress on stages’’ (Dahlberg, 1995, quoted by Dahlberg et al., 2003, p. 66). 12. The Index of Basic Education Development (Ideb) was created in 2007 to measure the quality of every school and every educational system in Brazil. The indicator is calculated based on student performance in tests designed and administered by the Ministry of Education and on approval rates. The index is measured every two years. 13. A free translation of the name given to this standardized test is ‘‘Brazil’s Little Test.’’ It is developed by National Institute of Pedagogical Studies (INEP) and distributed by the Ministry of Education for all municipal education departments, state and Federal Districts. This is the diagnostic evaluation of the literacy level of children enrolled in the second year of schooling in Brazilian public schools.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to acknowledge and appreciate the financial funding provided by the state of Sa˜o Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). Also the English review made by Professor Lı´ via de Arau´jo Donnini Rodrigues (main reviewer) and Adriana Weigel, from Faculdade de Educac- a˜o da Universidade de Sa˜o Paulo (FEUSP).
REFERENCES Alvarenga, A. R. (2010). Uso de apostilas na Educac- a˜o Infantil: O que oferecem as empresas que desenvolvem os Sistemas Privados de Ensino? [Using booklets in Early Childhood Education: What do offer the Private Systems of Education?]. Research Report. Sa˜o Paulo: FAPESP.
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Bennett, J. (2005). Curriculum issues in national policy-making. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 13(2), 5–23Available at http://www.informaworld.com/ smpp/titleBdb=allBcontent=g779610114. Accessed January 11, 2011. Brazil. (1996). Lei 9394, de 20 de dezembro de 1996. Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educac- a˜o Nacional. (National Educational General Act, law number 9394). Available at http:// portal.mec.gov.br/arquivos/pdf/ldb.pdf. Accessed January 11, 2011. Brazil. (1998). Ministe´rio da Educac- a˜o (Ministry of Education). Referencial Curricular Nacional para a Educac- a˜o Infantil. (National Curriculum Reference for Early Childhood Education). Brası´ lia: MEC/SEF/DPE/COEDI, 3v. Brazil. (2009a). Conselho Nacional de Educac- a˜o (National Council of Education). Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a Educac- a˜o Infantil. (National Curricular Guidelines for Early ChildhoodEducation).Availableathttp://portal.mec.gov.br/index.php?option=com_content &view=article&id=12992:diretrizes-para-a-educacao-basica&catid=323:orgaos-vinculados. Accessed January 11, 2011. Brazil. (2009b). Ministe´rio da Educac- a˜o (Ministry of Education). Projeto de Cooperac- a˜o Te´cnica MEC e UFRGS para Construc- a˜o de Orientac- o˜es Curriculares para a Educac- a˜o Infantil. Pra´ticas Cotidianas na Educac- a˜o Infantil – Bases para a Reflexa˜o sobre as Orientac- o˜es Curriculares. [Technical Cooperation Project for MEC and UFRGS Construction Curriculum Guidelines for Early Childhood Education. Everyday practices in Early Childhood Education – Basis for reflection on the curriculum guidelines]. Available at http://portal.mec.gov.br/ dmdocuments/relat_seb_praticas_cotidianas.pdf. Accessed January 11, 2011. Cerisara, A. B. (1999). A produc- a˜o acadeˆmica na a´rea da educac- a˜o infantil a partir da ana´lise de pareceres sobre o referencial curricular nacional da educac- a˜o infantil: primeiras aproximac- o˜es. [The academic production in the area of early childhood education from the analysis of opinions on national curriculum reference for early childhood education: First approximations]. In: A. L. G. Faria & M. S. Palhares (Orgs.), Educac- a˜o Infantil po´s LDB: rumos e desafios. [Early childhood education after LDB: Routes and challenges]. Campinas/Sa˜o Carlos/Floriano´polis: Autores Associados/FE/UNICAMP/Editora da UFSCar/Editora da UFSC, pp. 19–49. Dahlberg, G. (1995). Everything is a beginning and everything is dangerous: Some reflections on the Reggio Emilia experience. In: H. Penn (Ed.), Early childhood services: Theory, policy and practice (pp. 175–183). Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Dahlberg, G. (2009). Policies in early childhood education and care. In: J. Qvortrup, W. A. Corsaro & M.-S. Honig (Eds), The Palgrave handbook of childhood studies (pp. 228–237). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Dahlberg, G., Moss, P., & Pence, A. (2003). Qualidade na Educac- a˜o da Primeira Infaˆncia: Perspectivas po´s-modernas [[Beyond quality in early childhood education and care: Postmodern perspectives]]. Porto Alegre, Brazil: Artmed. James, A., & Prout, A. (1997). Constructing and reconstructing childhood, contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Jenks, C. (2005). Childhood (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Kramer, S. (1995). A polı´tica do pre´-escolar no Brasil: A arte do disfarce [Preschool policy in Brazil: The art of pretense]. (5th ed.). Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil: Cortez. Kuhlmann, M., Jr. (1998). Infaˆncia e educac- a˜o infantil: Uma abordagem histo´rica [Childhood and early childhood education: A historical approach]. Porto Alegre, Brazil: Mediac- a˜o. Mayall, B. (2002). Towards a sociology of childhood, thinking from children’s lives. London: Open University Press.
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Moss, P. (2008). What future for the relationship between early childhood education and care and compulsory schooling? Research in Comparative and International Education, 3(3), 224–234. Available at www.wwwords.co.uk/RCIE Murphey, D. A., & Burns, C. E. (2002). Development of a comprehensive community assessment of school readiness. Early Childhood Research and Practices, 4(2). Available at http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v4n2/murphey.html. Accessed January 11, 2011. Nascimento, M. L. B. P. (2006). Creches: Caminhos de inclusa˜o e exclusa˜o da pequena infaˆncia [Cre`ches: Paths of inclusion and exclusion of early childhood]. In: B. R. P. Saeta & M. L. B. P. Nascimento (Eds), Inclusa˜o e exclusa˜o: Mu´ltiplos contornos da educac- a˜o brasileira. [Inclusion and exclusion: Multiple contours of Brazilian education] (pp. 119–133). Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil: Expressa˜o e Arte. Oliveira, Z. M. R. (2002). Educac- a˜o infantil: Fundamentos e me´todos [Early childhood education: Bases and methods]. Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil: Cortez. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). (2006). Starting strong II (Available at http://browse.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/pdfs/browseit/9106031E.PDF. Accessed January 11, 2011). Paris, France: OECD. Rocha, E. A. C. (1999) A pesquisa em educac- a˜o infantil no Brasil (Research on early childhood education). Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Cieˆncias da Educac- a˜o, Nu´cleo de Publicac- o˜es. Rocha, E. A. C. (2001). A pedagogia e a educac- a˜o infantil [Pedagogy and early childhood education]. Revista Brasileira de Educac- a˜o, 16, 27–34. Rosemberg, F. (2002). Organizac- o˜es multilaterais, estado e polı´ tica de educac- a˜o infantil [Multilateral organizations, state and early childhood education policy]. Cadernos de Pesquisa, 115, 25–63. Tredici, T. C. (2007). Adoc- a˜o pelos municı´ pios do Estado de Sa˜o Paulo de contratac- o˜es de ‘‘Sistemas Apostilados de Ensino’’ de empresas privadas para aplicac- a˜o nas escolas pu´blicas municipais. Trabalho apresentado a` Secretaria Diretoria Geral do Tribunal de Contas do Estado de Sa˜o Paulo. (Adoption and hiring of ‘‘Private Systems of Education’’ from private companies by municipalities of Sa˜o Paulo for use in public schools. Paper presented to the Secretary General Board of the Court of the State of Sa˜o Paulo). Available at http://www.tce.sp.gov.br/artigos/ ArtPublicTompsonGestaoDemocEscolaSistemaApostilado.pdf. Accessed January 11, 2011. Vasconcellos, V. M. R., Aquino, L. M. L., & Lobo, A. P. S. L. L. (2003). A integrac- a˜o da educac- a˜o infantil ao sistema de ensino: Exigeˆncias e possibilidades po´s-LDB [The integration of early childhood education in the education system: Requirements and possibilities after LDB]. In: D. B. de Souza & L. C. M. de Faria (Eds), Desafios da Educac- a˜o Municipal (Challenges of local education) (pp. 235–258). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: DP&A.
POLITICAL AND LEGAL EFFECTS OF THE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD IN LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES Maria Guiomar da Cunha Frota ABSTRACT Purpose – This chapter investigates the possibilities and limits for effectuating the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in Latin American countries. Methods – The following dimensions are questioned: (a) the monitoring process of the CRC; (b) the contrast between the social organization of children’s rights in the National State and the international pressures to incorporate foreign law into the national legislation; (c) the role of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the processes of child rights violations. Findings – The main conclusion is that the possibilities of effectuating international treaties on human rights are different at three scales. Within international organizations (specifically within the United Nations and its Committees on Human Rights), it is possible to create conventions and
The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 14, 307–323 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1108/S1537-4661(2011)0000014018
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monitor them, making use of the reports. At the nation-state scale, it is possible to formally incorporate the rights of the foreign law into national constitutions, but the punishment related to the violations of these rights will depend on the hierarchical relationship between domestic and foreign law. At the interregional scale, one can observe the effective actions of the juridical institutions (specifically of the Commission and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights) to punish and compensate the victims that suffered violations of the rights guaranteed by international treaties. Keywords: Child rights; Latin America; Human Rights; Inter-American Court of Human Rights
INTRODUCTION The twentieth century was marked by internationalization and specialization of rights, which are two important trends in relation to human rights. At the institutional level, these trends were manifested in several ways, such as the following: a. The internationalization of rights through the broad ratification of international treaties by UN member states and the proliferation of forums and summits that have proposed ways of implementing and monitoring the treaties; b. The specialization of affirmative treaties and conventions specifically oriented for historically excluded social segments for those whose status of citizenship has been well overdue, and for the most vulnerable social segments, in the face of the persisting attacks on their integrity as human beings. The sociohistorical processes that shaped these trends, as well as those which have motivated and stimulated the expansion of rights, have been extensively investigated by the social sciences and philosophy (Marshall, 1967; Bobbio, 1992; Bendix, 1967; Giddens, 1982). The central question for the twenty-first century is to identify the limits and possibilities for effectuating international treaties on human rights. The same question has motivated the writing of this chapter, yet it focuses specifically on children’s rights. The legal framework of the empirical
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research1 is composed of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) of 1989 and the American Convention on Human Rights of 1969. The main objective of this research is to clarify and question the following dimensions: a. The monitoring process of the CRC through the Latin American State Part Reports and their political effects; b. The contrast between the internal social organization of children’s rights and the international pressures to incorporate international law into the national legislation; c. The role of the Inter-American Commission and Inter-American Court of Justice in the punishment and reparation processes for violating the rights of the child. The first section of this chapter addresses the theoretical discussion on the relationship between the international human rights system and the possibilities of incorporating and effectuating human rights within the legal framework of the nation-state. The second section presents the CRC, the monitoring process established by the CRC and its repercussions in Latin American countries. The third section discusses an important case that exemplifies the ability to repair and punish violations of children’s rights under the Inter-American legal system – ‘‘Caso de los Nin˜os de la Calle (Villagra´n Morales and others) versus Guatemala.’’
THE INCORPORATION OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS TREATIES AT THE NATION-STATE SCALE The recognition of children as subjects of rights by the United Nations occurred in the second half of the twentieth century from two legal frameworks – the Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1959 and the CRC of 1989. The CRC is regarded as the international instrument with the highest consensus since it was ratified by all member states of the United Nations with the exception of the United States of America. From the field of institutional sociology, two important studies – Bennet and Meyer (1978) and Goodman and Jinks (2008) – were examined not only to understand the ratification process but also to analyze the possibilities of effectuating CRC at the nation-state scale. These authors discuss the
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following key questions to investigate the incorporation of human rights treaties by the nation state: 1. Does the incorporation of human rights by the nation-states reflect a social internal organization or external forces of the world modern system? 2. What are the processes (coercion, pressure, or acculturation) that may explain the incorporation of human rights by the states? To what extent the operation of different processes influences the State’s enforcement of these rights? 3. Is the gap between legal provisions and enforcement of rights under the nation-state explained by the incorporation of human rights regimes into the constitutions of nation-states under the influence of the world system? According to Bennet and Meyer (1978), the social role of childhood in the modern world is increasingly differentiated from adulthood and brought under the jurisdiction of the state. This is not primarily a social organizational process but an institutional or ideological one. This distinction manifests itself in the different roles and tasks assigned by state institutions to children and adults, ranging from schools and prisons to the specific sets of rules and ideologies that define young people into different categories and, consequently, align special rights and obligations. The hypothesis formulated by the authors is as follows: The institutional rules defining childhood parallel the spread of the institutional system of technically advanced society, whose central components consist of the nation-state and its citizenship variant of individualism. As the technical system expands, childhood ideology becomes worldwide, associated with state authority rather than with variations in local social and economic organization. (Bennet & Meyer, 1978, p. 798)
To support the expansion of the ideology of differentiated childhood by the world system, Bennet and Meyer reviewed the clauses related to childhood in the constitutions of all independent countries between 1870 and 1970 at 20-year intervals. To codify the constitutions, eight indicators2 were selected, based on the citations that referred to the childhood theme. The authors reported an average growth of occurrences in the ‘‘child as a distinct biography’’ indicator in all countries, regardless of the date they gained independence, proving, thus, that the ideology of differentiated childhood has been incorporated in the State’s structure of several countries. To determine the association between the allocation of a differentiated status for childhood and the growth of state authority, the authors built a global childhood index, aggregating indicators related to childhood citations
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and the state functions regarding to the child.3 The overall index has nearly tripled over the past century (1870–1970) and the nations that integrated most recently into the world system had a higher ‘‘global childhood index’’ when compared to older nations. In relation to the worldwide spread of the ideology of differentiated childhood, Bennet and Meyer’s (1978) hypothesis is The periphery tends in general to adopt ideology more expansively than the core because ideology development is much easier to institute than organizational changes, and peripheral states try at least to give the strong impression that they are mobilizing in the accepted way. (Bennet & Meyer, 1978, p. 800)
When countries were classified according to their importance in terms of trade volume4 in the world system, the authors found that on average, the peripheral countries have an overall higher global childhood index than core countries. Thirty years after Bennett and Meyer, Goodman and Jinks’ study (2008) analyzed the incorporation of human rights through processes of acculturation, defending the hypothesis that human rights law incorporated by acculturation, rather than through an internal social organization process, neither prevents nor causes a distance between the law and its effectuation. According to the authors: (y) acculturation is a distinct social process by which international law influences states and that human rights law might harness this mechanism in designing effective global regimes. (y) Many critics suggest, and understandably so, that acculturation should not guide the design of international human rights regimes since any such regime would promote only shallow reforms – further entrenching the gap between formal commitments and actual practices (y). In reply, we argue that acculturation generally does not impede progress toward deeper reform and, indeed, will often facilitate it. (Goodman & Jinks, 2008, p. 748)
To support this argument, Goodman and Jinks (2008) indicate that after the legal incorporation of human rights in the constitutions of peripheral or semi-peripheral countries, some advances occurred. Nevertheless, they warn that these advances cannot be identified through comparative synchronic analyses between countries, but rather through the application of diachronic analysis taking into account the history of a country over time. In this chapter, we understand that the process of ratification of the rights of children by the nation-state can partly be explained, as suggested by Bennett and Meyer, as a response of the modern State to the world
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ideological pressures that assimilate modernity and social control of children by the State. However, in order to comprehend the different modes of incorporating international norms to the nation-state’s legal framework and to shine light on the possibility for these policies to take effect, other important variables need to be included such as a. The forms of participation of governmental and nongovernmental organizations (NGO) in the treaty drafting, ratification, and in their incorporation into the domestic law; b. The presence of different legal positions in the national constitutions with regard to the relationship between foreign and domestic law; c. The forms of childhood socialization and regulation in the country’s historical and cultural context including the analysis of the constitutions in terms of childhood representation and allocation of childhood responsibilities by public and private actors; and d. The different legal and institutional resources that can enable the monitoring of the implementation process of rights, as well as the compensation for the violation thereof. As such, an effort will be made in the following sections to demonstrate the analytical relevance of these variables and how they can be related to an interpretation of the complex problem of effectuating the rights of the child. The key question guiding the analysis is the relationship between the global system and the nation-state with regard to the process of incorporating, effectuating, and monitoring international human rights treaties. The Convention on the Rights of the Child: Background of the International System and Incorporation in Latin American Countries The CRC is based on a legal doctrine that ensures the integral protection of the child and recognizes that the child is a subject of rights and not a tutelary object of the State and of his/her parents. The fundamental principles established by the Convention include 1. Principle of nondiscrimination: ‘‘States that Parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child’s or his or her parent’s or legal guardian’s race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status.’’ (Article 2)
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2. Principle of best interests: ‘‘In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.’’ (Article 3) 3. Principle of participation and free expression: ‘‘States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child (y). For this purpose, the child shall in particular be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly, or through a representative or an appropriate body (...)’’ (Article 12) 4. Principle of implementation obligation: ‘‘States Parties shall undertake all appropriate legislative, administrative, and other measures for the implementation of the rights recognized in the present Convention. With regard to economic, social and cultural rights, States Parties shall undertake such measures to the maximum extent of their available resources and, where needed, within the framework of international co-operation.’’ (Article 4)
Out of 195 UN member states, the only two that have not ratified the CRC are Somalia and the United States of America. To monitor the member states’ implementation of the Convention, Article 43 determines the creation of the Committee on Rights of the Child which consists of 18 specialists indicated and elected by the member states. The members of the Committee are not legally representatives of neither their countries nor any other organization and are selected strictly based on their personal capacity. However, for the selection of Committee members, the countries tend to nominate candidates based on the definition of regional, economic, social, and cultural factors. The Committee monitors compliance of the member states with the obligations set forth by the Convention mainly through the analysis of periodic reports submitted by States parties. Verhellen (1996) considers the monitoring process based on the reports of a social resource (social binding), based on the moral authority of the Committee. By ratifying the Convention, the member states are formally obliged to report the implementation process and have agreed that the process of monitoring results should be public, that is, open to social participation. With regard to the legal measures, the author believes that they can only be enforced individually by the member states, since ‘‘the Convention does not set forth legally binding monitoring instruments’’ (Verhellen, 1996, p. 17).
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Nongovernmental organizations act together with the Committee, sending alternative reports and giving opinions about the implementation of the Convention during the evaluation process set forth by the Committee. The process of monitoring the CRC can therefore be investigated by analyzing the official and alternative reports which are regularly elaborated by countries that have ratified the CRC, and which are also available on the UN and Child Ritghs Information Network (CRIN) Web sites. Based on studies using samples of South American countries (Frota, 1995; Frota & Quintao, 2007; Frota da, 2008),5 we could observe that the monitoring process has become a social resource with moral effects, in unison with Verhellen’s interpretation. Nevertheless, our studies show that these reports can go beyond the social dimension and, thus, become political resources, as long as they are duly assumed by organizations that work in the children rights field. Government reports provide very precise data on the incorporation of the CRC in the context of the national legislation. The reports identify what principles of CRC were included in the constitutions and also whether specific institutions were created to monitor the implementation of the rights. This can be observed in a study (Frota da, 2008) that researched the results of the reports of South American countries sent to the Committee for the following periods: Chile (1990); Peru (1992); Bolivia (1992); Colombia (1993); Argentina (1993); Paraguay (1993); Uruguay (1995); Ecuador (1996); Venezuela (1997); Suriname (1998); Guiana (2003); Brazil (2003). The study found that the majority of the countries investigated in South America modified their national legislation to comply with the CRC between 1990 and 2003 (Table 1). Considering the 12 countries analyzed, the following observations stand out: a. Nine out of 12 countries have modified their legislation to comply with the CRC and have created organizations to monitor the implementation of the rights of the child; b. Three countries – Chile, Uruguay, and Venezuela – were in the process of modifying their legislation at the time they submitted the first report to the Committee; c. Eight out of 12 countries quote the Article of their legal constitutions in which the child is recognized as a subject of rights; d. Only three countries – Bolivia, Guyana, and Venezuela – consider the child as the object of authority of the state.
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Table 1. Countries/ Ratification
Modifications in the Legislation and Monitoring Organizations.
Modifications in the Legislation
Carried In out process 1. Argentina 2. Bolivia 3. Brazil 4. Colombia 5. Chile 6. Ecuador 7. Guyana 8. Paraguay 9. Peru 10. Suriname 11. Uruguay 12. Venezuela
X X X X
Total 12 (100%)
9
Organizations to Monitor Implementation Yes
No
X X X X X
X X X X X
3
Tutelary object
Not specified
X
X
X X X X X
X X 9
Subject of rights X
X X X X X X X
Concept Definition of a Child
3
X X X X X 8
3
1
Source: Table created by the author based on data extracted from the Members State Reports. Available at: http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/index.htm
Therefore, one can observe that, at the formal level, most South American countries adapted their legislations introducing the concept that the child is a subject of rights. These results solidify Bennet and Meyer’s argument that peripheral countries tend to readily embrace ‘‘the ideology of differentiated childhood’’ currently in vigor in the world system. However, it still remains to be verified whether the countries have also introduced changes in their respective institutional frameworks, so as to facilitate the concretization of children’s rights. The reports of South American countries highlighted some administrative measures including the elaboration of policies (action plans, programs, and projects) and the creation of institutional bodies to support and monitor the implementation of the CRC (councils, commissions, offices, committees, and prosecution offices). Eight out of 12 countries created at least one body with this function and the development of ‘‘policies’’ was cited by 10 countries (a total of 16 citations in the first modality and 15 in the second). These results demonstrate that the incorporation by acculturation, as
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Goodman and Jinks suggest, does not prevent, but rather drives the activation of laws, that is, the countries not only ratified the CRC but also created policies and institutions to facilitate its implementation. Beyond this universal trend, diachronic analysis, including that of childhood representation in the constitutions of South America countries, is able to portray important specificities inducing the observation that internal social organization cannot be excluded from the analysis. Two findings of this research subsidize the analytical importance of the variables on internal organization: 1. South American countries have introduced the concept of a child as subjects of rights in their constitutions or complementary legislation, when they were democratic regimes. This can be observed in the constitutions of Argentina (1994), Brazil (1989), Colombia (1991), Paraguay (1992), Venezuela (1999), and Ecuador (1967, 1998). 2. South American countries that were under the military dictatorships during the period between the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959) and the CRC (1989) did not include the principles of the Declaration neither in their constitutions nor in their specific legislation: Brazil (1979) and Ecuador (1979). This point is further assessed through the Brazilian example. Brazil, under the military dictatorship, created a new Code of Minors in 1970 which did not insert any concept of children as subjects of rights. At that time, some lawmakers had access to the bill that contained the principles of the Declaration. But in the face of the political repression of a freely functioning Congress and due to the suppression of social movements that could have placed pressure on the legislature, the postulates of the bill were not adopted. The code clauses kept all the old tutelary doctrine which considers child an object of the state. The development of laws which guarantee full protection and effectively regulate constitutional rights is also an important ‘‘variable’’ to assess the possibilities of effectuating the CRC. In Latin America, all countries, with the exception of Chile and Cuba, have instituted laws of full protection, according to the data of the Sistema de Informacio´n de Tendencias Educativas (SITEAL) organization (2009).6 In five countries, the laws were drawn up during the 1990s – Brazil, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, and in twelve countries – Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela, Paraguay, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, and El Salvador, between 2000 and 2009.
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These child protection laws share some important common principles: the child as subjects of rights, the best interest of the child, and the interest in strengthening family and community bonds. At the same time, the differences in these laws outline the many ways to implement policies and report violations. In some countries, children rights policies are allocated at the ministerial level but are predominantly drawn up by councils or joint committees, formed by the state and society members. In the protection laws, the conflict resolution involving child rights violations can be grouped into two categories: (a) traditional systems which give an almost exclusive control to the judiciary system to resolve conflicts and (b) innovative systems that create mechanisms and intermediary bodies to prevent an exacerbated judicial approach to conflict resolution. In this system, councils and joint committees rather than formal courts of justice resolve conflicts. Finally, the type of relationship between foreign and domestic law established by the countries’ constitutions is another important variable related to the internal social organization. In a sample of 12 South American countries, all the constitutions mentioned international treaties in their respective texts. Most of these constitutions outlined that the treaties must first be ratified by the executive powers and later approved by the legislative chambers. Meanwhile, four distinct types of relationships between international and domestic laws were observed, as indicated below: 1. Countries that ascribe superiority of international treaties, specifically with regard to human rights (such as Colombia and Argentina). Argentina references in its 1994 constitution all human rights treaties including the CRC. Colombia’s constitution in Article 44 of Article 2, which deals with children’s rights, cross-references the relationship of the rights granted to child under the constitution with those prescribed by international treaties; 2. Countries that equate their respective constitutions with international treaties. These cases include the constitutions of the following countries: Brazil (1988), Chile (2001), Ecuador (1998), Peru (1993), and Venezuela (1999). The Venezuelan constitution cites the CRC and establishes that, in cases of human rights, the most beneficial law to the victims of violations will prevail (the principle of most beneficial law); 3. Countries that emphasize the superiority of the constitution in relation to international treaties: Paraguay (1992) and Suriname (1987); 4. Countries in which the hierarchical relationship between domestic and foreign is not explained: Uruguay (2004) and Guyana (1980).
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Thus, the first important conclusion is that in addition to the pressures of modernizing ideologies prevailing in the world system, the combination of external factors with the political regime in periods of constitutional change also led to the inclusion of children’s rights in the nation-states. In order to determine the possibility of effectuating the rights at the national scale, it is important to consider some specificities within the national constitutions the type of relationship between foreign and domestic law and the hierarchical level at which the childhood policy is formulated (allocated) and the various systems to receive complaints of violations and conflict resolution.
Compensation for Rights Violations at the Inter-American Scale The regionalization of human rights is an important trend observed since the mid-twentieth century. This trend is expressed in the formulation of treaties and in the establishment of human rights institutions with regional coverage. The Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (1948) and the American Convention on Human Rights (1969) represent the most comprehensive laws signed in the United States. The Inter-American Commission (1969) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (1979) are the two institutions whose mandate is to investigate violations of the human rights treaties. The former has jurisdiction over the states belonging to the Organization of American States (OAS) and the latter has powers over the states that ratified the American Convention and has formally recognized the jurisdiction of the Court.7 At the interregional scale, it is possible to observe the use of judicial institutions to repair and punish rights violations of the international treaties and conventions. This approach will be illustrated through the presentation of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights actions (hereinafter referred to as ‘‘the Court’’). The Court is an autonomous institution created by the OAS in order to apply and interpret the American Convention on Human Rights as well as the international treaties on the subject, including the CRC. Allegations of violations of rights under the treaties are submitted first to the Commission on Human Rights which brings together the parties (complainants and the accused party) and attempts to reach a settlement. When the settlement is not feasible, the case is forwarded to the InterAmerican Court.
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The presentation of a specific case – the case ‘‘De los Nin˜os de la Calle (Villagra´n Morales y otros) versus Guatemala’’ – illustrates how the Court disposes of full powers and legal mechanisms to not only compensate for violations suffered by the children and their families but also to punish States that breach (by act or omission) children’s rights, as affirmed by international treaties. In 1994, the Commission received a complaint against the state of Guatemala, produced by the ‘‘Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional (2010)’’8 and ‘‘Casa Alianza’’ – regarding the murder of five people, three of them minors. The complaint also stated that four of these young men had been kidnapped and tortured. The state was accused by the suspicion that police officers were the perpetrators of the murder. In addition, the State was further accused to omit from its responsibilities in the course of the legal process of investigation and in denying the victims access to the justice system. Having exhausted all attempts to settle the case amicably, the case was referred to the Court. The investigation process lasted two years (1997–1999), during which evidence and testimonies were collected from the involved parties. In December 1999, the six judges responsible for the case decided unanimously that to the detriment of the victims, the state of Guatemala violated various clauses of the ‘‘American Convention on Human Rights’’: 1 (Obligation to Respect Rights), 4 (the Right to life), 5 (Right to Humane Treatment), 7 (Right to Personal liberty), 8 (Guarantee of a Fair Trial), and 25 (Judicial Protection) – as well as Clauses 1.6 and 8 of the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture. During the next phase of the process, the victims of the rights violations were compensated for the suffered liabilities. The Court also supervised this process. In the Compensation Sentence (2001), the Court determined that the Guatemalan State should bear the costs, compensate the families of the victims for material and moral damages, reopen the internal process of investigation to prosecute the perpetrators, take action to avoid occurrences of further violations, and to ensure the adequate registration of the victims and of the suffered violations.9 The final step was to monitor compliance with the Compensation Sentence. Up to the last hearing, held in 2009, it was found that the Guatemalan State had fulfilled the following determinations: it paid out the compensation to the families of all victims for material and moral damages (except in one case), created an education center with the names of the victims, returned the remains of one of the victim to the family and funded the burial process, and made adjustments to Guatemalan law to align it to Article 19 of the Convention. But the document also specifies that
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the investigation to prosecute the true perpetrators of the killings did not take effect and indicates that the Court will continue to monitor the implementation of the sentence. The ‘‘Ninos de la Calle’’ case indicates that it is possible to punish the State, which violates the Convention and other human rights treaties, as well as to take measures to repair the violations suffered by the victims.10 For this to occur, the State needs to ratify the human rights treaties and to formally recognize the power of the Court. However, the case study also indicates that this is a long, slow process that requires commitment and persistence of the complainants. This is illustrated by the fact that the two NGOs involved in ‘‘Ninos de la Calle’’ case followed up the entire process from 1994 to 2009, representing the families of the victims throughout the litigation process.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS This chapter revealed important differences regarding the possibilities and limitations of effectuating international treaties on human rights, and in particular of the CRC and the American Convention, at three different scales: 1. Within international organizations (specifically within the United Nations and its Committees on Human Rights), it is possible to create conventions and monitor them, making use of the reports. 2. At the nation-state scale, more specifically, it is possible to formally incorporate the rights of the foreign law into national constitutions, but the punishment related to the violations of these rights will depend on the hierarchical relationship between domestic and foreign law. 3. At the interregional scale, one can observe the effective actions of the juridical institutions (specifically of the Commission and the Court) to punish and compensate the victims that suffered violations of the rights guaranteed by international treaties. In the light of the above, the Inter-American Court has a mainly compensatory role – a powerful feature that enables legal, moral, and material compensation to victims of the violations (and their families), as well as it has the powers to punish the states for violating the rights of the ratified treaties. It is worth noting that the range of measures that the Courts have adopted goes beyond the individual dimension. In fact, several of these measures have collective effects, such as the determination to achieve
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changes in the domestic legislation to ensure due process and the naming of public spaces with the victim names (acting as a repository of the memory) as demonstrated by the ‘‘Ninos de la Calle’’ case study. Furthermore, it is important to point out the significant role of the NGOs in the effectuation of the CRC. In addition to having contributed to the writing of alternative reports directed to the Committee on the Child Rights, they have also acted as representatives of the victims in cases of children’s rights violations. In theory, what can be concluded is that the effectuation of children’s rights is a complex problem and should be investigated considering the large spectrum of not only external variables that impact the context of the nation-states – such as the ideologies and processes of acculturation – but also variables related to the internal social organization, naming the role of NGOs, the hierarchical relationship between domestic and foreign laws expressed in the national constitutions, and the prevailing circumstances at the time of treaty ratification and during the incorporation processes of the foreign legislation.
NOTES 1. This research was support by Fundac- a˜o de Amparo a` Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG). 2. The study selected eight indicators to codify the constitutions: (a) childhood as a distinct biography, (b) responsibility of the state with regard to the child, (c) child labor regulation (d) state control of education (e) obligation of the state to provide education (f) codified levels of education (g) right to education (h) duty to be educated. These indicators were divided into scoring scales according to the highest and lowest emphasis of the cited indicator. 3. This index includes six out of the nine indicators cited in footnote 2: indicators a, b, c, e, f, and h. The maximum score is 15 and the minimum score is 0. 4. Countries that have more than 3% of the total volume of international trade are classified as central and countries with less than 1% are considered peripheral. 5. The possibilities of analysis of incorporation of the CRC are based on the results from the research conducted with South American countries carried out from 2006 to 2009. 6. SITEAL (2009). Information system on first childhood. Available at: http:// www.siteal.iipe-oei.org/informetendencias/informetendencias2009.asp. Accessed March 3, 2009. 7. For more information on the Inter-American system, access http://www. corteidh.or.cr/sistemas.cfm?id=2. Out of the 34 American countries, 25 ratified or adhered to the Convention.
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8. The ‘‘Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho International’’ is an NGO that promotes human rights on the American continent, by principally filing charges and documents with the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. Currently, according to the site, the CEJIL is involved in 250 cases in the InterAmerican Court. For more information, access CEJIL’s site: http://www.cejil.org/ cejil/cejil 9. See document, Sentence and Compensation, pp. 50–71, CIDH. Available at http://www.corteidh.or.cr/casos.cfm 10. For a critical view about the role of the Inter-American Court, see Cavallaro and Brewer (2008). These authors demonstrated that the growth of the regional courts (in activities and number of countries under their jurisdiction) in the last decades demands a revision of their procedures and roles.
REFERENCES Bendix, R. (1967). National-building and citizenship. New York: Wiley. Bennet, J. B., & Meyer, J. W. (1978). The ideology of childhood and the state: Rules distinguishing children in national constitutions, 1870–1970. American Sociological Review, 43, 797–812. Bobbio, N. (1992). A era dos direitos. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Campus. Cavallaro, J. L., & Brewer, S. E. (2008). Reevaluating regional human rights litigation in the twenty-first century: The case of the Inter-American Court. The American Journal of International Law, 102, 768. Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional. (2010). Histo´rico. Available at http:// www.cejil.org/cejil/cejil. Retrieved January 15, 2011. Frota, M. G. C. (1995). Do Co´digo Filipino ao Estatuto da Crianc- a e do Adolescente: processos de regulamentac- a˜o e de institucionalizac- a˜o da infaˆncia e da adolesceˆncia no Brasil. 129f. (Dissertac- a˜o de mestrado). Mestrado em Sociologia/FAFICH-UFMG, Belo Horizonte. Frota, M. G. C., & Quintao, P. (2007). An analysis of the implementation of the convention on the right of the child in South American and European countries. Revista Pensamiento Jurı´dico, 19, 175–189. Bogota´, Colombia: Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Frota, M. G. da C. (2008). A Convenc- a˜o dos Direitos da crianc- a e os desafios para a sua implementac- a˜o nos paı´ ses sul-americanos. Revista de Observato´rio de desenvolvimento dos objetivos do mileˆnio de Belo Horizonte. Belo Horizonte/SMPL. Available at http:// observatoriodomilenio.pbh.gov.br/?q=node/61. Retrieved January 15, 2011. GIDDENS, Anthony. Class division, class conflict and citizenship rights. In: Profiles and critiques in social theory. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982. Goodman, R., & Jinks, D. (2008). Incomplete internalization and compliance with human rights law. European Journal of International Law (Electronic), 19(4), 725–748. Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Caso Nin˜os de la calle versus Guatemala. Available at http://www.corteidh.or.cr/casos.cfm. Retrieved January 15, 2011. Marshall, T. H. (1967). Cidadania, classe social e status. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Zahar.
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Organizacao dos Estados Americanos. (1948). Declarac- a˜o americana dos direitos e deveres do homem. Available at http://www.dhnet.org.br/direitos/sip/oea/oeadcl.htm. Retrieved January 15, 2011. Sistema de Informacio´n de Tendencias Educativas (SITEAL). (2009). Information system on first childhood. Available at http://www.siteal.iipeoei.org/informetendencias/informeten dencias2009.asp. Retrieved January 15, 2011. Verhellen, E. (1996). Monitoring children’s rights. London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
ABOUT THE CO-EDITORS AND AUTHORS THE SERIES CO-EDITORS David A. Kinney is professor of sociology at Central Michigan University. He obtained his Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University at Bloomington, completed postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago and worked as a research development specialist for the U.S. Department of Education in Philadelphia. His primary research areas are sociology of adolescence and sociology of education. He has published articles and chapters on children’s time use, adolescent peer cultures, and education in venues such as Sociology of Education, Youth and Society, American Behavioral Research Scientist, and The Praeger Handbook of American High Schools. He is past president of the Michigan Sociological Association and elected council member of the American Sociological Association sections on Sociology of Children and Youth and Sociology of Education. He became series editor of this volume in 1999 and has been series co-editor with Katherine Brown Rosier since 2004. Loretta E. Bass is associate professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Connecticut and completed a two-year appointment within the Fertility and Family Branch of the Population Division at the U.S. Census Bureau. Dr. Bass focuses her research on children and stratification issues, and has published her research in Population Research and Policy Review, Political Behavior, the Anthropology of Work Review, the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, the Journal of Reproductive Medicine, the Journal of Sociology and Social Work, the International Journal of Sexual Health, and Current Sociology. Prior to taking the co-editor position, she served as a guest editor for a special international volume of this series in 2005 and published a book, Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa (Lynne Rienner Publishers) offering a window on the lives of child workers in 43 African countries on the continent in 2004. She currently serves as chair-elect of the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Children and Youth Section and as the President 325
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of Research Committee 53 on the Sociology of Childhood within the International Sociological Association (ISA).
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES Steve Carlton-Ford received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) in 1986 and joined the faculty at the University of Cincinnati in 1988. Currently he is professor and head of the department of sociology. His research has examined the impact of school organization on children’s and adolescent’s self-image, the impact of ritual and charismatic leadership on the self-esteem of commune members, and the effect of family processes and illnesses (e.g., epilepsy) on children’s well-being. This research was published in journals such as Child Development, Sociological Quarterly, the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Sociological Focus. Most recently, he has examined the impact of armed conflict on adolescent’s and children’s well-being, focusing most of his attention on the impact of war and militarization on children’s mortality rates cross-nationally. This work has been published in a previous volume of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, as well as journals such as Childhood, International Sociology, and Armed Forces & Society. In addition, he and Morten Ender (of the U.S. Military Academy) have recently published the Routledge Handbook of War & Society (Routledge 2010). Beatrix Perez received her B.A and M.S. from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). She is research associate and sociology adjunct professor at the University of Texas San Antonio. Her research has focused on foster care youth, the education of Latino youth, and low-income families. Other interests include sociology of childhood, homelessness, college access for first generation college students and social capital. She has worked on grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the University of Texas Health Science Center. Harriett Romo received her Ph.D. from the University of California San Diego. She is professor of sociology at the University of Texas San Antonio. She is the author or co-author of books, Latino High School Graduation and Transformations of La Familia on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Her research has focused on Latino youth, immigrant families, race and ethnic relations, and minority students’ experiences in education. She has received several federal grants to focus on issues of early childhood education, foster care youth, and the educational preparation of Head Start teachers. Her current
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research examines college access for Latino foster care youth and the incorporation of transnational Mexican immigrant families into U.S. society. Yingyi Ma is as assistant professor of sociology at Syracuse University. She obtained her Ph.D. in sociology from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. Dr. Ma’s research takes a multidisciplinary approach to examining issues that have both theoretical and policy implications. Her work mainly deals with various issues related to education and social inequality, and she has been funded by National Science Foundation and Alfred Sloan Foundation. Her research has been published in various journals, such as Sociological Perspectives, the Social Science Journal, AAPI Nexus Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Policy, Practice & Community, Theory in Action, and Critical Half. Noriko Milman is visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her research and teaching interests developed from her experience as a first-grade educator at a public school. She uses ethnography to answer questions in the areas of the sociology of education, race & ethnicity, social inequality, and childhood & youth. She is currently working on a study that reveals the social process behind Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and how school personnel influence formal diagnoses. She sees projects like these as the beginning of a careerlong orientation aimed at understanding young people’s experiences in schools and their communities. Sandi Kawecka Nenga is assistant professor of sociology at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX. Her research interests include the sociology of youth and childhood, youth engagement, volunteerism, middle school peer cultures, and lived experience of social class. Currently, she is conducting an ethnography of a college readiness program for first-generation, Latina/o high school students. Lauren A. Apgar is doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research interests include social movements, immigration, social class, youth, and social policy. With the nonprofit organization, Workers Defense Project, she recently conducted research on the working conditions of immigrant construction workers in Austin, TX. Daniel Briggs is senior lecturer in criminology and criminal justice at the University of East London. He has worked with a range of different social
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groups – from the most vulnerable to the most dangerous. His work initially examined crime, criminal justice, drug users, and prisoners but, more broadly, his work has also come to examine social suffering and marginalization and how these experiences merge with the potential for deviancy and crime. More recently, he has become interested in cultural oppression and deviance. His work has taken him inside prisons, crack houses, mental health institutions, asylum seeker institutions, hostels, and various homeless services. He has also undertaken international research in Spain and Portugal with illegal immigrants, football hooligans, gypsies, and substance users. Ethnography is his preferred methodology although he has been involved in quantitative research such as prevalence studies and crime surveys. Yu-Hsuan Lin is assistant professor of the Department of Applied Sociology and Graduate Institute of Sociology of Education at Nanhua University in Taiwan. She obtained her Ph.D. in Education from the National Taiwan Normal University. When she was a doctoral candidate, she was granted by National Science Council to work under the supervision of Dr. Lois Weis at the State University of New York at Buffalo for one year. Dr. Lin focuses her research on youth culture, gender studies, and sociology of education. Sarah H. Matthews is professor emerita of sociology at Cleveland State University. Her interest in African-American students and childhood more broadly began over a decade ago through an ethnographic research project on students’ experience of an inner-city middle school, which was reported in an earlier volume of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth. More recently she published ‘‘A Window on the ‘New’ Sociology of Childhood’’ in the on-line journal, Sociology Compass. Her other research focuses primarily on old people’s relationships, both kith and kin. She is associate editor of The Journal of Marriage and Family and The Journal of Aging Studies. Timothy Stablein earned his Ph.D. in 2009. His graduate research employed an ethnographic and interpretive approach to understand the transitional nature of street life among homeless and at-risk youth and young adults. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Security, Technology, and Society and the Department of Sociology at Dartmouth College. His research interests include homelessness, deviance, and health. Steven H. Jacobs provided research assistance for this chapter. He studies history and is a recent graduate of Skidmore College. Renee Hosang is adjunct professor at Broward College and a Ph.D. student at Florida International University, where her research examines the
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influence of child inclusion in pediatric care and research. Upon finishing her dissertation, The Influence of Child Inclusion on the Perceptions Parents and Children have of Pediatric Care, she plans to continue exploring the concept of child as patient in postdoctoral work. Ingeborg Marie Helgeland, Ph.D., is professor in Education and Social Sciences at Oslo University College. Her research publications focus on children and youths with behavior problems and special needs in a life-long perspective. She lectures on social pedagogic and child welfare at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Maria Letı´ cia Nascimento is professor of Early Childhood Education at Universidade de Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil. She teaches courses on sociology of childhood and early childhood education in the undergraduate and graduate programs. Her research interests include sociology of childhood, public policies, generational relations, and early childhood. She co-organized three books about childhood, ‘‘Inclusa˜o e exclusa˜o: mu´ltiplos contornos da educac- a˜o brasileira’’ [Inclusion and Exclusion: Multiple Contours of Brazilian Education] (2006) and ‘‘Infaˆncia: violeˆncia, polı´ticas pu´blicas e instituic- o˜es’’ [Childhood: Violence, Public Policies and Institutions], vol. 1 (2006) and vol. 2 (2007), published in Brazil, and is co-author of the topic ‘‘Ecology of childhood,’’ in the four-volume compendium of New & Cochran’s Early Childhood Education – An International Encyclopedia (2007). Maria Guiomar da Cunha Frota is professor of methodology at Federal University of Minas Gerais/Information Science School. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Instituto Universita´rio de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro (2004). Her research interests and publications center around child rights, the implementation of child rights in Latin American countries, citizenship, social participation, human rights and information, and the Child and Adolescent Statute – A landmark Brazilian legislation on child rights. She is currently coordinating comparative research about the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Asian, African, European, and Latin American countries.
