Youth in Context:
Exploring Diverse Pathways of Youth Development
Michael Anderer-McClelland
Director of Community Outreach
San Miguel Schools Back of the Yards
March 2004
This paper was written for partial fulfillment of course requirements at De Paul University’s Graduate School of Education Program in Educational Leadership
Student success and student failure in schools is a complicated matter. Educators continue to be confounded by the barrage of solutions proposed to increase the success of all students and to leave no child behind. Early indications reveal that the silver bullet is yet to be found. What are the factors that influence the success or failure of youth development and educational achievement?
Recent theoretical developments in the area of community psychology and sociology suggest a broader, more contextual view of youth, recognizing the interconnected layers of life that impact positive or negative youth development. The classroom is just one small part of the context of a child. Family, peer groups, kin and adult networks, local resources, and regional processes and policies all directly or indirectly influence youth developmental pathways. This literature review outlines two theoretical frameworks—the Transactional-Ecological Model of human context and Social Capital—that may prove useful to both educational researchers and instructional leaders. While methodological constructs that match the theoretical frameworks are still in their infancy, two studies are reviewed that begin to observe youth in a more complete context. The educational implications of recognizing youth in context will be highlighted. Finally, this review will suggest a local, exploratory, and comparative study of social capital operationalized as reciprocal trust between parents and schools as one contextual measure that may positively influence the educational achievement of youth.
Theoretical Frameworks:
Community Psychology and Youth in Context
A complete understanding and knowledge of youth development is necessary to tailor and improve our schools and prevention programs to increase achievement for all students, especially for youth living in challenging situations. Out of the field of community psychology, Bronfenbrenner (1977) proposes an “ecological model” of human development that is depicted as four concentric circles: Microsystem, Mesosystem, Exosystem, and Macrosystem. Microsystems encompass those relationships and settings for a youth that are direct, personal and frequent (i.e. homes, families, friends, teachers, classrooms). Mesosystems involve the connections between various Microsystems (i.e. parental involvement in school). Exosystems encompass institutions that can influence Microsystems and Mesosystems (i.e. neighborhood, churches, schools). Macrosystems represent larger cultural influences, such as governments, laws, policies, religious systems, and societal values. This theoretical model begins to illuminate the many interconnected layers that influence youth development.
Subsequent to Bronfenbrenner’s proposed schema, community psychologists and other researchers began thinking more about a contextual framework for understanding human development. While research lagged through the 1980s and into the 1990s, the past ten years has seen an explosion of research investigating, for example, neighborhood influences on youth and family well-being (Roosa, 2003, Furstenberg, 1999). However, much of this research examined aggregate level neighborhood data with aggregate level population data. Less research examines the link between neighborhood data and individual family or child outcomes (Roosa, 2003). A Transactional Model of contextual human development adds to the ecological model by illuminating these multiple, mutually influential relationships and connections at various levels (Roosa, 2003). Enormous methodological hurdles must be overcome in performing quality research based on this model, but the potential benefits to policy and program design are enormous (Roosa, 2003, Furstenberg, 2001)
In summary, a Transactional-Ecological Model, therefore, recognizes that the social contexts of development exist in interwoven and nested systems that evolve together over time (Moos, 2003). This model considers the connections among various contextual influences and the bidirectional exchange that occurs between many of them. For example, a peer group certainly exercises influence over an individual youth, but that youth also exercises some influence over the peer group. Influence goes both ways. Neighborhood characteristics may directly influence youth development, but they may also indirectly influence youth development through the mediation of the family, peer group, or school (and vice versa). Influence can be mediated by a “middle” person or setting. As a research and program evaluation tool, Moos (2003) suggests constructing “cause maps” that raise hypothesis about how social contexts function and alter individuals. This technique can be used to clarify and validate theories of change for a particular program. A theory of change map shows the processes by which the program is expected to improve the clients’ quality of life.
Sociology and Social Capital
Social capital is concept from the
field of sociology that gained import and ascendancy through the 1990s. It has been described as the glue that
enables cooperative social action (Forsyth & Adams, 2004). The term was popularized by Robert Putnam in
his 1995 article “Bowling Alone:
The conceptual definitions of social capital and its measures are not uniform, nor universally accepted. Much research on social capital utilizes data gathered for completely different purposes, thus bringing into question the validity of the measures (Forsyth & Adams, 2004). Forsythe and Adams recently completely a theoretical study in which they attempt to operationalize the concept of social capital for educational settings by developing a “theory near” measurement tool. They review several different conceptual frameworks, research methodologies and measures for social capital. They propose a conceptual theory of social capital and then develop a quantitative survey tool that is “”theory-near.” Their measure evaluated reciprocal trust, cohesion and multi-dimensionality, the three criteria of their proposed conceptual theory of social capital. Reciprocal trust was the only criteria for social capital that produced reliable and valid results (Adams & Forsythe, 2004). This suggests that more works needs to be done in defining social capital and designing valid and reliable measures.
The Transactional-Ecological Model of development and the concept of social capital provide a framework which gives us a more complete understanding of youth in context. Let’s now turn to two recent studies that examine youth development from this type of contextual perspective.
Marshall et al. set out to answer two questions: First, is there evidence of an urban village? Second, do urban parents’ social ties outside the immediate family have an effect on children’s development (2001)? Their results were based on data from a study of 206 African American, European American and Hispanic American boys and girls in grades 1 through 4, and who come from varied socioeconomic backgrounds. Data was gathered through an average of 4 hours of face-to-face interviews with the child and his or her mother or guardian as well as through self-administered questionnaires. Participants were recruited through a variety of different methods over an 18-month period. The researchers measured five characteristics of parents’ social networks, three aspects of parenting, and four aspects of child-well-being. The results suggest that children whose parents had stronger neighborhood social ties were more socially competent themselves, reported fewer depressive symptoms, and were described by their parents as doing better in school than other children (Marshall et al., 2001). In addition, parents with less homogeneous networks (a characteristic of strong social networks) were observed to be more warm and responsive to their children, and parents who received greater emotional support felt more effective as parents. While the authors fail to point out clearly the deficiencies in their measures and sampling method, the study still strongly supports an ecological view of parents’ contributions to children’s development. A parent’s relationships are also part of the context of the child (Marshall et al., 2001).
Beyers et al. study parenting from a contextual approach using the theories of ecological and transactional development (2003). They point out that parenting plays a substantial role in youth development, but that those interactions and settings that influence parenting styles are not frequently examined. The study attempts to examine the connections between neighborhood characteristics, parenting and parent-adolescent relations, and adolescents’ externalizing behavior. Data from a previous research protocol, the Child Development Project, was used in this study. Participants were recruited for that study in two separate cohorts in 1987 and 1988. The original study was longitudinal with the cohorts entering when their children were in kindergarten and continuing through the eighth grade. Eighty percent of the families who began the original study were still participating in sixth grade. The current analysis by Beyers et al. also removed several more individual children and their families from the data set because of incomplete information or data on that child and his or her family (2003). The methodology of this study—using measures designed and utilized for one research project and then using the same data for a completely different study—exemplifies a weakness in many of the studies that explore and examine youth in context. Even so, the results of this study do begin to quantify the complexity of interactions among multiple layers that impact youth development. For example, one result suggests that residing in a neighborhood with more residential instability was associated with worse behavior problems among adolescents whose parents reported relatively low monitoring, but not among adolescents whose parents reported relatively high monitoring. Another result suggests that neighborhood structure did not independently relate to youths’ externalizing levels and growth rates. Rather it played an indirect role by moderating (read: influencing) the effects of parental monitoring. These types of result are consistent with a transactional-ecological model of youth development, and should encourage researchers to continue to search for more reliable and valid methods to examine youth in context.
Factors that influence the success or failure of youth in schools are complex and escape simplistic, silver-bullet solutions like standardized curriculum and high stakes testing, especially for youth living in challenging situations. A Transactional-Ecological Model of youth development and the concept of Social Capital begin to articulate the complexity of interwoven layers and nested systems of relationships and resources that represent the context of youth development. Recent studies that examine these concepts are scientifically weak in regard to their reliability and validity. I suggest that this is expected in the early stages of research into a model of youth in context that literally complicates results. For example, the model does not lend itself to true experimental research. The complex context of youth cannot be manipulated without altering that very same context, confounding the results.
Policy-makers and
instructional leaders, however, must not wait for research techniques to
demonstrate the power of context in determining pathways of youth
development. The models and concepts are
simply too internally coherent and intuitively compelling. Educational practice and community-based
programs can help lead the way in determining effective intervention and prevention
programs for youth in context. The
Community Schools movement is one reform initiative within schools that
recognizes youth in context and seeks to develop programs and partnerships that
seek to strengthen the full context of youth.
Community schools bring together many partners to offer a range of supports
and opportunities to children, youth, families and communities -- before,
during and after school, seven days a week (see www.communityschools.org for more
information).
Program and school practice can
assist in developing the research agenda as well. Schools and community-based programs can
develop a theory of change for their initiatives that describes the processes
by which a program or context is expected to improve a youth outcomes. Researchers can then test these “hypotheses”
about how social contexts function and alter outcomes for individuals and
families (Moos, 2003, Connell & Kubisch, 1998). In this vein, I suggest a
research study to be conducted in partnership with the
In order for our youth to succeed, an array of stakeholders, partnerships, systems and resource-providers must collaborate together to improve the full context of youth development. This systemic approach will provide youth with diverse pathways through which to navigate adolescence. Theory and practice must come together once again to illuminate the multiple factors that influence youth success. It is possible.
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