Date of Award

9-6-2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Social Work

First Advisor

Katherine Tyson McCrea

Abstract

Structured out-of-school programs (OSPs) can be contexts in which youth can be producers of their own positive change (Eccles & Gootman, 2002). However, despite a considerable body of research documenting the benefits of participating in OSPs, there is a lack of knowledge about how youth of color in low-income communities define positive personal change in OSP settings. As a result, many OSPs and interventions designed for youth of color rely on adult practitioners’ or researchers’ perspectives of the change process, which may weaken program impact and fail to holistically meet youths’ developmental needs. This study uses a critical realist scientific paradigm to carry out an interpretive, phenomenological qualitative examination (Denzin, 1989; Cresswell & Poth, 2018) of youths’ perspectives on the program mechanisms that bring about their personal change. From this realist standpoint, change does occur via youths’ internalization of program experiences. The purpose of this study is to explore youths’ perspectives about how they internalize OSPs (curricula and relationships with instructors, each other, and other participants) and define personal change in an OSP context. This study addresses the following overarching research question: Since program impact occurs via youths' internalization of the program offerings, what do youth perspectives tell us about how they internalize the experience of an out-of-school, high-dosage, strengths-based program? Specifically, this study aims to: (1) understand youths’ perspectives of personal change, including the nature of youths’ internalization processes; and (2) identify program elements that function as mechanisms of change that youth say are helpful and not helpful. Data were gathered based on feedback of 212 youth participants enrolled in OSPs using three different curricula in four neighborhoods in Chicago over a 17-year time span. Data consist of youths’ qualitative peer-to-peer program evaluation interviews with each other at the conclusion of each program. Qualitative peer-to-peer interviews were analyzed with NVivo12 using a causal thematic and content process analysis (Denzin, 1989; Maxwell, 2004). This research design is well suited to answer the present research questions because it can produce grounded, “rich descriptions” and explanations of internalization processes situated within real-life contexts (Miles et al., 2019). The qualitative data were coded initially to generate themes and compile a coding manual. Inter-rater reliability of coding manuals was achieved at 91%, which preceded the analysis of all qualitative data (Miles et al., 2019). Understanding how youth themselves define and experience meaningful personal change is important in mitigating the traumatizing impact of epistemic violence and for optimizing services to improve care and promote healthy, culturally relevant practice models of youth development. The findings of this study represent a realist interpretation of SUHO, LYLL, and LUCM’s efficacy (Pawson & Bellamy, 2006). In other words, the causal power of these programs lies in their underlying mechanisms. Youth identified program mechanisms that they prioritized, which are represented by the themes that emerged from their peer-to-peer interviews. The results of this study indicate that youth strongly value having positive connections with peers and instructors in their program and suggest that the process of relating to others helps develop their own personal identity and sense of self. They also describe program mechanisms that facilitate the developmental need of relating to others. Moreover, there are many youth responses suggesting that the OSPs were impactful in part because they enabled youth to consolidate a positive identity (“I’m a good person”). This did not occur via curricula about self-affirmation or positive thinking (a more cognitive behavioral approach) but was connected by youth with the experience of feeling respected, heard, cared for, and affirmed by instructors and peers (a more humanistic approach). The mechanisms of action described by youth lead to specific guidelines for intervention providers, elucidated in this study. The theories of therapeutic change developed from adult treatment do not fully encompass the unique aspects of clinical work with youth. With a practice knowledge base rooted in this study’s findings about youths’ subjective meanings and experiences of services, social work practitioners can design practice models that are more suitable and relevant to youths’ cultural strengths and existing strategies of healthy development. Approaching out-of-school program design with an emphasis on human rights, humanistic group therapy, participatory approaches and resistance-building processes could provide a theoretical framework that can contrast overly medicalized models and help social workers address the profession’s core values. By doing this, youth may see themselves as less pathologized by the “intervention” and view concepts of personal “change” in the program as defined by themselves, made possible by incorporating participatory elements throughout program design, implementation, and evaluation.

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