Date of Award
Fall 9-5-2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Child Development
First Advisor
Cynthia Garcia Coll
Second Advisor
Amanda Moreno
Abstract
Objectives: Certified Child Life Specialists (CCLS) are pediatric healthcare professionals primarily working in hospital settings to support children and families in navigating the developmental challenges of hospitalization, illness, and enduring medical treatment. Recognizing the presence of racial and ethnic health disparities, coupled with the field’s notable lack of diversity (98% White female), the child life workforce is increasingly acknowledging the undeniable evidence that discriminatory behaviors adversely affect a child’s life and well-being. As advances in the social sciences increasingly reveal that discrimination functions as a "socially transmitted disease" in a child's life, I predict that the failure of child life certification materials to prepare CCLSs to identify racial bias in clinical practice risks perpetuating discriminatory healthcare practices. Such practices may lead affected children to observe, experience, and internalize racism. This, in turn, can result in numerous harmful effects, including poor health outcomes and the development of maladaptive behaviors that persist throughout a child’s lifespan. To mitigate these impacts, it is crucial to systematically address the role of discrimination in shaping child life outcomes and to ensure that future child life professionals are thoroughly prepared to actively engage in societal antiracism. Methods: Anchored in Garcia Coll and colleagues’ (1996) integrative model of child development, a qualitative, grounded-theory research design was employed to examine how cultural constructs were conceptualized in the professional training materials recommended for mastery in child life certification. A total of 14 documents were reviewed, with the analysis identifying limited segments of text addressing the social constructs under study: “culture,” “ethnicity,” and “race,” as well as emerging concepts aimed at alleviating discrimination through professional training. Results: There were a total of 87 out of 2017 pages (.04%) that mentioned the constructs in this study. Results demonstrate that the cultural-deficit model is deeply embedded in the historical narratives of the child life field, a perspective which attributes a child’s maladaptive development to his/her culture rather than to failures or limitations of the education and training system or to prevalent socio‐positional factors. A discussion on how to draw the curtain on higher-level concepts in professional training materials across the pediatric healthcare continuum is offered, ultimately channeling the child life infrastructure into a direction of critical consciousness and improved cultural praxis.
Recommended Citation
Ferrer, Kia Lee, "Drawing the Curtain: A Grounded theory Analysis of the Conceptualizations of Culture, Ethnicity and Race in Professional Training Materials for Child Life Certification" (2025). Dissertations. 4215.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/4215
