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Transforming High Schools:
Field Research in Youth Development |
Facilitating student research: One of the two options for field work in the Field Research in Youth Development course is to work with high-school student researchers in participating "small learning communities." Students also have the option to conduct one-on-one interviews and focus groups for their field work. This is an example of the first option.
Active learners in the high school
One team of students went to Vocational High to help the students in their "small learning community" or academy identify and conduct a research project that would help their academy. The Clark students served as facilitators, helping the academy students identify problem areas in their academy and ways to address those problems.
The Clark student project team tackled their task by first setting up a meeting with the students in Vocational High's academy. At that meeting, they did a presentation for the students, covering areas such as identity, teacher-student relationships, ethnicity and gender issues and more. They opened up the room for discussion and helped the academy students brainstorm about what kind of a research project would be most meaningful for their academy. The students decided to focus on "identity." They wanted to address the fact that the other students in the high school, as well as students in other Worcester public high schools, didn't seem them as academically rigorous, but only as a technical school. They wanted to show students from other schools what it is like to be at Vocational High School.
As a result, the Clark students are helping the student researchers organize a swap day, where students from Vocational High can visit classes at another Worcester High School and other high school students can spend a day at Vocational. They are also helping the student researchers write about their findings and share them with the other student researcher teams from the other participating high school small learning communities.
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