Research Question: What can be done in High Schools to support the academic achievement of students from diverse family structure?
Coming from a less than desirable family structure myself, I have often wondered how I made it through high school. I have always had a soft spot for kids who grow up with a messed up family structure and find myself usually going out of my way to help them. The purpose of this research study is to gain understanding of the external environments of my students and to explore ways to help support those students.
Setting: In this action research study, I will explore what can be done in high schools to support the academic achievement of students from diverse family structures. The setting of this research will be in classrooms at TIS High School in Western North Carolina. The research will be focused on a selected number of students from various family structures (natural birth parents, separated-divorce families, single parent families, step-parent families, and adoptive/foster/relative families). I will interview students from the selected group about their thoughts and feelings about their school experience. I will plan meetings with students, teachers, support staff and the administration to formulate strategies to support this growing population. Over a four week period we will implement strategies, observe students, and gather data. At the end of the four weeks I will again meet with all participants to gain feedback. In other words, the research will focus on the students past experiences and their current classes in order to formulate ideas and strategies to support students that fall into this population.
Participants: The participants will be students, teachers, support staff, and administration.
Scott Heavner
Comments (5)
The diverse family structure that each teacher should know and probably doesn't about individual students. What makes these students tick or tock the way they do? Some of them turn out to be some of your best students and some turn out not to be so good. Some are self motivated while others are not. What can we do as professional educators to improve the self worth? Look forward to hearing about all this research and vast knowledge I know you will come up with.
Posted by Scott Harrill | January 31, 2009 6:14 PM
Posted on January 31, 2009 18:14
Also, per Scott's comment above, each teacher should know their students at least enough to have some sense of empathy for the various and sundry things that may be going on behind the scenes to make academic pursuits more difficult. This study can be beneficial to see if student perceptions of their teacher's empathy is accurate.
Posted by Conrad Martin | January 31, 2009 7:38 PM
Posted on January 31, 2009 19:38
Scott,
I highly commend you for caring about this issue and diving in. I grew up under extraordinarily crappy circumstances, and school was just another platform for misery. If there had been structures in place (like what you are suggesting) I, and a lot of other students, would have done a lot better and could have possibly thrived.
I don't have any recommendations for you. I just want to give you all the positive reinforcemnt I can in the hopes that you will see it through.
Great Idea!
Lyme
Posted by Lyme Kedic | February 1, 2009 2:50 PM
Posted on February 1, 2009 14:50
I guess my only concern in all of this is how you would go about labeling students that have a "diverse family structure" and why, by default, that might imply that that structure is "messed up". I guess I'm just suggesting that you be careful how you step. Of all the friends and family that I have, they might all fall in some way into a "diverse family structure" and yet they were, for the most part, able to be very succesful in school. We're all dealt a hand in life and how we play it is based on so many factors that we might not be able to count them or even fully study them. For instance, I would venture to guess that there are single-parent homes that are by far more stable than homes with two parents and that seem to fit the cookie cutter image of what a family should be. In 2009, families are what you make them. People are who they are. And we're all affected by the events that happen to us along our path. Again, I would just caution you against labeling. For instance, if you were to label a child that was having trouble in school as coming from one of these families and you attributed it to his/her homelife, you might be overlooking a learning disability, apathy, or any other number of factors. My parents were bikers. They had parties at the house on a regular basis. My father was in the military and would be gone for anywhere from a week to a year at a time. Does that mean I was from a diverse family structure? Perhaps. But we had dinner at the table as often as possible and my parents showed up to every parent-teacher conference and were loving, caring, incredible parents. I struggled some in school. There may have been folks that chalked it up to my abnormal family. It's interesting to find out, though, that I was diagnosed with a pretty strong case of ADHD when I was 36 years old and that THAT may have been what held me back in many ways. No one was looking for that, though, and so my family supported me through the rougher times. Just offering a different perspective, perhaps.
Posted by Kate Whyte | February 1, 2009 5:06 PM
Posted on February 1, 2009 17:06
Scott,
Kate has some excellent cautionary words above. It would be difficult to make any direct correlations, which I don't think is your intent, it might be best to focus on a specific family structure. There's no need, really, to aim for a diverse sample in this case based on family structure because it is such a small study. But you could vary your participants by other factors such as age, race, class, gender --- and focus only on, for example, kids whose parents are divorced.
The other issue is that counselors may not be able to reveal information to you that is confidential. Just keep that in mind.
It's probably best that you just focus on students as your participants, and design this as a study to understand their life circumstances. You won't have time in four weeks to implement and study the implementation; what you'll want to focus on is getting information, and the result of your study will be what you plan to implement. Does that make sense?
Posted by Alecia Jackson | February 3, 2009 10:30 PM
Posted on February 3, 2009 22:30