Final Blog

Brace yourselves, I am going to be talking about different things. In my post a few weeks ago, I had mentioned the vast uncertainty of knowledge, skills and attributes necessary in youth work. And my goal is to do a comprehensive work analysis, highlight the roles and competencies required/ necessary in this field, and then synthesize findings into a manual for new professionals. I think this may help provide a roadmap and foundational guidance for new professionals in the field, or even veterans as they make lateral transitions within the field. Now there have been developments in my capstone project. I thought about all the methods that could be used to do this- interview, observation, critical incident report, job inventory, questionnaire etc. With time not being on our side, I will not have time to do intervews or surveys. I think I am better off doing a qualitative document-based work analysis using artifact analysis( reviewing existing documents,and materials that reflect how a job or role is performed) as well as content analysis (systematically coding and interpreting them to identify themes and KSAO). This way, all I have to do is look into job postings and job descriptions found online to derive the data I need to make my analysis. Aditionally, instead of thinking about my project as a roadmap for new professionals, I now have a different target audience. I am doing the project with YDEV undergraduate students in mind, this makes this project a bit more personal and hopefully it can be a great resource for them as they think about their future careers in YDEV.

When I think of where I want my influence to be in the world. It will be through education. Not the eurocentric filled curriculum but the one that centers culture. The one that does not unintentionally or intentionally distance people from their heritage, identity and culture. I attended an international highschool and the entire curriculum reflected western espitemologies, history, literature, philosophy etc. This system often reinforce European perspectives as the default or standard. This experience left me with a sense of inferiority about my own people and culture. I want to change that. I want an education system where youth see themselves reflected, one that integrates diverse epistemologies and one where culture is centered. So hoepefully, I can work with organizations where I can advocate, develop, design, and implement a culturally relevant curriculum.

Blog #8

What a read that was. I liked the discussion about stereotypes vs humantypes, and the incorporation of the story Girls like me. Kiri Davis depicts a complete story using the Clark and Clark dolls test and adding footage of young women of color as they talk about their hair, bodies, and identities. That portion of the text resonates with me so much. I can vividyl remember being 7 and 8 wanting straight hair, and that was because it was all I saw on TV. There was no representation for my 4C hair. So I never though of it as pretty. Over the next few years, I had my mom relax and straighten my hair every chance I got. Up until the age of 15, thank God to social media,I have loved my hair ever since. We do not need representation on TV anymore, we can choose to follow influencers that look like us, have the same hair type, share the same culture, religion etc. I have grown to learn to take care of my curls which I did not appreciate then, but would not trade it for the world now. Every single day, I am amazed by the thickness, fullness and the curlness of every single strand of hair on my head. That is the part that damage-centered research does not show. The part where we decolonize our thoughts, and beliefs about what is beautiful and instead embrace and honor, and appreciate ourselves. Now I am at a stage in my life where my hair is only seen by family members due to being a hijabi, and there still remains a few people in my family that will ask, "why not straighten your hair to see how long it is?" I think I genuinely see red when I hear those words lol. To think that for decades we have been made to think that our hair or even looks is less than, or that we have to keep our hair straight. Despite those few people who still think this way, I am glad to say the tides are changing, because my little younger cousins under the age of 7 know that their hair is pretty, and a few years from now maybe 3-4 year olds will choose black dolls instead, and we will as a community do research that capture desire and not the damage-centered reserach that outsiders have used to represent us.

blog #7

I thnik one of the most impactful statements from this chapter was Restler highlighting how NCLB required states to track metrics like graduation ratea and standardized test scores disaggregated by race, class, language and disability status. She also went on to quote Leornardo (2007) who notes, "NCLB gives whiteness the license to declare students of color failures under a presumed-to-be-fair system." This reminds me of when I first moved to the US and started college. I noticed a pattern in all my psychology classes. Most studies compared white people to people of color and every single time these studies go out of their way to belittle people of color and paint an image superiority of white people over black and brown people. The studies usually go as follow: "black people are less likely to graduate than white people...," "white people are more likely to score high on the SATs...," "black people are more likely to drop out....," etc. These studies truly did dentured my self-esteem for a while. I have always been an A student, high self-efficacy, brilliant, smart, granted sometimes I lack common sense. But what I am tying to say is that I am book smart. But when I was exposed to these papers, even though I am not African American I still internalized some of these studies. I started to feel inferior to my white classmates. I also hated when we had to discuss these studies being the only black person in the class because I can feel every other white students' eyes piercing through my body, as if they were just given a "license" to declare me "a failure."

These are thing I do that cannot be measured. -I'm a bit of an overthinker. Just thinkig about life, love, future, heaven and hell, job, birth, religion. I just overthink. -I write a lot, not like jorunaling, I just write things when they come to mind in the form of peoms. I fidn that I can articulate things better when I write them. So yeah, I write.

BLOG#6

Q U A L I T A T I V E VS Q U A N T I T A T I V E RESEARCH

BLOG #4

I am glad that we went through past capstone projects. For some reason I had a misconception that a capstone should be a specific research project that follows a linear path of abstract, literature review, data collection/ methods, data analysis, implications and then conclusion. Seeing the different varieties of projects from past cohorts, I now have a better idea of what capstone projects can be.

My ideas at the moment...................................... Before this program, I did not know much about youth work. I had many questions like, what can I do with this degree? Where can I work? And a plethora of other questions about the field. Thanks to YDEV 501, I am getting introduced to what Youth work is, the history, the evolution and where we currently are. I think one of the highlights from what I have learned so far is that the field is highly under-professionalized. Now my interest definitely lies with the matter of professionalization, but it is too broad for a capstone project. However, as a result of underprofessionalization, there is an excessive heterogeneity in the sets of requirements for jobs within the field (Baldridge, 2019). For example, different organizations ask for different sets of requirements, there is no consistent training, a lack of uniformity in the practice, and only little understanding of youth work. This can place people looking to get into the field in a confused state of mind. To address this, my question is “what knowledge, skills, attributes and other characteristics are required in youth development roles/ jobs?” My goal is to do a comprehensive work analysis and synthesize findings into a manual for new professionals. I think this may help establish clarity in roles and competencies required/ necessary in this field. Hopefully, this data can help provide a roadmap and foundational guidance for new professionals in the field, or even veterans as they make lateral transitions within the field.

BLOG #3

 

ORGANIZATION
TITLE OF RESEARCH/ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION	Breakfast for Banter (Bogad, 2002)
CRUST (type of research)	Qualitative
SAUCE (ideology/underlying beliefs)	Constructivist The following quote makes it clear as day that this is purely constructivist, and that you as a researcher claim no objectivity. "I am a researcher. They are the subjects I study. But I am always trying to position myself with them, rather than against them, to be a part of the inside rather than on the outside."
TOPPINGS (methods and tools)	Observation
UTENSILS: (how is it cut up and served AKA: analyzed?)	Data synthesized by author
BOX (how is it delivered?)	Data presented in the form of an article.
NOTES:	Loved reading this article. I admire how the youth took ownership of the space, how they interacted with adults, and one another. It is 2025 now, I wonder where they are, what they are doing, and how they carried the lessons from Banter for Breakfast into adulthood.

BLOG POST #2

I think constructivism aligns more with my learning journey so far and what I want to do in the future. My goal is to work with refugees. Often, I ponder on whether I will be able to do them justice in terms of providing them the necessary resources they need to excel in their new environments. After extensive research over the weekend on the different approaches to research, I think a constructivist approach may help me in that future role and with one of the questions I had last week, "How can I support refugee youths, when I do not understand the impact of their experience?"

 

Constructivism is a paradigm that emphasizes that reality is apprehensible by people in social ways, and knowledge is co-constructed between people as they engage (Guba &Lincoln, 1994). With this approach, instead of wondering how I can help refugees in the future, to answer my question, I can simply be intentional in the way I engage with refugees, learn from them, and understand their needs. In a more practical way, I can create safe spaces where I encourage refugee youths to share their lived experiences, to create and reflect. This gives them a sense of agency, and allows us to build an understanding together. 

A German philosopher Ernest Glasersfeld, who was a radical constructivist pushed the idea that knowledge  is only judged by how viable or useful it is for the knower. I mention this because I truly believe that we are better able to help youths as youth work professionals when we know more about them. I acknowledge that I can never fully understand the experiences of refugee youths or refugees in general, what matters is creating ways of knowing and relating that are viable for understanding their needs, and supporting their growth and well-being.

References

https://ankara.lti.cs.cmu.edu/11780/sites/default/files/10-guba_lincoln_94.pdf

https://www.simplypsychology.org/constructivism.html

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