On the Road with NYKids: A New Study Launches at Crown Point Central School

By Kristen C. Wilcox and Fang (Lisa) Yu

Finding out what kids think about their educational experiences is key to improving what educators do. At the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, a core principle of improvement rests on being “user-centered”. As a Foundation’s blog by Manuelito Biag explains,

In education, knowing what works, for whom, and under what conditions requires deep understanding of individuals — their needs, concerns, and motivations — as well as the contexts they inhabit.

Being “user-centered” necessitates listening carefully and empathetically to those most affected by policies, processes, and practices and that includes those most directly impacted —the kids.

While NYKids has included data collection with kids in other studies (most recently in the elementary study focused on English Language Learners), such studies require lengthy reviews by the Institutional Review Board (the gatekeeper for research in universities) and layers of consent procedures making them particularly challenging. Nonetheless, NYKids has all approvals in place and is returning to a subset of odds-beaters from the College and Career Readiness Phase 1 for Phase 2 of the study, and kids are front and center.

What Do The Kids Say?

Based on others’ research as well as the Phase 1 study, the NYKids College and Career Readiness Phase 2 study is informed by three frameworks:

• Positive youth development—a strengths-based, developmentally informed framework that takes the view that young people are more than their school-defined roles as students.

• Critical and culturally-relevant, responsive and sustaining pedagogy—these are approaches that reflect and leverage students’ lived experience and empower them to use school-based knowledge to effect change.

• Social identity and agency–provides a useful framework to explore how students make sense of their experiences at school and their emerging identities as learners.

NYKids researchers will delve into kids’ experiences through these lenses at Crown Point Central School, Malverne Senior High School, Port Chester High School, and Sherburne-Earlville Senior High School.

On the Road with NYKids: Crown Point Central School

In November 2019, Crown Point Central Schools was the first stop as NYKids researchers launched the second phase of the study. During two site visits, researchers met with students to conduct both individual interviews and focus groups to learn more about their experiences in and outside of school and how those experiences are shaped by and shape what they plan to do post-high school graduation.

In the coming weeks and months, the NYKids research team will be on the road to other odds-beaters to gain kids’ insights about college and career readiness in relation to their experiences in and outside of high school.

Stay tuned for ongoing updates about the NYKids Phase 2 study in our blogs and on NYKids Facebook and Twitter!