Engaging Young Men of Color in GED (General Educational Development) Programs

• In Event: The GED and Literacy Programs as Counterspaces to Schooling? Operationalizing What We Know

Abstract

Objectives
This ethnography of one localized urban adult education center explored the issues of high school “push outs”, disparities in school completion for young men of color, and the human, as well as economic costs, of disengagement in learning. The research question was: From the perspective of multiple stakeholders, what were the critical organizational and instructional features that played a key role in helping 16 – 25 year old out of school males engage in learning, as evidenced by consistent participation in the learning community and making a transition to post-secondary education or employment?

Theoretical Framework
Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) framed this study. CHAT embraces the complexity of the learning process with its many interconnected components and contradictions: historical, socio-cultural, organizational, as well as the subject of learning (young men), and the learning tools (Engstrom, 2001). CRT identifies the intercentricity of race and racism in teaching and learning, and provides ways to classify, summarize, frame and understand the data collected around learning and race.

Methods
Data collection included a 15 semi-structured one hour interviews, 7 one hour focus groups, key informant dialogue journals, and 8 two hour classroom observations. A physical map of the center was created to examine proximics (Hall,1969) Data analysis began with coding for emerging categories. For further data reduction and visualization, matrix displays were utilized (Miles and Huberman, 1994) as well as an enumerative inquiry classifying items and words by frequency. Data, method and theory triangulation, member checking, critical friends group, and my own reflective process (Lincoln & Guba, 1984) were also used.

Data Sources
The research site was a community based adult education center located in New York City serving 700 students annually. Five key informants were GED graduates, or currently engaged GED students and about one half of the 37 total research participants were young males ages 16- 25 years old; the remainder of the participants were older students, counselors, administrators, teachers, volunteers, and staff.

Results
Two main findings that addressed the question of how young men of color re-engage in learning will be presented: establishing affective relationships and the creation of counter-spaces for safety, healing and voice within differentiated learning activities. Significant from the data was the impact of past educational experiences on present learning experiences. The data strongly suggests that many young men have been subject to negative educational experiences and, in some instances, educational trauma. Therefore, the young men bring fear, self-doubt, and skepticism into the new learning environment. The findings of this study are often a response to, and remedy for, past negative school experiences.

Significance
For adult education, the numbers of youth entering GED programs seems to be steadily rising. Programs need to understand and pro-actively create learning environments that intentionally address the findings identified in this study. The findings have implication for professional training of adult educators, architectural design of adult education centers, and collaborations between mental health professionals and adult educators.

Author

• Joni Marie Schwartz, LaGuardia Community College - CUNY