Hope as Strategy: The Effectiveness of an Innovation of the Mind . . .

Students may be situated within complex systems that are nested within each other. This complexity may also envelop institutional structures that lead to the socioeconomic reification of student post-secondary opportunities by obscuring positive goals. Building on previous cycles of action research, this multi-strand mixed-methods action research study examined the effectiveness of an innovation designed to address student, teacher, and parental understandings of college and career readiness. This innovation was developed and implemented using a participatory action research model and included a student program administered during an advisory period and evening parent education programs. Findings included the importance of parent involvement, the influence of positive goals, relational implications of goal setting and pathway knowledge on agentic thinking, and that teacher implementation of the innovation may have influenced student hope levels.

Students may be situated within complex systems that are nested within each other. This complexity may also envelop institutional structures that lead to the socio-economic reification of student post-secondary opportunities by obscuring positive goals. This may be confounded by community misunderstandings about the changed world that students are entering. These changes include social and economic factors that impact personal and economic freedoms, our ability to live at peace, and the continuing trend of students graduating high school underprepared. Building on previous cycles of action research, this multi-strand mixed-methods study examined the effects of the innovation of the I am College and Career Ready Student Support Program (iCCR). The innovation was collaboratively developed and implemented over a 16-week period using a participatory action research approach. The situated context of this study was a new high school in the urban center of San Diego, California. The innovation included a student program administered during an advisory period and a parent education program. Qualitative research used a critical ethnographic design that analyzed data from artifacts, journals, notes, and the interviews of students (n = 8), parents (n = 6), and teachers (n = 5). Quantitative research included the analysis of data from surveys administered to inform the development of the innovation (n = 112), to measure learning of parent workshop participants (n = 10), and to measure learning, hope, and attitudinal disposition of student participants (n = 49). Triangulation was used to answer the studies’ four research questions. Triangulated findings were subjected to the method of crystallization to search for hidden meanings and multiple truths. Findings included the importance of parent involvement, the influence of positive goals, relational implications of goal setting and pathway knowledge on agentic thinking, and that teacher implementation of the innovation may have influenced student hope levels. This study argued for a grounded theory situated within a theoretical framework based upon Snyder’s Hope Theory and Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological System Theory. This argument asserted that influence on pathway and agency occurred at levels of high proximal process with the influence of goal setting occurring at levels of lower proximal process.

The I am College and Career Ready Student Support Program (iCCR). The iCCR was a collaboratively designed system utilizing a PAR (Herr & Anderson, 2015; Ivankova, 2015) structure that (a) provided staff and stakeholder professional development on a graduation profile that identify post-secondary needs for all students, (b) collaboratively set positive goals and expectations for all students in our schools to be ready for 21st century post-secondary environments, (c) developed and implemented college and career ready advisory period curriculum and supporting experiences, and (d) provided parent workshops to increase parent knowledge of college and career readiness standards being expected of students, and (e) provided ongoing professional development sessions for the implementation of iCCR curriculum with advisors in their advisory period.

This was the presentation given with the dissertation Hope as Strategy: The Effectiveness of an Innovation of the Mind.

The purpose of this qualitative cycle of action research was to explore how urban educational leaders form and created justifications about the expectation levels for students that are categorized by the State of California as being high need. My previous cycles of action research have examined institutional, cultural, and individual aspects of my district and our schools that may diminish current student achievement. A problem of practice has emerged for further examination whereby students that are label high need are not thought of being able to achieve high levels of academic achievement. In this cycle, participants (n = 2) were urban educators in leadership positions from outside the context of origin of my problem of practice. The research questions were: How do urban educational leaders describe the learning potential of students labeled high need? and; How do urban educational leader describe their responsibility to students labeled high need? Findings included the development of a grounded there whereby when urban educational leaders set positive ecological systems goals, actively engage in the struggles students face, create clear expectation and supports for school staff, and engage in equity based resourcing, that students labeled high needs are more likely to find success.

There is a growing body of literature on the application of Hope Theory (HT; Snyder, 2002) to advance student achievement in schools. The purpose of this multi-cycle, mixed-methods, action research study was to continue exploratory investigations on positive goal formation and examine a district-wide innovation to reduce pathway complexity. Qualitative methods included document analysis and interviews of district officials and a school site principal (n = 4). Quantitative methods were utilized to examine the district Course of Study. Results included four qualitative themes and a reduction in systems complexity. Scientific significance included how practitioners can utilize action research and theoretical frameworks at the district level as means of organizational improvement in the pursuit of educational excellence for all students.