Eight Exonians to Conduct Research with the CSBGL
This fall, eight students began research with the Center of the Study of Boys and Girls Lives (CSBGL), a program with the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education in which a select group of students chooses a topic about their school and spend a year researching it. The goal of the center is to help schools understand and improve their cultures through analyzing student-run, qualitative research.
The students conducting this year’s research are lowers Shaan Bhandarkar, Anna Clark and Isadora Kron and uppers Jaynee Anaya, Menat Bahnasy, Ori Evans, Maria Heeter and Madison Stern. They plan to focus their research on a question about either gender neutral housing or how social class affects student lives and interactions on campus. This type of research, Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), is aimed at community change.
“This isn’t radical. It makes sense and aligns with our school’s values that if we’re going to study school culture and look at ways of improving it, that we actually have this formal mechanism that has students doing the work.”
Last April, Director of Studies Brooks Moriarty, Dean of Academic Affairs Karen Lassey and Dean of Students Melissa Mischke attended the Round Table Conference in Philadelphia. This is an annual meeting where the student research teams from about 11 schools present their work and share what they were working on all year. They went to observe the conference and decide whether or not the program was something Exeter wanted to pursue.
According to Moriarty, they returned to campus excited by what they had seen. He was impressed by the level and quality of the work that the students had done as social science research. In addition, he saw that students acted as “agents of change” as their “thorough and convincing research” was received by peers, faculty and trustees. “The students were exploring exactly the kinds of questions schools should be asking in order to become better communities,” Moriarty said.
Another appealing facet of the program was that it allowed the school to view itself not only from the faculty or student perspective but to make informed decisions based on the research about different policies, practices and curriculum. “I think to ground these ideas in rigorous research is really important and I’m not sure we always do that, so this is just another way that adds that information to help our decisions,” Lassey said. Moriarty agreed, saying, “This isn’t radical. It makes sense and aligns with our school’s values that if we’re going to study school culture and look at ways of improving it, that we actually have this formal mechanism that has students doing the work.”
As the School Coordinators, Lassey and Moriarty work closely with the group during their bi-weekly meetings. They also attended a retreat in September where they met Exeter’s Research Assistant Joseph Nelson, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania School of Education who has been working with the program for several years. Nelson’s job is to help narrow down a research topic, guide the group on how to collect through data focus groups, surveys or interviews, then train the group in how to analyze and understand their findings. In the spring, he will help the students write a report from their observations to present at the Round Table Conference. This same presentation will be shown to the principal, students, faculty and trustees.
CSBGL offers the students instruction on qualitative research, similar to the curriculum level of an AP Social Science class. However, the club is currently an extra time commitment, so the students are working through the textbook in sections. In the coming years, the rigorous program may offer student researchers credit for their efforts and shift towards becoming an elective that offers one third of a credit each term. “Maybe this could pave the way for opportunities in which students achieve credit for types of co-curricular activities on campus,” Moriarty said.
Since the goal of the research is to eventually follow through with steps to create change within the community, the coordinators opened the application to preps and lowers last spring. They thought it was important for students to have the time to continue the work. If the program continues next year, some of the returning researchers will work on policy changes, while another group will continue research and train a new set of lowers. “We have this idea of constant and connected experience for our students over time,” Moriarty said.
Lassey agreed and said that last year there was a large pool of applicants to choose from. “We were excited about a lot of interest, and frankly, it was really hard to choose,” she said. Students who were interested in taking their work “to that next step” by helping instigate change stood out.
When asked about what drew her to CSBGL, Clark said she truly believes in Exeter’s pedagogy and thought that CSBGL played very well to it. “I think that it’s our duty as current students to think about the future, and how to improve the school,” she said.
Kron echoed Clark’s devotion to initiating positive changes on campus. “I felt [the program] was a really good opportunity to make a significant change at the school in a topic that I am passionate about,” she said.
Stern reflected on how CSBGL introduced her to the concept of YPAR, admitting she didn’t know “this whole world of qualitative research” existed. She applied because of her interest in cultural anthropology, and thought it would be a more effective way of promoting change.
“I watched last year how ineffective we really were at changing set things such as the [visitations] policy; we were going round and round with that and kind of just going off of observations, like, ‘oh well maybe this is going on so therefore,’ but you never really got anything concrete that you could [cite],” Stern said.
Bahnasy hoped her work with CSBGL will bring to light important issues on campus that are frequently overlooked. “There were definitely topics on campus that needed to be discussed, and some faculty and students shied away from,” Bahnasy said.
Heeter said that she wanted her work with CSBGL to make concrete changes instead of just clarifying issues on campus.
“I think the Academy can improve its culture by first recognizing that there are problems and then by implementing policies that will address the problem instead of just saying ‘there’s a problem, students fix it,’” she said.