The intent of this study was to explore directly from the statements of youth themselves how teens experience youth empowerment through participation in youth groups. This study was based upon an analysis of youth as a group oppressed by adultism. Empowerment is the essential process by which this oppression is overcome. Through the personal accounts of a sample of eight youths who belong to six diverse organizations, a deeper understanding has been developed of what are the essential ingredients for the empowerment of youth. The study used qualitative research methods to explore in depth the experience of youth through interviews conducted by the researcher. A methodology which encouraged youth to reflect and enter into a dialogue was selected to be consistent with the empowerment process. The analysis of the data was completed in two sections. The first section consists of participants' profiles which summarized personal stories prior to group involvement and significant experiences with the group that lead to the youths' empowerment. In the second section an inductive analysis of the data was made to discover emerging themes in the youths' experience of the empowerment process. This research concludes that incorporating three components in a youth empowerment model--emotional nurturance, intellectual challenge, shared power with adults--results in a successful formula for the transformation from disempowerment to empowerment. The empowerment organization provides emotional nurturance, consisting of a safe environment and closeness, expression of emotions and conflict resolution and the acceptance of diversity. Such emotional nurturance lays a strong foundation and creates a positive organizational climate. In this climate, intellectual challenge is developed: youth receive sophisticated training and education which builds critical analysis and fosters the development of their voice. Through this combination of intellectual and emotional growth, many aspects of the youth developed as individually and as group members. Emotional nurturance and intellectual challenge are set in a context of shared power which includes a non-authoritarian relationships adult leader. Youth have the opportunity to experience and exercise power which helps them to choose where and how to take action. This results in increased self esteem and empowerment.

This research project emerged from the researcher's work as an adult basic education instructor in a community learning center. With an inordinately high attrition rate (over seventy percent), the researcher's attention was easily focused on the small number of students who remained in the Learning Center and attended classes consistently. This group of five learners became the self-selected participants in the study. The purpose of the study was to examine the life experience of the five learners to gain insight into the nature of their motivation and commitment to learn. A series of up to six, one hour interviews were conducted with each of the participants. During the interviews, participants reflected on both past and present experience. Although it varied from person to person, discussions included childhood and family experience, prior school and educational experiences. Conclusions drawn from the research are not easily categorized. Motivating factors were different for each learner; one was motivated by a life-altering illness and another by the realities of finding employment without a high school diploma. The most salient insight gained from the research, however, was the similarity of experience across participants with issues related to dysfunctional families, personal violence, and substance abuse.

A number of researchers have developed treatment packages to improve social competence in young elementary school age children. Such programs assume that children are deficient in the area of social skills, therefore, by learning appropriate social skills unliked children's social status and resulting prognosis will likely improve. These treatment programs have demonstrated that more positive social behaviors can be learned by the targeted children. Yet, despite behavior improvements within the treatment setting, gains have not consistently generalized across settings or time and low social status is maintained. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of self-modeling as a social skill training and status improvement technique. Could the use of this technique decrease negative interactions and isolation while increasing positive interactions during the subject's recess play? Also evaluated was whether the treatment and resulting behavioral changes affected the subjects' sociometric status. This research utilized a multiple baseline across subjects design. Subjects were selected by peer nomination from grades one through three in a rural elementary school in western Massachusetts. Three children (2 second grade boys and 1 first grade girl) were selected from those identified as having low social status within their respective grade. The subjects were regular education students and did not exhibit any idiosyncratic behaviors that would set them apart from their peers. Observations and data collection were conducted during morning recess. Observations continued throughout the study and documented decreased rates of negative and isolate behavior and increased rates in positive interactions as a result of the treatment condition for two of the three subjects. Treatment consisted of the targeted children viewing videotapes of themselves playing appropriately with peers during recess. At the end of treatment the peer nomination instrument was again administered to assess whether changes in status accompanied the behavioral changes. Two subjects improved their rates of positive interaction and one of those two also significantly improved her social status. Results for the third subject are less clear. A trend toward the positive is evident but the study was ended before any clear pattern was established.

Understanding the ways of working and interacting among teachers within the culture of the school continues to be incomplete. Women comprise over 80% of elementary teachers yet there has been scant acknowledgement that gender may be a contributing factor to our knowledge of this aspect of school culture. This study, in two parts, employed ethnographic research methodology that values the emic (insiders) perspective to examine the form and content of teacher collegiality in elementary and middle school settings in an urban area of a north eastern state. It involved an exploration and application of the insights and theoretical assumptions from the scholarship on women to examine the ways gender influences teachers' construction, maintainence and utilization of collegial relationships. This study found women teachers involved in an interpersonal social and cultural setting. Their relationships were based upon the expression of the caring relationship which offered informally constructed professional and personal support systems in the face of the contradictions, constraints, dilemmas and frustrations of practice. The study presents a theoretical model that posits a definition of collegiality among teachers as a process which moves teachers from a naive orientation towards interdependence to a more fully conscious interdependence. At the highest phase more fully conscious interdependence involves self-directed participation in joint enterprise around the tasks of teaching and the work of the school and commitment to community building. It includes engagement in activities of interpersonal and connected knowing. Nurturance, as an expression of the caring relationship, is demonstrated through the willingness to engage in dialogue and narrative. It is identified as the dynamic that facilitates the process of collegiality from naive to conscious interdependence. The study suggests that culture of collegiality constructed by the social and psychological orientations of the women teachers is an important part of our knowledge school culture. It recommends that the issue of gender becomes a seriously considered explicit element in the structuring of schools and the reconceptualization of teacher development programs, placing greater value on the activities of the caring relationship as essential and necessary preconditions to the realization of interdependence and the engagement in joint enterprise.

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