Alumni

FACULTY | OUTSIDE THE BOX

Learning Experience
Assistant Professor of Education Rachel Ragland's first-year students leave Lake Forest to conduct research in the classrooms of a Chicago Public School. 

By Lindsay Beller

A First-Year Studies education class stands outside Senn High School in Chicago, where they conducted a semester-long research project about what motivates high school students to succeed.

When a group of first-year students visited Nicholas Senn High School in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood for a research project last semester, they saw signs of a typical high school. Hallways buzzed with students and teachers. School announcements blared across the loud speaker. Posters promoted after-school meetings, and colorful murals brightened many walls.
 
But some of the Lake Forest students saw, for the first time, the reality of an urban public high school environment. They had to walk through metal detectors into a place where students were required to wear white tops and dark pants to keep gang colors out of the school. Many classes also had limited resources and supplies.
 
Tensions were further exacerbated by the military academy that shares space with Senn High School, where the students strongly identify with the school they attend. Some students and teachers were also experiencing low morale and anger toward an alderman in the community who had proposed to split Senn up into four smaller schools to make it appeal more to families in the gentrifying neighborhood. With 95 percent ethnic minority students from 63 countries — most from low-income families — the school is more diverse than what most of the Lake Forest students had experienced in their own high schools. 
      
"When I came here it was a culture shock to me," recalls Caroline Davis '11, who had attended an affluent private school in Nashville, Tennessee.
      
As students in the class Exploring Adolescence: The Role of Chicago School Experiences, they visited Senn four times during the fall semester to research what factors motivate high school students to succeed. Like an increasing number of First-Year Studies classes, the course was designed to incorporate the resources of Chicago into the curriculum and expose incoming students to the city. This class achieved that by turning Senn into a laboratory. "The main goal was for students to get an authentic experience of carrying out an example of social science research," says Assistant Professor of Education Rachel Ragland.
     
The Lake Forest students worked together as a research team to investigate the impact of the Chicago school experience on adolescent development. They hypothesized that students who feel most connected, respected, recognized, encouraged, and empowered by teachers and the school culture will be most engaged and motivated to succeed in school.
 
To test their hypothesis, the Lake Forest students created a questionnaire that surveyed students' views on community service, parental involvement, teachers, and motivation to succeed, plus factors like ethnicity, gender, age, and native language. Of the 500 questionnaires they distributed, they received 93 back. They also conducted one-on-one interviews with 23 of these students. The class then analyzed all the data and returned to Senn a final time to share their results.
 
They found that approximately 90 percent of students surveyed said they were engaged in school and rated their teachers positively. They also concluded that the students rated highest in engagement had the most positive relationships with their teachers and parents.
 
This didn't surprise Senn High School Curriculum Coordinator Lucille Grieco, the liaison with Ragland's class. She said the findings were relevant and planned to cite Lake Forest's study in Senn's biennial school improvement planning process. "Research has already shown that the more involved students tend to stay in school and tend to do better than their non-connected counterparts," she says. "Additionally previous research has shown that those students who have parental support tend to stay in school and do better." 
 
However, the results — and the interactions with Senn students — surprised some of the students in Ragland's class. "We were expecting them to not care, but these kids really cared," David Goldsmith '11 says. Several quotes from Senn students during the personal interviews bore that out. "The only way to be someone is to be educated," one says. "I'm motivated to prove to my family that I can be successful," says another.
 
In their final analysis, Ragland and her students recognized the limitations of the results. "Ninety-three students isn't representative, and they are probably more engaged than the average student population," says Goldsmith, who cited an inability to re-interview students to see if their motivation and engagement had changed. "That's why research never ends," he says. "That's why it keeps going." 
 
But Ragland was more concerned with having students go through the research process than with the actual results of the study. By building these research skills into the curriculum, she wanted students to gain experience in data gathering and interpretation, which she believes will serve her students well.
 
Gwen Baldwin '11 came away from the class with that and more. "We'd learn about adolescents and education in the classroom and then see it in action," she says. "It put experience in learning."
 
The benefits extended to the students at Senn, many of whom came up to the College to see the class's final presentation and tour the campus. "High school students can benefit from interacting with college students and from spending time on a college campus," Grieco says. "College students who may not have had a multicultural urban experience can benefit from spending time at Senn."

Lindsay Beller is the editor of Spectrum.