|
|
About
the Changing Lives Program (CLP)
The
Changing Lives Program is a school-based positive development program that
aims to empower troubled adolescents to change their lives in positive
directions. Our goal is to create context in which troubled young people
can transform their sense of control and responsibility and change their
“negative” life trajectories into positive ones. Our intervention goal
is changing lives and we use intervention strategies that are
participatory and transformative to achieve this goal. A transformative approach seeks to create an intervention
context in which students take an active role in the intervention process
and the interventionist (facilitator, teacher, etc.) works with the
students to co-construct alternatives to negative life pathways.
In
CLP, the learning process is co-participatory. In the process of
identifying effective methods for overcoming obstacles to changing
negative life pathways and engaging in transformative activities to bring
about change, participants become empowered as they experience the
possibility of creating and constructing (rather than enduring) the
circumstances of their lives. In CLP, participants not only talk about
their problems; they do something about them. In the context of such
mastery experiences, they become empowered to transform themselves, their
lives, and their communities.
CLP thus seeks to do more than treat behavior problems or prevent negative
developmental outcomes; it also seeks to promote positive psychosocial
development as a means for providing youth with the opportunity to be in
control of their lives and take responsibility for the direction of their
life course. That is, like other treatment and prevention programs, CLP
targets reducing or eliminating the behavior problems and risk factors
that troubled adolescents bring into intervention programs, but it also
seeks to go one step further. CLP also seeks to promote positive change in
young people that will serve as a catalyst for future change.
CLP is an approach that considers positive change that takes place as part
of youth development intervention to serve as a catalyst for future
change. More specifically, it holds that what is important about future
change is that it will be under the control (and responsibility) of the
young people who have changed during the intervention. CLP further holds
that it is change that is youth-selected and youth-directed that will be
most likely to persist past the end of the intervention. What is unique
about CLP’s approach to promoting positive development is that the focus
is not on providing youth with guidance and direction but on creating
context in young people themselves make the choices that give their lives
direction and purpose.
In
our work, CLP is implemented in alternative high schools as part of the
school’s ongoing program of services. Because the schools are
alternative high schools, students participate in program services either
through self or counselor referral. The types of program services
available to them include psycho educational services, individual
counseling, and counseling groups (the groups include anger management,
relationship, substance use/abuse, alternative lifestyles, etc.).
The
Longitudinal Life Course Change (LLC) Project parallels the Changing
Lives (intervention) Program (CLP), but it does not involve an
intervention. The project is an ongoing longitudinal study of quantitative
and qualitative changes in the life course or life pathways of
multi-problem adolescents in alternative school programs who do not
receive psychosocial intervention. Because they receive systemic
evaluations, we currently know more about the changes that take place in
multi-problem troubled youth in psychosocial interventions than we do about the
life course change that occurs in the lives of multi-problem youth in
alternative programs who do not experience a psychosocial intervention.
[top]
Theoretical
Framework
In
seeking to promote positive development by creating contexts in which
these troubled young people can change their lives, the CLP draws its
developmental framework from both psychosocial developmental theory
(Erikson, 1968) and life course theory (Elder, 1998) which we refer to as
a “psychosocial developmental life course” approach. From psychosocial
developmental theory, this approach adopts the view of adolescence as the
developmental stage at which the individual is first confronted with,
systematically and seriously, addressing the complex and difficult
challenge (and responsibility) of choosing the goals, roles, and beliefs
about the world that give the individual's life direction and purpose as
well as coherence and integration. From life course theory, it adopts an
emphasis on how individuals construct their own life course through the
choices and actions they make within the constraints and opportunities of
history and social circumstances.
In
line with Eriksonian theory, the CLP not only targets (and seeks to
resolve) identity issues of the developmental moment but also is aimed at
fostering domains of functioning that are foundational to successfully
meeting other developmental challenges across the life span. The
psychosocial developmental life course approach of CLP, however, draws on
life course theory to extend Eriksonian theory to include the view that
intraindividual change after childhood is less developmentally predictable
than has usually been described in Erikson's approach. Rather, in adapting
the view of identity as a “steering mechanism” for life course change,
a life course approach emphasizes the self-directed nature of change in
adolescence and adulthood consistent with life course theory (Elder, 1998)
and the emerging view of individuals as producers of their development
(Brandtstaedter & Lerner, 1999; Lerner & Busch-Rossnagel, 1981).
[top]
Intervention Goals: Promoting Positive
Development
There
has been a growing interest in developing intervention programs designed
to affect the lives of young people, with the goal of moving their life
trajectories in more adaptive directions (Rutter, 1990). More recently,
there has also been a growing recognition that interventions need to do
more than ”treat” problem behaviors (i.e., symptoms) or “prevent”
negative developmental outcomes (Lerner, Fisher, & Weinberg, 2000;
Lerner, 2005). As
a result, a growing literature focusing on interventions that seek to
promote positive development. CLP is a positive development program.
Positive
development programs differ from both intervention and prevention
programs. Treatment intervention programs, for example, specifically
target identified problem behaviors. Prevention intervention programs
similarly specifically target risk and protective factors identified as
probable antecedents of negative developmental outcomes. In contrast to
treatment and prevention programs that target specific types of behavior
problems (conduct disorders, AOD use/abuse, etc.) or risk factors,
however, CLP does not target specific behavior problems or risk factors;
rather, the focus of CLP is on promoting positive development. CLP
provides (as needed and available) selected interventions that target
specific behavior problems and risk factors and reducing behavior problems
(conduct disorders, AOD use/abuse, etc.) and risk factors are an important
goal of our intervention work but it is not our only goal. Nor is it in
the long-run even our primary goal. From the perspective of a psychosocial
developmental life course approach, important addressing the pressing
problems of the here and now, but in the end they are not more important
than being capable of addressing all of the pressing problems that will
inevitably arise in the future. Changing lives in ways that will move the
lives of young people’s in positive direction is a central aim of CLP.
[top]
Intervention
Strategies
For
its intervention strategies, CLP draws on Freire’s (1983/1970) approach
to empowering marginalized people by enhancing their critical
consciousness about their exclusion from the mainstream. Freire offered an
alternative: a “problem posing” and co-constructive learning model.
Freire referred to such a transformative pedagogy as a pedagogy of
dialogue rather than instruction. Transformative pedagogy is
participatory; it identifies and seeks to solve problems. While
intentionally identifying problems and following through by engaging in
transformative activities to solve these problems, students become the “experts”
and, in the process, develop a greater sense of control and responsibility
over their lives. They become empowered as they experience the possibility
of creating (rather than enduring) the circumstances of their lives.
Because of such mastery experiences, youth learn to see a closer
correspondence between their goals and a sense of how to achieve them,
gain greater access to and control over resources and gain mastery over
their lives (Zimmerman, 1995).
In our work with young people, the learning process is co-participatory.
In the process of intentionally engaging in critically posing problems and
in following through by engaging in transformative activities to solve
these problems, participants acquire a greater critical understanding,
transform their sense of control and responsibility, and increase their
proactive participation in defining who they are and what they believe in.
Within the context of the program these young people become empowered to
transform themselves and, as a result, the context of their communities.
[top]
Intervention
Domains
CLP
seeks to promote positive development by empowering young people in ways
that enable them to change their lives in positive directions. In doing
so, CLP targets four developmental domains:
-
Skills
and Knowledge (the focus is on Critical Understanding)
-
Attitudes
and Orientations (the focus is on Control and Responsibility)
-
Self
Understanding and Insight (the focus is on Knowledge of Self)
-
Personal
empowerment (the focus is on proactive participation in self and
community)
that
enable young people to:
-
think
critically about making the choices that shape their life course
-
take
personal responsibility for these decisions
-
live
up to their fullest potentials
-
to
change the negative trajectory of their lives to positive direction
[top]
Implementation
Strategy
CLP
is designed to be implemented by intervention teams with some background
and/or training in working in both individual and group formats. In our
work with multicultural populations we have also found it useful if the
intervention team members have had experience in working with at-risk,
urban, and minority youth. In
implementing CLP with our population, all members of the intervention team
(counselors, group facilitators, co-facilitators, group assistants and
intern trainees) participate in an ongoing program of training and
supervision conducted as part of the implementation of CLP. The training
and supervision is designed to familiarize intervention team members with
the target population and CLP's intervention goals and procedures as well
as address specific intervention issues that arise in the context of
implementing the program.
CLP is implemented at a variety of levels,
from psycho educational services
and individual counseling to counseling groups that range in size 2 to
8. That is, in addition to individual counseling, we also implement CLP in
dyads, triads, and larger groups, with the type of format used for
specific presenting problems selected on the basis of the best mix of
student needs/presenting issues, school needs/resources, and counselor
skills/resources.
All of the program services are provided by
an intervention team comprised of:
-
intervention
team leader who is a graduate student in psychology, education, or
social work undergoing counseling and/or mental health training,
-
a
co-leader,
-
a
group assistant, and
-
one
or more intern trainees
top]
The
problem and the Population
Although
adolescent stress and storm is not a universal phenomena,
for an increasing number of youth the transition to adulthood poses a
formidable challenge. This is particularly so for disadvantaged youth.
Such youth begin life outside the mainstream social institutions
(e.g., economic, political, educational, etc.) that have traditionally
provided young people value references and normative support. For such socially marginalized youth, the
development of a personal and moral sense of identity (i.e., who they are
and the values they believe in) has become increasingly problematic.
The cost to society is high. Because of the experience of increasing
marginalization, these young people put little (if any) investment in
most normative social institutions. The cost to the youth themselves is
also high. These marginalized youth have withdrawn from proactive
participation in their personal lives, tending not to take control and
responsibility for the direction of their lives, instead searching for
daily adventure that too frequently includes antisocial activities and
problem behaviors. As a result, the number of youth at risk for problem
behaviors is extraordinary high,
particularly among disadvantaged youth.
A
large proportion of marginalized young people in the United States come
from inner city, low-income minority families that exist within a
community context of disempowerment, limited access to resources, and
pervasive violence, crime, and substance abuse. Such youth tend to be
disadvantaged by socioeconomic status, ethnicity, minority status, or in
other ways socially marginalized. They are, for
example, often subject to diverse forms of oppression, the deleterious
effects of poverty, and various forms of institutional and individual
racism. The
psychological consequences are profound. Many young people respond
to the experience of marginalization in ways (e.g., impulsiveness/
immediatism, pretending not to care, keeping their pain inside themselves,
acting out against others, or escaping through drug use) that result in further
marginalization and disengagement.
[top]
Working
with Disadvantaged Adolescents
Adolescence
represents an opportune time for intervening to prevent risky behaviors
that compromise healthy development and assisting with the normative
course of development into adulthood. Adolescence is a time of
experimentation, increased risks, and heightened vulnerability as well
as openness to change. Thus, for some developmental
domains, adolescence provides a maximally effective point of focus for
programs that promote youth development.
However,
the challenge of developing interventions for promoting positive
development in disadvantaged youth in the context of limited resources is
formidable. The development of effective interventions requires approaches
that are readily adaptable to local and particular contexts, culturally
responsive, and practical. Our
experience in using this approach with the young people drawn from a
diverse array of cultural contexts and traditions has shown it to be
useful for providing them the opportunity to increase their proactive
participation in defining who they are and what they believe in. That is,
to acquire a greater critical understanding, transform their sense of
control and responsibility, and to live up to their fullest potentials.
[top]
|
|
