Update & Next Steps

RESEARCH METHODS
To recap our research over the last couple of weeks:

1. Interviews at Andrew Street High School
We interviewed counselors and students on two different occasions at Andrew St. High School, which is a Propel charter school with about 200 students in grades 9-12.  We asked the counselors some broad questions about student career decision-making and did a few card sorting activities.  This provided valuable insight into the culture of “everyone-goes-to-college” at the high school, as well as insight about overtaxed counselors who are doing a great job taking care of juniors and seniors but who don’t always have time to help younger students.  When we interviewed students, we brought three sets of storyboards that explained a few different concepts for a tool or service to support career decision making.  We walked the students through the scenarios and got a lot of good feedback about what parts they thought were useful and which were less so.

2. Card sorting at SHIM
We spent an evening doing card sorting activities with 12 boys in 8th and 9th grades, at a program put on by the South Hills Interfaith Ministry.  We interviewed the boys in pairs and had them do 3 different card sorting activities to prompt them to talk about careers they’re considering, resources that are helpful to them, and what factors are important in their future careers.  One interesting insight was that boys who were in specialized electives at school (electronics, web design, etc.) were very interested in careers that related to those classes.  On the other hand, some participants were dreaming of careers as professional athletes or the President.

 

3. Career Path mapping
We completed the career path mapping exercise with four adult participants, and we received a variety of interesting stories about the turning points, influences, and lessons learned as these adults got settled into their careers.  The overarching takeaway was that, in the end, most of what they had learned came about during the experiences that occurred along the way.

4. Hanging probes at Andrew Street HS and Braddock Hills HS
We hung banners at two different high schools with open ended statements and blanks for student responses.  The banners posed one of two statements: “After high school I will be…” or “I will figure out my job by…”  After a week or so, we picked up the banners and examined the responses.  The responses varied in originality and quality, but we were excited to see in at least one case that students were considering a variety of ways to figure out their careers (internships, job shadowing, etc.)

 

RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

 

We compiled the results of all of these research methods, plus insights we gained from literature and artifact reviews and the interview with Steve from the Neighborhood Learning Alliance.  After sorting, categorizing, and synthesizing, we were able to establish some overarching themes.

• human interaction is needed
• lack of support available for self reflection
• lack of awareness of others’ career paths
• lack of long-term thinking
• balance needed between planning and exploration
• students feel overwhelmed and/or lack initiative
• negative influences exist in the lives of students

Based on these overarching themes, we did a round of brainstorming to come up with a number of quick concepts.  They ranged from developing a digital tool for counselors to running an after school peer mentoring program to compiling a database of working professionals who would be willing to teach in high school classrooms.  The policy implications included tying participation to the Pittsburgh Promise program, using dual enrollment or internships as student incentives, and lowering the student-counselor ration.  We discussed the concepts, combined the ones that overlapped, and analyzed how well each concept addressed each overarching theme.

 

 

NEXT STEPS

We will be deciding on a concept in class tomorrow, then delegating responsibilities for the final deliverables.

 

Photos from Participatory Design Research

These are photos from two of our research activities.  We made posters with open ended statements, with the idea that high school students will fill in the statements with their own thoughts.  We hung these at Andrew Street High School and Braddock Hills high school, and we’ll retrieve them in a week or so.  We anticipate a variety of responses that should help inform our understanding of how high schoolers think about life after high school and how they’ll figure out their future job.

We’re also using a journey mapping activity to engage adults in a conversation about how they landed and settled into their current career.  With a blank board and a set of descriptive stickers to illustrate milestones and influences, we ask directed questions to gain an understanding of how the person got to where they’re at.  We anticipate that these various stories will help demonstrate the difference between where they thought they would end up and where they actually did, and how their career plan changed along the way.

Foster Care is Broken (But There’s Hope!)

“It’s difficult to change systems even when they are widely acknowledged to be broken. That’s the situation facing the nation’s foster care system.”
– David Bornstein, New York Times

Many children are well-cared for and thriving in their own homes, and an even larger majority of kids are at least having their basic needs met.  For some kids, though, home life is much different.  These children may experience maltreatment, lack of care, or lack of supervision while they are at home, or suffer from any number of other conditions that threaten their safety and well-being.  Because of measures outlined in the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), once these circumstances are identified and reported, state governments must act quickly to ensure that children are being taken care of.  For kids who have been deemed as abused or neglected, or who simply cannot remain in their homes, foster care is often the initial solution.  This social service provides a safe, temporary placement for a child in a single-family home or a group home, until the child can return to his or her family.  (If parental rights are terminated, adoption is typically pursued as a more permanent option.)  In 2012, about 400,000 children were in out-of-home care on any given day.  In total, well over 600,000 kids received services throughout the year (Trends in Foster Care, 2013).

Although the purpose of foster care is incredibly noble, the moving parts get a little clunky between governments, foster care agencies, and families.  Each foster care situation is different, with most children coming from a background that includes poverty, inequality, abuse, and/or an incarcerated parent.  Many children have serious medical problems or developmental delays, and a large majority of children in foster care suffer from emotional problems (Facts About Foster Care, 2013).  Because of the number of stakeholders and the critical nature of the circumstances, a myriad of problems surround the service.  Just to name a few, mostly from a report called Meeting the Challenges of Contemporary Foster Care (Chipungu & Bent-Goodley):

children in care – long stays in foster care, changing placements, moving schools, grief over losing biological parent

children out of care – more likely than same-age peers to be depressed, unemployed, uneducated, pregnant, in jail

families of children in care – parents often have serious issues of their own, difficulty when child returns home

foster parents – out-of-pocket expenses, managing multiple children, burn out, lack of resources

case workers – complex cases, heavy case loads, high turnover, lack of necessary services for families

government – out-of-home care is expensive, lack of foster care parents, lack of permanent solutions for kids

There are a number of interesting solutions to some of these problems, most of which are operating on a small scale with some potential to be scaled.  The S.T.A.R. project proposes a holistic model that improves the outcomes for children in foster care, mostly by increasing the permanence of placements.  A much different perspective is presented by the Story Design lab at Columbia, which piloted a project in which students worked with former foster kids to develop an immersive storytelling experience to help foster children who age out of foster care services.  A third approach is described in this NY Times article, which highlights Youth Villages as a service that equips case workers and the families of children in care, in order to move children back into their homes and support in-home care.

It would be wise to recognize the government’s efforts in all of this, and we should especially commend state governments for “experimenting with social organizations who have innovative delivery models” (Bornstein, NYT).  The Children’s Bureau is making a notable effort to fund initiatives that promote permanent outcomes for foster children, and the Bureau seems to do a good job tracking and reporting on their work.  Also, Children’s Rights is a national advocacy group that is working from a policy angle to improve child welfare.

None of these solutions are perfect, though, and all of them have huge opportunities for growth.  Why do foster kids still have such a hard time both in and out of care?  How can case workers be better supported?  How can we help at-risk families from the get-go, in a preventative effort to reduce the overall need for foster care? It seems to me that we have a long way to go in developing empathy for all of the stakeholders, particularly children in care and foster parents.  Reading first hand accounts of foster parents who just want to be understood and statistics about foster children who haven’t been successful is just a taste of what it must be like to be involved in the world of foster care.

I think that this important problem could be a unique application of design and policy to impact society.  The foster care system could benefit from a human-centered design overhaul, probably most profoundly in the form of service design.  With strong, sustainable policy reform to back up the proposed changes, designers and policymakers could create a powerful solution to reform this social service.  It’s an urgent need – kids are growing up in broken families, getting pushed here and there in foster care, and floundering as soon as they exit.  How can design and policy work together to craft an empathetic solution to this problem?

Written by Robyn Hammond, MDes

Works Cited

1. Chipungu, Sandra S., and Tricia B. Bent-Goodley. “Meeting the Challenges of Contemporary Foster Care.” Futureofchildren.org, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2013. <http://www.whenyouwish.com/upload/9c35e260-6e56-47f9-bb71-107d19ce6ca2.pdf&gt;.
2. “Facts About Foster Care.” Childrensrights.org. Children’s Rights, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2013. <http://www.childrensrights.org/issues-resources/foster-care/facts-about-foster-care/&gt;.
3. “A Families-First Approach to Foster Care.” Opinionator Blog. New York Times, 21 Feb. 2011. Web. 11 Oct. 2013. <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/a-families-first-approach-to-foster-care/&gt;.
4. “Trends in Foster Care and Adoption FY2002-FY2012.” Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2013. <http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/trends_fostercare_adoption2012.pdf&gt;.

Project Pitch: Career Exploration & Guidance

Alex and Robyn are excited to work with teenagers at a Pittsburgh high school in the space of career exploration and guidance.  We’re looking to complete our team with 1 or 2 more non-designers who are also excited about this topic.  Email us at alexandra.krysiak@gmail.com or robynlhammond@gmail.com if you’re interested!

The goal of our project is to: 
1. support discussions about careers in a tangible, visible, fun, and interactive way
2. equip teens to see the value of their past experiences and make on-going connections to their goals for the future (ex. working at McDonald’s and gaining insight into what they don’t want to do, but also taking away an understanding of parts that they did like)
3. reward actively participating teens with assistantship opportunities that are tailored to expressed interests, based on relationships developed with working professionals (from in-demand jobs or careers that cater to the interests of a specific class of students, not just professionals from typical “good” careers like lawyers and doctors).

Our approach will be:
1. creating a mapping exercise to help students visualize significant past and future experiences and identify takeaways.
2. teach working professionals to tell their stories through similar exercises
3. structure on-going tasks and discussions to build relationships

We see this tying to policy through:
1. existing education curriculum policy
2. incentives for participating companies

We think this could have impact on these “wicked problems”:
1. student drop-out rates
2. effectiveness of existing curriculum
3. long-term employment and career satisfaction
4. poverty

Check out these links for more insight into the topic!
http://www.mmsonline.com/columns/lack-of-career-guidance-among-high-school-students
http://fitzjkenny.hubpages.com/hub/careerdecisionmissinglink
http://www.seenmagazine.us/articles/article-detail/articleid/2353/career-exploration-and-guidance-for-students.aspx

Click to access 2009_08-14_WP-CareerEducation.pdf

SparkTruck: Hands-on Creativity to Revolutionize Learning

“We drove 15,323 miles and met 2,700 kids between California and Massachusetts, teaching them about tinkering, brainstorming, and how to get unstuck.” – Eugene Korsunskiy, SparkTruck founder

What began as a thesis project in the d.school at Stanford in 2012 has now become an “educational build-mobile,” intended to drive change in education.  Welcome to SparkTruck, an initiative begun by a group of graduate students who spent a year exploring the intersection of creativity, technology, and learning.  The group realized that many schools don’t have the flexibility or equipment to allow students to try hands-on building and making, which is a key skill for learning to brainstorm, prototype, and problem solve.

Now in its second year, SparkTruck operates as a mobile work station full of both high-tech equipment (ex. laser cutters, 3D printers) and low-tech supplies (ex. post-its, pom poms).  The original group has passed on the torch, so now it’s a new group of students who drive the truck and run workshops for kids, parents, and teachers at each stop along the tour.  SparkTruck serves literally to “spark” creativity and interest in technology, by providing some simple tools to help kids learn through making.  It also encourages parents and teachers to imagine the future of learning as something that incorporates this hands-on creativity.

The group has seen an incredible response to their makerspace – they’ve seen kids light up as they learn to collaborate and build working robots; they’ve watched adults catch a glimpse of the rewards of hands-on education; and they’ve set a precedent for a low-cost solution to a big problem.  Look here for an interview with one of the original founders, who says, “One of the things that has been pushing exploratory activities like making out of schools is rigid curricular standardization,” which explains the SparkTruck vision for free exploration and unstructured brainstorming.

I got to meet the original SparkTruck founders when they visited Pittsburgh last summer, and it was eye-opening to hear their optimism and vision for shaking up the status quo of education.  In my opinion, the most important takeaways from SparkTruck are these:

1. Innovation & social change requires a willingness to be flexible.  The SparkTruck founders recognized a problem in schools (a lack of hands-on learning), but instead of attempting to change the situation from the inside out, they offered a solution from the outside and wiggled their way in.  By bringing the tools and workspace to kids and schools, rather than expecting schools to build classrooms dedicated to making, SparkTruck demonstrates the value of their initiative in a low-cost, low-risk environment.

2. Lasting change requires baby steps.  The SparkTruck founders know that a one-time makers workshop is far from the ideal of a lifetime of hands-on learning for kids and adults. However, they are intensely optimistic that this single interaction with the SparkTruck will be enough to spark an interest in technology for at least a few kids at each stop.  One commentator even suggests that the experience will be enough to convince some of the participants to pursue STEM majors in college.  The founders of SparkTruck are also eager to equip teachers with small ways to integrate making into their daily classroom routines, either by setting aside physical space for making or by incorporating design thinking into the approach that students take when solving problems.

3. Do something.  After the problem was identified and explored, the SparkTruck founders didn’t just park their idea.  The found a truck, rigged it up as a build-mobile, invited people to come, and then found places to park it!  It sets a great example of seeing change in action.  Even after the original batch of founders was ready to move on to other work, they met with students and professors at Stanford to make sure the project would continue.

The #1 question that the SparkTruck group gets from kids is: “Are you coming back tomorrow?”

 

 

Robyn Hammond,
Design & Public Policy
Blog Entry #1