End of Winter Term 2013 and Course Evaluations

Today I finally finished my winter term. I just turned in my final project for my descriptive linguistics class. It was tough. I am glad it's over. Now I can go and enjoy my Easter weekend and the rest of my Spring Break.

I just also completed my course evaluations. At Marylhurst, they really want to improve their courses so at the end of every term, they email you the link to complete the survey on one's courses. Here is why course evaluations are important:


Anyways, I decided to on my grades and I received an A- in adolescent development. As for my final grade in my linguistics class, I won't find out until later. Spring term starts for me next Tuesday, April 2nd. On Tuesday nights I will be taking a course called Teacher as an Action Researcher. I will also be taking a Compassion in Action:Service Learning Seminar course online. I will meet like-minded people who are going to spend at least 30 hours serving the local communities around here online. Stay tune about Spring Term plans.

Four Stages of Faith Identity (Marcia's)

Right now I am finishing up my revised term paper for my adolescent development class. In one aspect of my paper, I talked about my spiritual faith and where I was at as an adolescent. James Fowler has his stages of Faith development from young children to adults. Now I am reading another article that talks about Marcia's Identity stages while other researchers uses her model in faith development during adolescence. I am using this to teach others. Here is a summary:

In general, our findings seem to confirm the commitment and exploration conceptual underpinnings of Marcia’s (1966) adolescent identity-status categories in the religious domain. Our analyses of religious commitment and crisis (doubting), and especially our analysis of belief-confirming versus belief-threatening exploration, lend support to the validity of Marcia’s conceptualization. However, we would agree that religious doubt, itself, is only a part of religious exploration and possibly a better indication of crisis rather than active exploration. Our assessment of the consultation process for religious questions and doubts is probably a better measure of actual exploration, related to potential commitment or avoidance of commitment. Overall, then, what do our findings suggest regarding links between religion and each of the four identity statuses?

1. Achievement: In general, there was little association between identity achievement and religion in our studies. There was a weak tendency for achievement to be related to religious commitment in Study 2 only, but there was no link between achievement and the extent of self-reported religious doubting in eitherstudy. Notably, however, when more achieved individuals did have questions and doubts, they tended to consult both belief-confirming and belief-threatening sources for assistance. They were, thus, apparently open to hearing “both sides of the issues,” consistent with Berzonsky and Kuk’s (2000) and Berzonsky and Sullivan’s (1992) informational style proposals.

2. Moratorium: These scores were modestly related to evidence of more religious doubting, lack of religious commitment, and lower religious fundamentalism. Higher Moratorium scores were related to a tendency to avoid BCC both concurrently and 2 years in the future. Indeed, consistent with this, Moratorium scores were also linked with self-perceptions of becoming less religious over time.

3. Foreclosure:Our findings suggested that foreclosed individuals have indeed made religious commitments, generally accepting the religious teachings they grew up with. They also tended to believe that they belong to the one, true religion (as measured by the RF scale), and they were inclined not to doubt religious teachings. When doubts did arise in their lives, they preferred to resolve them by consulting sources that would confirm traditional religious teachings, and they tended to avoid sources that might threaten their religious beliefs, both concurrently and in the future. In light of this, it is not surprising that Foreclosure scores were predictive of decreased religious doubting 2 years later.

4. Diffusion: Finally, diffused individuals tended to be experiencing moredoubts about religion and were generally religiously uncommitted. They tended to be nonfundamentalist in their approach to religion, were inclined to avoid going to church, and also tended to disagree with parental religious teachings. They also did not seem particularly interested in seeking out information to help them resolve religious issues, tending to avoid both belief-confirming and belief-threatening sources of information. Consistent with the conceptualization of diffused identity, these people seemed to be avoiding both association with religion and seeking out information that might help them to resolve religious questions and doubts. Diffusion scores were predictive of decreased consultation (both pro- and anti-religious) in the future. There was also evidence that people with higher Diffusion scores were able to recognize that they were drifting further away from religion over time. These patterns generally parallel the diffuse–avoidant style of information processing described by Berzonsky and Kuk (2000).

These patterns of associations between identity status and religion are generally quite consistent with the conceptualization of the identity construct, and they add color and texture to basic identity-religion associations. More important, our findings regarding consultation for religious doubts are, with the exception of moratorium status, consistent with Berzonsky and Kuk’s (2000) suggestion that different identity statuses may have unique information-seeking and processing styles. Furthermore, these styles may have important implications for the eventual religious commitments (or lack thereof) among our participants.

Hunsberger, B., Pratt, M. & Pancer, S.M. (2001). Adolescent identity formation: Religious exploration and commitment. An International Journal of Theory and Research, 1:4, 365-386. Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S1532706XID0104_04.

Last Adolescent Class: Alternative Teen Lit Guide

Last night I had my last adolescent class. We didn't finish until 9:30 pm (15 mins extra since class officially ended at 9:15 pm). Each of us presented our alternative teen lit guide. What are alternative literacies? It's defined as learning, processing and sharing information in non-traditional ways such as blogging, music sharing, movie making, digital storytelling, video/online gaming, art making, etc. Everyone did such a good job presenting their guides either with brochures, power point or webpages.

I was losing my voice so I had to present my guide in a softer voice than normal. It's this awful cold. I chose video and online games as my alternative lit. Please check it out here. You can print out the brochure that covers why video and online gaming does support literacy in adolescents here. (You have to hit the hyperlink 'here' of Learn about video and online games as alternative teen lit here for you to be able to download and print it out.) I received several comments and a few add-on comments. Abi shared with us about two video game related books called Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and Level Up by Gene Lwen Yan (latter is a graphic novel). I feel I did well. A couple of classmates positively praised my presentation.

I can't believe this class is over already. I have learned so much. I still have to work on my paper for revision to get a better grade (not happy with my score) and the matrix which is a guide on how I deal with adolescents in their crises. I will share more on that in another blog entry. My term doesn't end until I turn in my final three assignments to my instructors.

With my voice being weak, the plus side is that my kids from work is more patient with me as well as being helpful. They were on the best behavior. I only had a couple minor issues with a few kindergartners. Though, my first graders were just excellent. I had three first grade helpers who assisted in gathering the whole group to transition to the next activity and make announcements for me. I wonder if I can milk this laryngitis longer. My voice is still semi-out. If I do recover in a few days, I may want to pretend that I still have lost my voice until Spring break. Generally little kids are so helpful when they realized that you are in a need for help.

Ethnic Identity

Wow, it has been awhile. I've been so busy with my classes and life this winter. Time to update what's going on. I have one more week of classes left. I have three major assignments due soon. More on that later. This term in adolescent development, I learned a lot about the different crisis and identity seeking issues that young people have.

Just a few weeks ago, we chatted about two different topics on Moodle. We had some in-depth conversation on ethnic identity. Here is what I posted on February 25th:

When I headed off to kindergarten, I had to face my ethnic identity early in life. I noticed many of my classmates have different skin tones, language and culture than mine. Since I was young enough, we all just played together. In elementary school, I blended in as best as I could. Majority of my schoolmates came from White American culture from working class to middle class backgrounds. I mentioned in one of earlier posts that I became color-blind and try to believe whatever my white peers and teachers believed. I read books with white characters and wrote stories using white characters. At school, I think I pretended to be white and at home I was Chinese.

I never really thought about my differences until middle school. I met more students with diverse backgrounds even some like me who was born here with immigrant parents. In seventh grade, a white kid mistaken me to be Japanese. I was like, yes, Japanese culture is so neat but my family is Chinese. In seventh grade, I actually made a first friend from a Chinese heritage who actually immigrated to America a couple years before I met her. We would hang out during recesses. It was fun to just chat both in Cantonese and English and just relate with a common ethnic culture. By high school, I wanted to examine my ethnic background. I started to read more books about China and Chinese culture especially written by another Chinese-American like me. I started to enjoy watching Chinese movies and read fictional books by Chinese Americans. By the time I started college, I could say I am a second-generation Chinese-American who's parents are Chinese immigrants. I didn't need to say I'm American while keeping my Chinese heritage at a low level. I think I found balance between my Chinese background and my American cultural side from being born and raised here.

With working with youth, one must really listen and let them identify what racial or ethnic identity they want. If I sense there is a crisis or uncertainty, I would offer my assistance. I would ask questions for them to explore. I need to give these young people time and space to voice where they are at with their ethnic identity. If they need assistance and need an ethnic model, I will help them find an adult who has experienced similarly to what they are going through and this adult's ethnic and racial background is like theirs. If I can't find another adult to assist, I would provide books and other resources for the adolescent to explore. I will constantly be willing to explore this process with them too. I would be open with my own process if need be. Each student's need for ethnic identity is different. I will have to know this student better before I could really help.

Two classmates (of European ancestry) responded with how they appreciate my story and my advice in letting young students decide how they define their racial and/or ethnic identities. Robyn responded to my post beautifully:

Clearly from your story, one's ethnic identity can be seen as evolving over time for some adolescents where others may have foreclosed or achieved identities much sooner than we think. As you and Abi stated, it's important that we let them identify and tell us what they think of themselves rather than us or other students choosing for them or labeling them. These labels can be discriminatory and limiting and we should not allow them to be used in our classes.

What is interesting to me too is how we as educators are having our own ethnic identities constructed at the same time as our students sometimes. I know that learning about ethnic identity really helped me explore my own more thoroughly, and I think this will continue as I work with adolescents with a deeper awareness of what is going on for them and myself.

Yes, we also delve into racial identity on the third week of February. If you want to learn more about adolescent development, please read Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators by Michael Nakkula and Eric Toshalis. This book need to be read by everyone to fully understand what adolescent children goes through.