Nicholas Tucker

In my final blog post for the semester, I wanted to look at major takeaways from my involvement in this project. For the duration of my semester-long involvement, I’ve been confused by one important piece of this project: the purpose. In talking with other people in my group, I’ve found that a similar question emerges; not that this aspect is super important for gauging the impact of such a project, as both interviewees and those involved on the research end have expressed how this project has bettered their perceptions of their schooling and their position in a global field of power (Howard 2018). That I’m not questioning, and I feel as though I’ve experienced similar results from working with the data; however, Adam Howard told us early on in the semester that this was framed as a “social justice project,” so with this in the back of my mind throughout the semester, I struggled to wrap my head around how what we were doing qualifies as a social justice project.

When I think of social justice work, the thing farthest from my mind might just be elite schooling. I think instead of working in schools in impoverished areas, or working in a soup kitchen, a shelter, etc. In any case, not performing a case study on one of South America’s most prestigious secondary schools. I guess for a while I kind of just accepted that this was a social justice project; only when I began really going through the interviews in depth and seeing the privilege they possess that I started questioning how exactly this is social justice. And I think the answer to that question lies in the connection between elite students and their surroundings. Often times in settings such as these, students struggle to see outside the bubble of eliteness in which they live. This became quite prominent through reading the data: almost every student mentioned the “Croftian Bubble,” usually using it as a crutch to fall back on when questioned about their privilege; this I found especially relatable, as Colby students are quick to reference the “Colby Bubble” with a similar end in mind. Both of these examples share the quality that students at these schools don’t engage as much and don’t really experience reality across socioeconomic lines despite, in some cases, claiming to have a deep commitment to social justice ideals.

It is here that I believe the true social justice aspect of this project lies. Although at the end of the day this project is elites researching other elites, through the questions posed and the themes discussed in interviews, students at the Croft School (and, I would assume, other schools too) as well as those who were part of the research were able to reflect on their privileged position in ways they hadn’t done before. In seeing this in a new light, it could open students’ eyes to the inequities in society in ways they hadn’t thought of before, and could lead students on a path to more justice-oriented lives.

As for what I gained from this project, I feel that the largest aspect of that isn’t what I have just said, but instead the ability to work with actual data on a real project. I’ve never done work like this before on this grand a scale, and I feel that, moving forward, it will better prepare me for life in academia.

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Howard, Adam. “Making it Political: Working Towards Transformation in the Study of Internationalisation of Elite Education.” Elite Education and Internationalisation, Claire Maxwell, Ulrike Deppe, Heinz-Hermann Krüger, Werner Helsper, 2018.

Over the course of the last couple weeks, we’ve made a lot of progress on our project. When we began coding, we had a rough idea of what we wanted to focus on in our paper from our primary readings, but were still unsure which evidence we would pull from either the interviews or outside sources to form the basis for our discussion. Through finishing coding and moving into the outline phase of our project, we encountered fewer problems than I had expected in translating the data and the list of codes we had created into two themes. The themes we surfaced from our readings of data on the Croft School highlighted the differing definitions of community service presented by students and faculty in their interviews and the lack of personal connection on behalf of the students with respect to their initiatives in finding community service opportunities independently.

Surprisingly enough, the hardest part of this project in the last month was finding sources that fit with our data. Specifically, my task was to research the role of community service in elite schools, a topic about which I figured there would be a reasonable amount of literature given how prominent these practices are in elite schools. That said, when I began researching a couple weeks ago, I found myself struggling to find anything. I first searched databases, and although there were a few articles that touched on the topic, nothing stood out, so I decided to take a different approach and look at the mission statements of some of the elite schools that are a part of this study. There I found what I was looking for: a strong emphasis on community service as one of the most important, if not the most important, values on which the schools pride themselves. Additionally, I found a source which outlined some of the benefits of community service that schools give as reasons for this emphasis on service. These are social development, personal and moral development, vocational development, academic achievement, and political development (Raskoff and Sundeen, 78-80).

That said, I have found it hard to match up these reasons with specific data points. Although it seems that all we need is there, much of what we’ve talked about in class and read about has consisted mostly of theory (especially Bourdieu’s ideas in The State Nobility). It has been more difficult than I had anticipated to connect this theory, which is mostly abstract (although we have read a few studies), to the data. With all of this in mind, though, I think we are headed in the right direction, and I’m excited to see the final product.

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Raskoff, Sally A. and Sundeen, Richard A. “Community Service Programs in High Schools.” Duke Law, 2000. 78-80.

Considering I had never read data before the initial run-through of student, alumni, and teacher interviews at the Croft School in Chile, I was very confused when Adam Howard brought up the process of coding data. After having spent hours combing through the data already to get a feel for it, I was really not sure how much deeper I’d have to analyze it when coding. What does coding even mean? I figured it had something to do with breaking down the data (obviously), but to what end? Why couldn’t we have done this during our primary read-through?

After having slogged through the data the first time, I was both eager for a break and unsure how to move forward in the project, so I waited a week or so to begin coding. When I began reading the interviews a second time, I didn’t know exactly what to do to code, but with just a highlighter in one hand and a pen in the other I was surprised at just how much I noticed that I hadn’t previously. Our group came up with a list of some preliminary codes to look for, so I just dove in. Having this clear list of terms to pick out, combined with the insights into the students’ characters gained from the first read-through, has made the reading feel much less superficial and more productive despite the earlier disconnect I felt from the interviews having not conducted them.

I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised at the amount I’ve gained from this rereading; after all, many of my professors suggest doing readings for their classes two, three, five times. Studies such as those done by Rawson, Dunlosky and Thiede (2000) have shown it to be effective for processing and retaining information. That said, being a college student, I don’t have time for that, but this project has forced me to create that time and reread this data with a completely different mindset. While I may have been overwhelmed at first by the sheer amount of data, the point of the research project seems so much more focused now, and will likely only become clearer once we begin narrowing down the codes and surfacing themes.

One interesting theme I’ve found is the contrast between how students (not the teachers, though) define and claim to value community service and how they actually are involved. In his book on Nikolai Gogol, Vladimir Nabokov describes a word in Russian, пошлость (pronounced poshlust), which captures the essence of something in popular culture that is seen as falsely important, associated with bad taste, or self-satisfying (1944). I believe this word perfectly reflects the state of community service in elite schools, especially the Croft School: the emphasis on service gives off the message that the school is generous and its students kind-hearted, yet at its heart their practices of service are just superficial and don’t accomplish as much as the school would like to have the public believe. Many students criticize the Croft School’s supposedly “surface-level” commitment to community service, as they feel the school doesn’t do enough outside of encouraging its students to donate money or build a house once a year while the teachers praise the school’s involvement through donations, building houses, etc. Of course, this belief is not universal among Croft students, and many critics don’t take initiative in finding other organizations through which they can engage more effectively, however this highlights a major disconnect between the values of community service between the teachers and the students, a theme which may require some further exploration. These results did not surface from the initial read-through of the data, but rather from the coding process, which turned out to be much more useful than I had initially envisioned.

I feel like I’m kind of rambling now, and I need to get back to coding data. Until next time, enjoy this gif of Snoop Dogg turning into a dog.

When I first opened the data folder that Adam Howard shared with our class, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I knew I was going to be researching the Croft School in Chile: an extremely elite school that I had been told accepts no applications from prospective students without a connection to the school and which avoids all forms of publicity despite its prominence as one of the top private schools in Chile. Honestly, I was terrified; having just declared the Educational Studies major, I had never read data before, so I had no idea what to look for, how to find themes across interviews, or — most regrettably, I would soon find — how much time to give myself to read them. Adam gave us almost two weeks to go through all of our country’s interview transcripts. As a fairly average college student, I first opened the folder with about five days left, read one interview (which took like three hours), and resolved that I was in for one long weekend.

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And I wasn’t wrong: I got through all of the data successfully having gained some degree of understanding about the students and teachers. That said, (and I’m writing this a week after finishing this first reading) my brain is toast. It’s not that the interviews were boring, or that I’m not excited for this project (because I really am, it’s the first time I’ve done actual work with data of this caliber before), but OMG is there a lot of data. Last year I worked with Herring Gut Learning Center in another one of Adam’s classes, and those interviews were nothing compared to this. I guess I just need to learn how to budget my time better, especially if I’m looking at pursuing a career doing something like this.

The saving grace of my data-infused weekend from hell was that finding a theme in the mountain of transcripts was easier than expected. In these interviews everything was laid out in perfect order, so when going through my notes I found it easy to pick out specific themes. Ultimately, the Croft Spirit, highlighted by the school’s six pillars, stood out most to me. It’s kind of funny: all the students and teachers knew of the pillars, and knew that there were 6, but not one of the interviewees could name more than like three (and everyone seemed to remember fair play, which I also found interesting, even though that’s not what my group is researching). When I brought this up to my group, we talked through potential topics, and landed on community service as our focus because of the huge differences in perspectives on it from students and teachers. While both groups thought service was important, almost all of the students said that the school basically does nothing (worthwhile) to promote in its students the value of this service, while the teachers believed wholeheartedly in the Croft School’s commitment to it as a key pillar of the school. Our research is going to look at the difference in these opinions and how that impacts both the quality and quantity of work being done, and also how eliteness is perpetuated in the school’s failure to make students more engaged in service. I might be biased, but it sounds pretty interesting to me.

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