Thomas Barry

About Thomas Barry

http://www.colby.edu/directory_cs/twbarry/

Posts by Thomas Barry:

Wow, What a Ride: An Overall Reflection of the Research Process

Thomas Barry / Globally Elite / Chile, curriculum, Elite, elite schools, eliteness, homogeneity, homogenous, privilege, research, research process, social class, values /

December 4, 2016

While I have completed a number of research projects during my time at Colby, my research partners for this project have arguably been the best ones ever. Each of us has our individual strengths, and I am very grateful to be a part of a balanced group. Collectively, we have rejoiced in moments when the research process has clicked…

… And persevered together when it hasn’t.

Early on in the research process, our group struggled to narrow our focus. In our initial research proposal, our group decided to focus on studying the impact of parental figures on the lives of Croft School students. When we realized there was not enough data on the Internet to analyze the Croft School through this lens, we decided to shift our focus to extracurricular activities. With this focus in mind, one of my group members effectively conducted three interviews with our assigned Croft School student. Shortly after finishing these interviews, my other group partner chugged along and transcribed all three interviews. Interviewing and transcribing are two of the most time consuming parts of this research project, and my partners did an amazing job.

While getting these interviews done was awesome, I was slightly disappointed to learn our student interviewee was not heavily involved in extracurricular activities. Doing a lot of research on two research topics and not having either pan out was definitely discouraging.

However, not being paired with a student who was deeply invested in extracurricular activities was actually a blessing in disguise. It forced my group to learn one of the most important rules of research– letting the data tell you what is important and what to focus on. We soon realized that one of the strongest connections between our class readings, Internet research on elite schools, and our interviews was the theme of homogeneity. Thus, we made homogeneity our research focus, and ran with it.

The Croft School is homogenous in a number of ways. First, the school provides a standardized, homogenous education to all its students; the curriculum is rigid and does not give students very many opportunities to take electives. Second, the social class standing of students at the Croft School is homogenous since most come from upper class backgrounds. Third, the Croft School fosters a particular environment, and upholds specific values, in order to develop a certain type of student — one that is well-rounded, responsible, prepared to attend university anywhere in the world, and equipped to become a trustworthy leader in the future.

mfl0305l — Definition of Homogenous – of the same kind or nature; essentially alike.

After completing our paper outline, my group felt confident in its thought progression. However, when Adam took a look at it, he saw a gap between our literature review discussion about the growth of inequalities around the world, and our claims regarding the impact of homogeneity at elite schools such as the Croft School. While making this connection was difficult, required a lot of brainpower, and required us to use a theory we had not been directly exposed to in class, my partners and I now feel confident that we can finish our paper with this new thought progression.

To be honest, I had not considered what it has meant to be part of a larger research project until Adam asked us to reflect on this question. However, after giving this question some thought, I now have some answers. Since each group in our class is analyzing the Croft School, albeit through a different lens, it has been very helpful to learn about where my classmates have gathered information on the school. Being part of this larger research project has also given me the opportunity to learn more about the elite schools Adam, his previous students, and his research team have explored and analyzed. It has been interesting not only to learn about these schools, but also to look at the similarities and differences between the Croft School and other elite institutions around the world. It feels awesome to be part of a larger research project, and I cannot wait to read more about the Croft School when Adam and his research team publishes research on it sometime in the future.

Besides learning to let the data tell me what to focus on, I have learned a number of valuable lessons during this project. The most important lessons I learned, however, were about my own Eliteness and privilege. I am now more aware of my privilege; how my social class background led me to Colby; as well as the ways I have perpetuated social inequalities — in terms of how I used to see the world, and where I go to school. This awareness has encouraged me to think more deeply about the ways I can impede the perpetuation of inequalities. While I do not have all of the answers to this question yet, I look forward to generating, learning about, and acting on some of them in the future.

Homogeneity – What the data was telling us all along

Thomas Barry / Globally Elite / Chile, Chilean Education System, Elite, elite schools, elite social class, habitus, homogeneity, homogenous, Inequality, Pierre Bourdieu, social class /

November 17, 2016

When I wrote my last blog post, my research group had yet to conduct an interview with our assigned student at the Croft School. At that point, we wanted to focus our research on extracurricular activities.

However, after analyzing the transcripts for our 3 interviews, I noticed a common theme running through the data: homogeneity. To support my analysis of the Croft School in this post, I include relevant questions and responses from our interviews in bold below.

According to the Croft School student we interviewed, most students at the school come from similar backgrounds. Croft School students often come from families that encourage and expect them to attend university. Since this school does not offer financial aid or scholarships, all students at this school come from families that can afford the school’s tuition—in other words, from a high socioeconomic class.

Interviewer: So does the Croft offer scholarships to students who can’t pay the full tuition?

Student: No.

This doesn't exist at the Chilean School! — **This doesn’t exist at the Croft School!**

Since Chile is so economically and socially inequitable, it is not surprising that Croft School students like our interviewee live in areas concentrated with upper-class families, and rarely interact with lower class people.

I: No scholarships? Oh. And then where you live in Santiago, did you grow up exposed to people of different social classes, or do most people who live in the area are from the same social class?

S: All from a similar social class.

I: How often do you interact with people who are not in your group?

S: Not often.

igualdad — **Yup, that looks pretty unequal to me!**

Since a majority of students attending the Croft School come from similar backgrounds/social classes, it appears they also share a habitus. Pierre Bourdieu defines habitus as a system of embodied dispositions that organize the way individuals perceive and react to the world around them. These mental habits, schemes of perception, classification, appreciation, feelings, and actions are shaped by social interactions and personal histories. As a result, different groups (such as a social class) share a habitus.

While students appear to share a habitus before they enter the Croft School, the headmaster’s message and our interviews indicate that the school also teaches an institutional habitus. Institutional habitus is the impact an organization, such as the education system, has on an individual’s behavior. This organization typically reflects the values of a particular cultural group or social class. In this case, the Croft School reflects upper class values.

The Croft School’s curriculum is organized to prepare students for university, and reinforces the expectation that they will attend. The school encourages students to pursue certain high-paying careers (including engineering, law, medicine, economics, and architecture) after attending university. Through an “all-rounder”, holistic education, students are taught the school’s values—the spirit of service, good manners, and fair play. While not explicitly a Croft School value, our research also indicates that the school encourages competition.

According to our interviewee, the Croft way of thinking is synonymous with the Croft values.

I: Many of the Croft thinking is based on competition with others. Like because one of the key elements of school is like sports, sports you have competition. Like I want to get to the first team, things like that. Ummm that’s reflected on like almost every aspect of the Croft, like in aspects where there should be no competition

I: Yes. And that is like the main aspect of the Croft kind of thinking, competition.

Our interviewee also told us that students are rewarded for sharing the same views as their teachers.

I: … There is like discussion groups in my school that are called colloquials, and there is this teacher that organizes it… she like chooses like who has to go… she chooses the students that are friends with her.

I: … Its not popularity… its about thinking the same as the teacher.

Since the Croft School strongly encourages its students to adopt a particular way of thinking, Bourdieu would argue that this school (like most elite schools) acts as a miniature, closed off society that shares a single lifestyle—one that is reflected in the shared goals, opinions, and values of its students.

**If you do not share the same habitus as us, you shall not enter!**

Elite schools like the Croft School attempt to select, and develop within students, a specific habitus. Ultimately, homogenous groups lead to cultural insulation, and reinforce the dispositions and values shared by all classmates. This environment allows the Croft School to produce graduates that will have the necessary capital to join the elite social class.

Citations:

Bourdieu, Pierre. The State Nobility. Stanford University Press: Stanford, 1996. Print

Thomas, Liz. “Student retention in higher education: the role of institutional habitus.” J. Education Policy,vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 423-442, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.476.2444&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Accessed 16 Nov. 2016.

An Important Rule of Research: Let the data tell you what to focus on!

Thomas Barry / Globally Elite / Chile, Chilean Education System, co-curricular activities, co-curricular activities in Latin American schools, elite schools, extracurricular activities, Inequality, research, research process /

October 20, 2016

Research is very tricky.

Initially, my research group thought we would focus our study of the Croft School on the role parents play in shaping the academic lives of their elite children.

My partners and I are aware that parents profoundly influence the academic aspirations, self-perception, and academic achievement of their children. Elite school students attend institutions that teach them the importance of academic achievement, and their parents usually reinforce this value. Since parents play such a influential role in the academic lives of their children, and thinking we would get a ton of information on how our interviewee’s performance in school is influenced by their parents, my group thought we had chosen the perfect topic. “Wow, coming up with that proposal wasn’t so bad!” I thought to myself. I high-fived my partners, and began scouring the Internet for sources addressing the relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement.

“We just crushed that research proposal!”

“Wow!” I thought to myself, “I’m finding so much information, and it all supports what we were thinking!” Indeed, studies show a positive relationship between parental involvement, school engagement and academic performance.

I also found that the social class position of parents influences the academic opportunities, and thus the academic achievement, of their children. For example, elite schools tend to admit most of their students from the upper class, since parents of these students can afford to pay expensive tuition fees. Elite private school students regularly score above public school and subsidized (voucher) school students on the Chilean national test, SIMCE. This data shows that the social class position of parents, determined by their socioeconomic status, can significantly impact the academic performance of their children.

“I’m on a roll!” I thought to myself. However, I could not seem to find any information on the Internet or the school’s website about parents. But I didn’t let that bother me too much. I had conducted a lot of quality research, and that was what mattered.

“Your group’s case study on the Croft School and case study on the student you interview need to have a connecting theme,” Professor Howard told our class. When it dawned on me that us not finding anything about the school and its relationship to parents was actually an issue, I looked at my partners, and no words needed to be exchanged. “Dang, we have to change our topic!” our eyes said to each other.

We decided to reconvene a few nights after that class to talk about a new topic, and I was pretty stressed about it. About an hour before our group met to talk, I took Adam’s advice about how to go about coming up with a theme for the school: gather as much data on the school as you can, then find a common theme in that data. So rather than researching what I thought we should write about, I began letting the research guide me.

A few minutes into my research, I discovered that the Croft School is part of an organization of independent schools that provides strong academic programs alongside unparalleled co-curricular opportunities. These activities are intended to provide students with a holistic education that develops a wide range of talents, skills, and abilities. Indeed, according to their website, the Croft School is strongly committed to providing an integrated, holistic education, where sports, arts, and service are at its core.

When I met with my partners that night, I was excited to show them what I had found. Both of them thought studying co-curricular activities at the Croft School would be very interesting. The idea of studying just sports came up, but our group agreed it would be too narrow of a focus. So, we decided to focus on co-curricular activities in general.

Co-curricular activities!

Going forward, our group will focus on researching how co-curricular activities impact academics at, and the social structure within, the Croft School, as well as in other Latin American schools.

There are two things, however, that will determine how successful our research is. One, will our interviewee be interested in any co-curricular activities? If the answer is no, we may have to call another audible and change our topic. But we have decided we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Also, I have recently been experiencing difficulty finding information and articles on how co-curricular activities actually impact academic performance and social structure within the Croft School, as well as other schools in Latin America. While there is ample research on the positive impact that co-curricular activities have on the academic achievement and identity development of students, we may need to make inferences using this research and what we find about the Croft School online in order to develop our analysis on the school. We are still in the thick of the research project, but co-curricular activities are certainly a topic we are all very interested in and excited to (hopefully) study more deeply as the semester progresses.

Teacher Salaries at the Croft School

Thomas Barry / Globally Elite / Chile, Education, Teacher Pay, Teachers, United States /

September 29, 2016

Recently, my Education Senior seminar has been discussing teacher salaries in the United States. My classmates and I are keenly aware that primary and secondary school teachers don’t get paid very much for all the work they do.

Modern School Teacher - Tom Barry — Yup, that pretty much sums it up!

Unfortunately, these low salaries are discouraging many highly-educated students from becoming teachers. While Teach for America has had success recruiting highly-educated college and universtiy graduates to teach for two years, low salaries are making it difficult for schools to attract and retain them for longer than that.

SEE YA! JPG — The motto for too many TFA corps members.

Other educational systems around the world are also experiencing difficulty recruiting quality students to become teachers, as well as retaining them for extended periods of time. While a number of unique factors hinder each education system’s ability to recruit and train highly qualified students to become teachers, the two most common factors appear to be low teacher salaries relative to other occupations in the country, as well as the teaching profession’s low standing among other occupations within the professional hierarchy.

For example, while India has a well-established system for training teachers, it has trouble recruiting promising students to the profession. This is because of the profession’s ‘meager’ salary. Careers in medicine, law, and engineering carry more prestige, respect and higher salaries relative to teaching. As a result, few promising students in India pursue teaching careers. More information on the Indian education system, as well as on other education systems around the world, can be found here.

"Um, I'll pass... I want to earn more money than a teacher!" — “Um, I’ll pass… I want to earn more money than a teacher!”

Since teacher pay was at the forefront of my mind when I began perusing the Croft School’s website, I immediately latched on to a section which discussed teachers at the elite institution. I am fascinated by the payment scheme the school uses to attract and hire teachers. The school recruits and hires both Chilean and international teachers, and uses a scale to pay salaries that include accommodation, pension, taxation, health insurance, and more. The school claims to pay teachers much more favorably than other schools in the immediate area, as well as the city it is located in. This school also says its international teachers enjoy a much higher standard of living than when they taught in their home country.

That line hit me like a ton of bricks. Did they REALLY just say that?

The description of their pay scale is fascinating to me for two reasons:

By comparing their teacher salaries to those in other countries, the school acknowledges that teachers in other parts of the world are not being paid a lot for their work.
This school is clearly proud of its long-standing ability to provide a well-rounded education. I believe the extent to which the school values high-quality teachers is seen in its favorable pay structure. The school pays its teachers high salaries because it knows it needs high quality teachers to effectively teach and carry out their curricular objectives.

Since the Croft School has a strong reputation for preparing students to achieve social and monetary success, their pay scale leads me to ask: What if schools in the US paid teachers these types of salaries? Would this change the teaching profession for the better (i.e. attract more highly-educated candidates who have potential to be great teachers ), or worse (i.e. recruit candidates who are more interested in the profession’s money than actually helping children learn and grow)? Would teacher quality improve as a whole, and would student performance improve, if US schools had the resources to pay teachers higher salaries?

It seems to be working at the Croft School, and I believe if the resources were there, paying teachers higher salaries would improve teacher quality, and thus the academic performance of schools, in the US as well.