Awakening Youth Through the Humanities: An Exploratory Pilot Study of a Community-

Based Model of Teaching Literature to University

Students and Incarcerated Youth

Funded by:Youth-Nex, the UVA Center to Promote

Effective Youth Development, Curry SchoolUVA Office of the Vice President and

ProvostThe UVA Teaching Resource Center The Charlottesville Area Community

Foundation

The Humanities in Crisis“Traditional liberal arts courses have lost

much of their ability to exert a transforming and enriching influence on students of humanity, and the humanities have become unattractive to many students. Many of those who profess to be humanists devote their lives to areas of high abstraction, decoding texts and deconstructing poems while the larger issues of the world and humankind's place in it elude them.”

–Frank Rhodes - Former President, Cornell University

Books Behind Bars:

Life, Literature, and Community Leadership

Research on Books Behind Bars

Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan)

Relatedness

Competence

Autonomy

• Motivation• Engagement

Research Methods

1 cohort (spring 2011)14 University students

Interviews pre and post programReflective journal and writing assignments Class sessions at UVA (with UVA students

only) were videotapedPre and post surveys

Civic attitudeUniversal orientation scale (how you see

yourself in relation to other groups)

Results

Processes:

Competence

Relatedness

Autonomy

Motivation &

Engagement

Outcomes:

Psychosocial

Content

“This has been perhaps the most exciting and revealing class I’ve had at UVA. I feel like I’ve come away a new person…” - Holly

“It was definitely my favorite class out of the entire year. And I feel like I learned the most out of all of my classes here. It was an incredible experience, very eye-opening. I’m kind of bummed that I now have three years ahead of me and I’ve already taken the best course UVA has to offer.”- Anna May

Learning Outcomes - Psychosocial

Teaching skills Facilitation skillsListening skillsRelationship skillsStereotype breakdown

Psychosocial Outcomes – Relationship Building

“My relationships with my residents really placed a high value on conversation for me. The people that I interact with on a day-to-day basis, I value them more. Not just my friends, but like the person who serves my coffee every morning. I’m much more intrigued by everyday people. I don’t see them as just the person serving my coffee now. I see them as somebody who probably has an interesting story. I feel like I want to talk to everyone now. It’s a good problem to have.” - Anna May

Psychosocial Outcomes – Stereotype Breakdown

“[I learned] that I’m not free of stereotyping…My image of a juvenile delinquent was a black person. I had this image of somebody who is “off” and doesn’t want to be messed with or talked to or doesn’t want to talk about anything intellectual…I am so proud of [the residents] for proving me wrong.” - Eve

Learning Outcomes - Content

“Because we had to come from [a] different direction it gave us a better understanding of the story. I’d come out going, “Well, I don’t feel like I just sat down in an English class and analyzed literature, but, hang on, I understand this story and the details, the subtle nuances and the broad themes of this story better than, or as well as, I would have in any English class.” -Lily

Learning Outcomes - Content

“Given the opportunity to prepare a discussion for each of the works allowed me to actually connect with the literature and not view it as merely a reading assignment that I needed to trudge through for a grade. The preparation encouraged me to evaluate the work from different aspects…In other words, I was given autonomy over my own learning, making it seem more relevant and worthwhile.” -Pandora

Learning Outcomes – Psychosocial through Content

“I am an English major and I don’t think there is one class that I have ever taken where the goal of the course was self exploration and discovery…It’s always been like, ‘Read this. How do you interpret it?’ It just makes everything I’ve done as an English major seem so silly…We did such silly things when you could be doing things like this with literature. It definitely put to life the power of literature for self-exploration and discovery...” - Eve

Processes – Self-Determination Theory• Autonomy

• Competence• Relatedness

• Student-Teacher• Student-Student• Student-Resident

Motivation & Engagement

Processes – SDT - Relatedness Between student and student

“[This class was] very different from a class where people are just in it to fill a requirement. I haven’t established relationships with people in other classes before. I’ve done group work but we get the project done and we keep moving.” –Eve

“I learned a lot from my peers and what they did in their discussion groups…We kind of built off of one another…building up the points and taking away points…I grew through them in the course which normally doesn’t happen in other classes…It’s kind of like a learning relationship.” – Alzena

Processes – SDT – Relatedness Between student and

resident“[The most valuable part of the course for me was] the ability to have a specific connection with specific people, not just saying I went to this facility and saw it…and learned about the criminal justice system. No, it was that I met RJ and Jason and Franklin and that they mean something to me on an individual level.” - Anna James

“That’s part of the value that I really saw in our work at Beaumont. Coming from such different backgrounds [the residents] just saw things so differently then I did or [my partner] did. Differently than, I think, anybody at UVA really did. And having their varying perspectives was really valuable to the discussion.” – Anna May

 

SDT Outcomes - Motivation & Engagement

“This feeling that the residents are waiting for me there, they’re really excited about me coming. That was by far the biggest motivator I could ever have. It was so important for me [to be well-prepared] because if I couldn’t, somehow I was failing these people...” - Courtland

“This was the most committed literature class I’ve ever been a part of, far and away.” - Luna, an English major 

“I read the work really differently than any other kind of English class because I wasn’t just reading it for me…I wanted to really understand it so I would have the ability to lead a discussion with somebody else…It just was a lot deeper and more involved reading, more active reading…That kind of diligence, I guess, comes from knowing that you are responsible for and accountable to other people rather than just, like, your grade on your report card. And that was a huge aspect of what made this so successful…” - Goldie

Directions Future for ResearchSocietal implicationso Civic engagementoMulti-cultural educationoDeep democracyo Understandings regarding the

juvenile justice systemo Altruism theory

Transformative learningExperiential learningJob preparedness/career direction

DiscussionData presentation

Processes versus outcomesManuscripts, 1 or 2

Additional tools to measure outcomes More objective measures to

corroborate learning outcomesEngagement?

Resident dataGrant writing

CASTL-HE