The Empowerment of Immigrant Students in School: Using Social Capital Research and Theory to Guide the Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Comprehensive School Restructuring

The Empowerment of Immigrant Students in School: Using Social Capital Research and Theory to Guide the Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of

a Comprehensive School Restructuring Initiative

By

Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar & Imelda Quintanar

Effective Strategies for Promoting School Success for Newly-Arrived Adolescent Refugees and Immigrants: New Directions for Research

Presented at the

Urban Institute Washington, D.C.

May 30, 2013

Draft: May 17, 2013

Stanton-Salazar & Quintanar 5/17/13 2

Table of Contents

Problem Posing……………………………………………………………..4

Defining Social Structure…………………………………………………..6

Social Capital Defined……………………………………………………..8

A Theory of Change & Mechanisms of Action…….…………………….11

Our Theory of Change……………………………………..……………..14

The Influence of School Personnel on Adolescent Development & the Incorporation of

Educators in Students’ Social Networks………………………….14

Structural Changes: Focus on both Students’ & Teachers’ Social Support Networks…..16

Fostering the Development of Student Social Networks Replete with Social Capital…..17

Assessment Students’ Social Support Network……………………………17

Creating an organizational structure whereby students and teachers have authentic

opportunities to forge meaningful and lasting relationships of support…….…18

An Exemplary Model of School Restructuring…………………………..20

The Help-seeking Orientations of Empowered Students…………...……24

Student Social Embeddedness……………………………………………26

Gender Influences on Help-seeking Orientation…………………………30

Adolescents’ Positive Help-seeking Orientation…………………………30

Social Embeddedness and English Proficiency…………………....……..34

Predictors of Help-Seeking Orientation (Stanton-Salazar, 2001)…….…..35

Evaluating the Structure, Resourcefulness of an Agent’s Social Networks……..37

The Structural Features of Educators’ Social Networks…………………38

Directions for Restructuring & the Development of Design……………..39


List of Concepts Defined and Discussed in Paper

social capital social network egocentric network social structure institutional agent (Table 1: Different kinds of institutional agents) critical consciousness resources (“social capital consists of resources…”) help seeking institutional support multiplex relations alienation empowerment help-seeking orientation theory of change mechanisms of action social integration social embeddedness weak ties alters


The purpose of this paper is to explore one particular strategy for integrating social

science research more fully into the design, implementation, and evaluation of a

comprehensive school restructuring initiative. In the case presented here, we focus on a

junior high or high school context that characterized by a mainly working-class ethnic

minority student body as well as characterized by a high proportion of immigrant students.

We examine here the social scientist’s role in the initial design phase of the restructuring

project, and his or her role in collaborating with educators and other stakeholders in the

dialogical process of design completion and in implementation. We move through various

steps, sometimes nonlinearly, in (1), a critical analysis of the challenges currently faced by

the school, (2), an examination of different phenomena relevant to life in schools, together

with a brief review of relevant research studies and (3), an examination of different concepts

and theoretical propositions, rooted in Stanton-Salazar’s social capital framework (Stanton-

Salazar 1997, 2001, 2011), which, we believe, have strong implications for how to

restructure urban high schools by enhancing the social support networks of both students and

teachers.

Problem Posing

Guided by the work of Paulo Freire (1993), we would begin by engaging in a critical

examination of the challenges teachers and other school personnel—as a community of

educators—have had to contend with, given the composition of their student body,

specifically, urban students of color from working-class backgrounds, immigrants at different

stages of adaptation, and refugees from different parts of the world. The problems include

(1), the academic disengagement and underperformance of a significant portion of the


student body, (2), the stress experienced by teachers who work hard to try to meet the many

needs of their students, and (3), the distress experienced by large numbers of immigrant

students due to rapid acculturation, the learning of a new language and academic discourse,

and the tensions and conflicts these students experience as they navigate across different

social and cultural worlds, usually without the support of the school. Echoing Freire, it can

be said that a large segment of students are prevented from achieving a sense of

empowerment, academic success, and a substantial measure of self-realization appropriate

for their age.

To arrive at a deeper understanding of student disempowerment and alienation, it is

helpful to start with some elaboration of student empowerment—as a concept. Empowerment

is a multidimensional, social process of increasing the capacity of individuals to make sound

choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes. The student moves

from an experience of alienation and disempowerment to a situation where they regularly

experience more control over their lives and environment, where they discover new insights

and abilities, and where they contribute their knowledge, energy and talent to both the school

and their community for the purpose of social justice and the uplift or empowerment of

others. In the process of empowerment, students have opportunities to develop social and

analytical skills within a group/collaborative setting; they learn to collaborate with others, to

provide sound support to peers and to significant others, to exercise interpersonal influence,

and to make decisions and solve problems thru dialogue with others (Sadan, 1997). Finally,

students become conscious of the strengths and temporary limitations of their social network

and social support system and prepare to take decisive action; they develop a behavioral and

linguistic repertoire and a network orientation which facilitates their simultaneous


participation in multiple social worlds which embody different languages and discourses,

along with competing norms, expectations, and socialization agendas; ultimately, this

repertoire and network orientation allows them to build supportive relationships with

teachers and other school personnel, and with resourceful and supportive adults in the

community (Stanton-Salazar, 1997).

The problems identified by educators as contributing to student disempowerment are

framed in systemic terms, in the principal forms of stratification in society (class, race, and

patriarchy), and in the constellation of organizational or structural aspects that make up the

school, including the tacit rules, conventions, and forms of consciousness that are taken for

granted or never examined as problematic. Educators and stakeholders therefore ask: Which

routine practices and organizational features, as well as tacit ideologies, may in some way

activate key mechanisms of action that produces distress and alienation in various groups of

students, mechanisms of action that potentially undermine students academic and

developmental empowerment. Various social science frameworks which provide a critical

analysis of the schooling process as experienced by minority and working-class students

would be useful in this endeavor.

Defining Social Structure

A sociological approach to fundamental school restructuring, and to examining those

features of the school that are disempowering, requires some sociological understanding of

social structure, and school social structure in particular. School life is organized by specific

features of the school’s “social structure,” with each feature composed of spoken and

unspoken cultural schemas or procedures that create cultural or normative patterns that


define the expectations that agents hold about each other's behavior and that organize their

enduring relations with each other (López and Scott, 2000; Giddens, 1979, 1984; Sewell,

1992). Social structure is also seen as comprising the relationships themselves, understood as

patterns of causal interconnection and interdependence among agents and their actions, as

well as the positions that they occupy” (p. 3) (emphases mine) (López and Scott, 2000).

A Social Capital Framework for the Understanding the Socialization of Racial Minority Youth

In this paper, we introduce a social capital theoretical framework originally

developed to cast some light on various ways in which race, class, and gender inequalities

manifest themselves in the school and school system, and how a typical school serving

working-class minority students often unknowingly participates in the social reproduction of

inequality (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Stanton-Salazar, 1997, 2001).

As Stanton-Salazar writes (2001:17):

The very texture of an individual’s daily existence (and ultimately, his or her life

chances) is fundamentally shaped by structured and accumulated opportunities for

entering multiple institutional contexts and forging relationships with people who

control resources and who generally participate in power.

For adults, such opportunities to build social ties to institutional agents are largely shaped by

society’s social structure, and more specifically, by an individual’s social class, racial

assignment, and gender (e.g., women in the corporate sphere and the ‘glass ceiling.’)

Following this logic, white males from the upper-middle and upper class possess the most

social capital, cultural capital, and economic capital. In contrast, for immigrant adolescents

from working-class backgrounds, usually the only context that provides opportunities to form

relationships with teachers and other “institutional agents” is the school—teachers,


counselors, and administrators qualify as institutional agents given that they are college

educated, licensed, formally form part of society’s middle-class, and possess or have access

to high-status resources and funds of knowledge (e.g., how to get into a university).

We know that working-class people and middle-class people are embedded in

different kinds of social networks. Again, Stanton-Salazar writes (2001:17):

At the micro level, middle-class people have what we may call cosmopolitan

networks, a set of relationships with a diverse constellation of people that translates

into smooth access to the mainstream marketplace (meso level), where privileges,

institutional resources, and opportunities for leisure, recreation, career mobility, and

political empowerment are abundant (Fischer, 1982; Wellman, 1983).

The networks of middle, upper-middle class, and upper class people, relative to working-

class and the poor people, are characterized by the exchange of social capital.

Social Capital Defined

Although various academic camps provide different characterizations of the concept

of social capital, we define social capital as consisting of highly-valued resources and key

forms of institutional support embedded in one’s network or associations, and typically

accessible through direct or indirect ties to people able and willing to act in the capacity of an

institutional agent (Stanton-Salazar, 1997, 2001, 2011). Writing in reference to working-

class minority youth, Stanton-Salazar (1997:10) defines institutional support as referring:

to key forms of social support that function to help children and adolescents become

effective participants within mainstream institutional spheres, particularly the school

system. Such support enables young people to become successful consumers and


entrepreneurs within the mainstream marketplace, to manage effectively the stresses

of participating in mainstream settings, and, in general, to exercise greater control

over their lives and their futures.

The concept of institutional agent is also central to the framework introduced here,

and is defined by Stanton-Salazar (2011: 2) as:

an individual who occupies one or more hierarchical positions of relatively high-

status and authority. Such an individual, situated in an [individual’s] social network,

manifests his or her potential role as an institutional agent, when, on behalf of the

[individual], he or she acts to directly transmit, or negotiate the transmission of,

highly valued resources (e.g., articulating the various requirements and strategies for

gaining admission to a Ph.D. program at a prestigious university).

Thus, we can say that a group of students are empowered through their regular access to

social capital, through personal connections to particular teachers and counselors, who

activate their role as an institutional agent, and engage in whatever actions are necessary to

either transmit to students highly-valued resources or provide important forms of social

support. Embeddedness in a social network that is replete with social capital and with

diversified sources of emotional and social support is highly consequential. In today’s

complex society, successful adolescent transitions require simultaneous participation in

multiple sociocultural worlds and institutional domains where key resources can be found

and valuable developmental experiences can be attained. For low-income racial minority

youth, participation in multiple worlds includes the crossing of often stressful cultural and

racialized borders; at every turn, key developmental transitions are made problematic by

institutional forces which threaten to compromise or undermine their psychosocial


development and school success. Empowering social embeddedness, the possession of a

strong social support system made up of school personnel, proactive parents, community

agents, and proacademic peers allows minority and immigrant youth to effectively participate

in multiple worlds and to experience important developmental transitions (e.g., learning the

principles of adult relationship).

Empowering social embeddedness, where ties between students and teachers are

salient, not only affords students academic support when needed, but also enables minority

and immigrant youth to develop lasting forms of resiliency. Among other strengths, resilient

youth are able to critically reflect on alternative courses of action when posed with difficult

problems, to adapt quickly to new situations (Stanton-Salazar and Spina, 2000). They exhibit

ingenuity in dealing with a complex role-set (role-sets increasingly similar to those of adults),

as well as exhibit the ability to deal effectively with frequently incompatible expectations

(Coser, 1975). When posed with a significant problem or challenge, resilient youth learn to

quickly assess the resources in their network and effectively use those resources in resolving

the issue (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). Spina (1998) describes resiliency as a contextually

“optimal” response to stress.

Yet, Stanton-Salazar argues that in contrast to children and youth privileged by their

class and race, many low-status young people are by and large embedded in social webs

defined by the lack of social capital, and that schools with a high proportion of minority

students and immigrants are socially organized or “structured” in ways that thwart access to

social capital, including high-status funds of knowledge that are taken for granted by middle-

and upper middle-class youth (Stanton-Salazar, 1997). “Structured” also means that relations

between school personnel and students are tacitly stripped of their capacity to act as conduits


for the transmission of institutional support, social support, and emotional support. Stanton-

Salazar writes (2001: 21):

As formulated here, alienation is a condition of embeddedness in a social web that

socially engages but does not nourish, a web that occupies and partially integrates but

does not enable the young individual to actualize his or her full potential.

How then does this critical perspective allow us to imagine a school environment

where all minority students and immigrants are able to actualize their full potential. Indeed,

we can imagine a school environment that is socially structured in ways where teachers and

other school personnel are able, and are fulfilled by their potential, to manifest their role as

institutional agents—to students and to their colleagues in the school; a school that is

structured in ways where relations between students and teachers are organized to generously

provide access to social capital and to key forms of social and emotional support. In this

scenario, student empowerment is a condition of embeddedness in a social web that socially

engages and indeed nourishes, a web that occupies and fully integrates, and that ultimately

enables the young individual to achieve a substantial measure of self-realization.

A Theory of Change & Mechanisms of Action

In any initiative aimed at fundamental school restructuring, the social scientist’s role

is to help identify and articulate the “theory of change” underlying the programmatic

practices to be instituted in the new school. Weiss (1995) defined “theory of change” as a

theory of how and why an initiative works. (p. x; emphasis added). Such theories can come

directly from social science, or the “theory of change” can come from those actors engaged

together in school restructuring, and who use social science to test or determine whether their


planned set of practices are going to produce the desired outcomes. Weiss (1995) and others

(Connell, Kubisch, & Schorr) have argued that the design of effective programs need to be

founded by a clearly articulated theory of change. According to Eccles, Gootman, and

associates (2002: 207), the theory should explicitly state the components and mechanisms of

action that are needed to be activated in order for the expected effects to occur. In the case

presented here, we would need to ask how do specific aspects of our innovative school

design—for example, assigning a group of students to a mentoring teacher—account for the

school’s effects on such outcomes as increasing rates of school graduation or of college

readiness). It should also detail the various characteristics of the school’s organizational set

of structures, and how different groups of students as well as the teachers are likely to

influence these different instituted structures. At a more abstract level, the theory [of change]

must also be plausible, taking into account current knowledge in the relevant social sciences,

the nature of the target population, and the setting in which the school restructuring takes

place.

When properly developed in the design phase of a school restructuring, the careful

elaboration of the design’s theory of change, increases the likelihood that stakeholders will

have clearly specified the key links between activities, outcomes, and contexts of the

initiative (Eccles and Gootman, 2002, p. 207). It insures that the school design is founded

upon solid social scientific evidence that clearly suggests why organizational features and

programmatic activities can be expected to lead to desired outcomes. It also insures that the

theory or framework “is specific and complete enough for an evaluator to track its progress

in credible and useful ways” (Connell and Kubisch, p. 2).


The reality, however, is that many programs and school reforms have designs and

theories which are underspecified at the outset of the initiative, thus making the early stages

of an evaluation difficult. Lisbeth Shorr, in her book, Common Purpose (1997), refers to the

theoretical ambiguity that characterizes many programs which are nonetheless effective:

We underestimated the subtleties of effective interventions. Even the best

practitioners often can’t give usable descriptions of what they do. Many successful

interventions reflect the secret the fox confided to Saint Exupery’s Little Prince: What

is essential is invisible to the eye. …In the words of MIT professor Don Schon,

[practitioners] operate with an “iceberg of tacit knowledge and artistry beneath the

surface of readily accessible descriptions” of effective practices” (p. 219).

Two principal objectives drive the present paper; first, we shall examine the

implications of our social capital framework for the development of organizational features,

innovative practices, and forms of consciousness that foster the development of student

social networks characterized by access to institutional agents that provide highly valuable

intellectual and social resources and forms of support (see Table 1 for forms of support).

Also, in this collaboration between social scientists and educators, there will be proposed

innovations that represent an “iceberg of tacit [experiential] knowledge,” innovations and

alterations that reflect the genius that teachers and other educators bring to the table. The task

here will be to rely on the social sciences to articulate the mechanisms of action, so that when

the implementation begins, everyone knows that the proposed new practice has to be

manifested in a certain way with a particular set of students in order for the desired

mechanism of action to be fully activated, and for the desire outcome to become manifest.


Our Theory of Change

Our second objective is to come to a clear understanding of our theory of change

underlying the school restructuring changes suggested in this paper. At its core, we

hypothesize that certain changes in social competencies and in consciousness in both teachers

and students, and in the organizational structure of the school, particularly those changes that

affects teacher-student contact and interaction, will lead to the development of student social

networks characterized by strong and weak ties to teachers and school personnel that will

serve as conduits to highly-valuable resources and forms of institutional support. In turn, we

hypothesize that the consistent provision of resources and key forms of support will lead to

various manifestations of student empowerment, resiliency, academic success, and forms of

self-realization that will forever alter students’ destinies.

The Influence of School Personnel on Adolescent Development & the Incorporation of

Educators in Students’ Social Networks

Empirical studies on the presence and influence of nonparental adults across the

stages of adolescence continues to grow. The evidence emerging from these empirical studies

provides a mixed picture. Woolley and Bowen (2007), working with a sample of more than

8,000 middle school students, many of them with significant risk factors in their lives,

demonstrated that of the variables examined, it was social capital—defined here as the

number of supportive adults in students’ lives—that had the strongest relationship to school

engagement. Another study reported that four out of five 11th graders reported having a

nonparental adult who played a very “important” role in their lives; included were older

siblings and extended kin (Beam, Chen, & Greenberger, 2002). While a bit more than half


identified kin (57%), a bit less than half (48%) identified nonkin as their “VIPs’; most

importantly for us, however, is that only 7% of nonkin were teachers.

Measurement issues stand out in a review of the literature (Stanton-Salazar, 2011).

Interview protocols where adolescents are able to identify the existence of a “very important”

nonparental adult do not give us data on the extent to which nonparental, nonkin adults are

either regular sources of social support or are tacitly yet extensively involved in providing

very valuable institutional resources to adolescents. In a study by Stanton-Salazar (1995), the

social networks of 145 Mexican-origin high school students with working-class immigrant

parents were examined (Bay Area Study; total sample size was 205 Latinos). Of particular

importance in the study was the prevalence of school personnel as sources of emotional,

personal and informational support. Only 6.2% of the sample elected at least one school staff

member as a source of emotional support. In terms of material support, help with

schoolwork, advice regarding personal matters, only slightly more than 1 in 4 elected at least

one school staff member as a source of such support. In terms of seven different forms of

information (including personal advice on academic decisions), the findings are more

reassuring, with 71% electing a school staff member as a source of such support. Yet, close

to 30% did not identify at least one school staff member.

The question emerges as to how to socially engineer students’ school-based networks

so that school personnel become sources of emotional, personal, and informational support.

Such engineering not only entails altering students’ networks, it also entails creating the

conditions and environment that motivate teachers and other school personnel to step into the

role of institutional agent and be a provider of various forms of social support. Such question


leads us to the reconfiguration of the social structure of the school. The list below are some

of the things we suggest would have to be attended to.

Structural Changes: Focus on both Students’ & Teachers’ Social Support Networks

(1) Assessment of students’ support network. Using standard structured interview protocol,

survey students and convert data egocentric network diagrams and have students see and

discuss their own social network.

(2) Assessment of teachers’ support network. Using standard structured interview protocol,

survey teachers, convert data into egocentric network diagrams and have teachers see and

discuss their own social network.

(3) Create a complex organizational structure in the school whereby students and teachers

have authentic opportunities to forge meaningful and lasting relationships.

(4) Create and implement a curriculum (one for students, one for teachers and school

personnel) that addresses help-seeking and networking in the fields of education,

business, health, and social services (e.g., how social workers help their clients by relying

on their personal network of colleagues and providers; social support and surviving

cancer; social support and mental health; networking and the successful job search)1

(a) Include in the curriculum the necessary aspects of effective network relationships

(e.g., ethical standards and the vital role of reciprocity—or reciprocal exchange).

(b) Include in each curriculum effective strategies of problem solving that entail an

appraisal of one’s network to see which people might have the needed resources, or,

who might be available to provide a particular form of support (See section below

about how teachers and counselors mobilize on behalf of a particular student by


surveying their own network and tapping the shoulder of colleague in their network

and requesting assistance in helping the student).

(5) Assess students’ help-seeking orientation, then institute school norms that cultivate in

students a positive psychological orientation (Stanton-Salazar, 2001; Stanton-Salazar,

Chávez, & Tai, 2001).

(6) Evaluate (at year’s end): (a) Survey a cluster sample of students, using an assessment of

students’ support network. (b) Survey entire student body using an inventory producing a

measure of “perceived support of teachers.”

Fostering the Development of Student Social Networks Replete with Social Capital

Assessment Students’ Social Support Network

An assessment of students’ current support networks would be a good place to start.

Researchers who have studied the social support networks of adults and adolescents have

typically relied on a standard structured interview protocol that reliably provides data on the

size and composition of a respondent’s support network (Barrera, 1986; Cochran 1990;

Fischer, 1982). Stanton-Salazar’s (1990) survey of 205 Latino high school students from six

high schools in the San Francisco-San Jose Peninsula Area (conducted in 1989) used this

standard protocol (1990). A few years later, in 1991, in San Diego, Stanton-Salazar used the

same network survey to interview 75 students (see Stanton-Salazar, 2001). He inquired about

four principal classes of social support: (1) Social / Material Support, (2) Emotional / Crisis

Support, (3) Peer Interaction and Recreation, and (4) Informational Support, such as

“Technical Information Related to Students’ Educational / Occupational Future.” Following

standard protocol, respondents were asked to elect those people they would seek out with


confidence if they needed specific forms of support. The criterion of confidence or confianza

was emphasized. After each question, respondents were asked to specify which people,

among those elected, they had actually gone to in the past year for this type of support. Using

this protocol, a student could have elected a particular teacher (1), as a source of information

about college admission, (2), as someone sought for a referral to an immigration attorney,

and (3), as a source of emotional support after a family crisis. When a teacher or another

adult serves as a source of multiple forms of support, we call this a “multiplex relationship.”

Creating an organizational structure whereby students and teachers have authentic

opportunities to forge meaningful and lasting relationships of support

Our task here is to create an organizational structure whereby students and teachers

have true opportunities to forge meaningful and lasting relationships or ties; some of them

“weak ties,” similar to adults’ casual relationships with well-regarded acquaintances, and

some of them “strong ties,” or relationships with teachers that are reliable, defined by trust,

and that serve as regular sources of emotional, social, and informational support.

“Weak ties” is a term coined by Granovetter (1983) to draw attention to these

relationships because, as well-regarded acquaintances, such individuals are situated in

different social networks (i.e., different social circles), and thus, they can offer novel

information that ego would otherwise not have received; they also are in a position to

introduce ego to key people he or she would not otherwise know. Finally, adults, in the

context of weak ties, tend to speak in “explicit elaborated codes for meaning to be fully

communicated.” When people switch into this code or discourse, they have more scope for


creativity, and the thought that it stimulates provides opportunities to see things in a new

perspective and to accommodate new, often sophisticated ideas.

The instructional organization of your typical large urban middle school or high

school is an historical artifact that does not provide an environment for many students to

experience either authentic weak ties nor strong ties with teachers. Although students

typically have opportunities to interact with six to eight teachers a day, weak ties are formally

relationships that are conversational, and in these interactions, one learns important things

about the other. In middle and high school, some degree of trust and mutual affect is

frequently a requisite even for weak ties. The formation of social ties with teachers and other

school professionals that become sources of support is quite problematic for a wide spectrum

of students.

If we take a typical urban high school organized around an eight-period day, students

have moved to seven different classrooms, plus PE, and worked with eight different teachers.

Over a three-year period, students have had a least 48 teachers, and have changed classes

more than 4000 times. With students moving from teacher to teacher so much, receiving

instruction in forty-five minute blocks, and with classmates changing every class, many

students get lost in the flux, particularly recent immigrants who become incorporated into the

larger student body. Such mobility is simply not conducive to students forming lasting and

supportive relationships with teachers. Those involved in extracurricular activities (e.g.,

theater, student government) do have an advantage, but they are a minority.

With regard to student/teacher ratios (in the classroom), much research has been

conducted on the relationship between different ratios and student learning. The evidence so

far suggests that a only a dramatic decrease in students per teacher—for example, cutting the


ratios to 15:1—has positive effects on learning (The Institute for Research and Reform in

Education, 2003).

An Exemplary Model of School Restructuring

Reform models for breaking down large schools into smaller learning communities

have emerged. One notable example is First Things First, a school reform model developed

by the Institute of Research and Reform in Education (IRRE). The Houston Independent

School District adopted First Things First as part of a district-wide high school restructuring

effort under the Carnegie Corporation’s Schools for a New Society initiative, which was

launched in 2000 (Hood, 2003). Two critical and overlapping elements underlying this

initiative were district-community involvement and parental involvement.

One school within the school district that epitomizes the great diversity found in

many urban high schools is Houston’s Lee High School. Most of the 2,077 students come

from 70 countries and speak 42 languages; and many of the students come from countries

marked by political turmoil. Guided by First Things First, the superintendent dramatically

restructured Lee High School, breaking it into “10 self-contained communities, each with

anywhere from 173 to 224 students” (Hood, 2003:7). Whether social scientists were involved

in crafting First Things First is unclear; regardless, one of the consequences of creating these

communities of learning is that teachers really get to know their students. As Lucy Hood

(2003) writes:

They see the same kids all day, every day and can call them by name. There’s a

closeness and a sense of belonging that wasn’t there before, say Garret Reed, an


English-as-a-Second-Language teacher at Lee. “I know all 200 kids I teach,” he

explains.

The superintendent of Houston’s urban school district, Steve Amstrutz, fully realized the all

students would benefit from Lee’s restructuring; but he was particularly attuned to the impact

on immigrant students. He states, “for immigrant kids, it provides for continuity and it makes

sure they’re not anonymous. It provides them with support systems for navigating this thing

called high school” (Hood, 2003:7).

An added structural feature further fostering teacher-students relationships at Lee is

the Family Advocate Program. Advocates include teachers, coaches and administrative staff

who are assigned to assist a group of 12 to 18 students (i.e., one to a group of students). As

Lucy Hood (2003) explains,

advocates meet one-on-one with each student at least twice every nine weeks to talk

about schoolwork and/or personal issues. As an advocate, Debbie Lee, a culinary arts

teacher in the Health and Human Services Community—one of the 10 units in the

school—says she does “stuff you would do for your own child or a neighborhood

kid.”

Advocates are connected to parents as well, meeting with each student’s parents at least once

a semester, providing them with a progress report, letting them know how well their

adolescent child has been doing in their classes and what requirements their child needs to

fulfill in order to graduate. Hood (2003:7) explains, “the advocates also make sure both

students and parents know about the school’s college center, geared to steer immigrant

students toward a college degree.”


Lee High School has instituted an organizational structure that establishes an

identifiable community, a community of learning; it establishes a kind of insidership that

informs students that this assigned group of teachers forms an alliance organized around

them, and that the 173 to 224 students in their unit form an identifiable peer community. In

this scenario, eight or nine teachers interact and share information about commonly shared

students. Students begin approaching teachers with a sense of familiarity and a sense of trust,

or confianza. Teachers become familiar with “their students” and learn about both their

academic progress and key aspects of their personal lives. In time, teachers become sources

of information and social support, and on occasion, emotional support—whether it’s because

a student seeks out the support of a teacher, or a teacher responds to signals that a particular

student is in need of help. A critically-important structural feature at Lee is that every student

has a formal “advocate,” be it a teacher, a coach, or an administrator. These supportive

connections, highlighted here as multiplex relationships, are not solely the consequence of

shared or enforced norms, or simply the actions of very caring educators; rather they are a

consequence of explicit and sanctioned features of the school’s new social structure.

This raises a point we wish to emphasize here; something important happens when

certain activities, rolesets, and mindsets, become the function or outcome of planned,

sanctioned and explicit features of a school’s social structure. They become conventions

consciously and collectively followed with an some understanding that certain desired

mechanisms of action will be activated, and that educators’ will, in turn, be more successful

in their efforts and more fulfilled by their work. Sole reliance on norms and guidelines does

not produce success across the board; and so, our argument in favor of integrating the

assistance and direction of a social scientist familiar with youth, schools, and the schooling


process. The job of the social scientist is to make explicit all that is entailed in producing

certain outcomes; the task is to make that which is tacit and outside of conscious awareness,

explicit, thus amenable to intervention based on social science. The ability is to interweave a

social support system with both strong and weak ties to teachers, counselors, coaches, and

administrators, is in reality, a set of social competencies that vary across the student

population. While such competencies can be developed through role modeling, as one finds

in upper middle-class families, schools, and communities, for working-class students, time is

of the essence, and such competencies, to become characteristics of all students, must be

explicitly taught (Stanton-Salazar, Vásquez, and Mehan, 2000). “Networking” for the

purpose of building a sound support system is a cultural activity familiar to immigrants

(Stanton-Salazar, 2001); the problem is that while it remains mainly a cultural activity, a

discourse usually does not emerge that allows one to critically reflect upon the many

developmental challenges entailed in building a social network: (1), the competencies

needed, (2), the necessary opportunities to engage potentially supportive people, (3), the need

of internalizing ethic of reciprocal exchange, the complexities and risk-taking entailed in help

seeking, and simultaneously managing a constellation of relationships across institutional

contexts and sociocultural worlds. These are some of the things missing from even the most

inspiring school reform models that attempt to create “community” within the school and

supportive relations between teacher and student.

Teachers in turn, must become critically conscious of any aspects of the current social

structure—most especially, that which is latent, that may be obstructing the ability of

students to construct an empowering social support network—including avenues to

accumulating social capital across school contexts. Teachers must also become critically


conscious of their own buried ideologies and assumptions about students and the school

process that might also be obstructing or sabotaging the networking attempts by students.

Ideally, teachers and school personnel develop into a sociological community, where there

emerges a discourse for interrogating organizational structures and forms of consciousness,

and for sharing successful strategies for both supporting students and for facilitating their

network-building efforts (Freire, 1990, 1993).

The Help-seeking Orientations of Empowered Students

Sociologists have traditionally been interested in how the systemic forces of social

class, racial assignment, and patriarchy exercise their power on people, both directly and

indirectly. One way these systemic forces exert their influence is through shaping people’s

adaptation to the structural constraints and possibilities which normally characterize their

environment—included here is their adaptation to the constraints and possibilities that

characterize the [individual or egocentric] social networks of their specific status group (e.g.,

working-class, adult Latino immigrant males; upper middle-class Anglo males). Also of

interest to sociologists are those mediating entities (e.g., cultural norms, church, temple,

mosque, civic organizations, membership clubs and societies, school) which either serve to

facilitate systemic forces, or in the case of lower-status groups, mitigate or diminish the

deleterious effects of systemic forces while bringing resources and opportunities to a group

(e.g., Civic or church organizations that provide free or low-cost child-care for working

mothers).

Here we examine a particular feature of the coping and adaptation process as

exhibited by adolescents enrolled in schools that have a history of serving students from


working-class and poor immigrant families. Specifically, “we look at young people’s

proclivity (or disinclination) to resolve personal, academic, and family problems through the

mobilization of relationships and through the seeking of social support (i.e., coping by

seeking help)” (Stanton-Salazar, Chávez, and Tai, 2001). Serious scholarly attention to this

aspect of consciousness, termed here as help-seeking orientation, originated in social

anthropology (Barnes, 1972; Katz, 1974), then eventually emerged in the scholarly work

conducted by community psychologists, epidemiologists, and sociologists who study mental

health (e.g., Lin, Dean, and Ensel, 1986; Vaux, Burda, and Stewart, 1986; Wallace and Vaux,

1993).

We propose here that students’ help-seeking orientation, particularly as it is exhibited

by working-class minority and immigrant students, provides one insightful indicator of their

social integration within the school--with ‘integration’ (of the individual) reconceptualized

below in network-analytic terms. Students with a positive help-seeking orientation are more

socially integrated in the school and do better academically; newly arrived immigrants

experience an easier transition and experience more opportunities to learn a new language.

Before we introduce our network-analytic version of social integration, we first entertain one

classical rendition of social integration found throughout the educational literature.

Taking from the work of Wehlage et al., (1989), classical depictions of social

integration of students have emphasized the social psychological states of group membership,

consisting of (1), students’ attachment to school personnel and to peers, (2), a commitment to

the norms and values of the school, (3), involvement in school activities, and (4), belief in the

legitimacy and efficacy of the institution. Indeed, Wehlage and his associates (1989), in their

study of 14 schools, found that the most effective schools in their study exhibited high


degrees of student integration (termed “school membership” – embodying the four

psychological states above). However, what we do not learn is what kind of social support

networks did different groups of students have in these effective schools, and, what level of

help-seeking behavior they exhibited.

Student Social Embeddedness

In contrast, we define social integration in terms of a group of network processes

nicely captured in the term social embeddedness, a concept taken from the work of Mark

Granovetter (1985). We present our version of embeddedness, and highlight the associated

processes, in terms of four principal dimensions. The first dimension of embeddedness

pertains to a student’s integration in the various social networks dispersed throughout the

school, networks that function as conduits to vital institutional resources, privileges, and

knowledge-forms—or in different terms, integration various network of that serve as

conduits to social capital (see Table 1 in Appendix). Social ties are formed and activated in a

number of ways within resource-rich school-based networks, including membership within

prestigious school organizations (e.g., ASB) and participation in the sphere of high-status and

exclusive academic courses (e.g, AP English). Once integrated in a resource-rich network,

such ties can be activated by help-seeking behaviors enacted by a student as part of a

consistent coping strategy for meeting an array of challenges associated with life

circumstances, school, and academic performance (see Frydenberg, 1997).

The second dimension of embeddedness entails students’ individual or egocentric

networks characterized by social ties to teachers and other school personnel that serve as

conduits to highly-valuable resources and various forms of social support not only vital to


academic success, but also to students’ mental health and overall well-being. In this sense, a

school exhibits a high degree of social integration (social embeddedness) when the majority

of its students have personal networks characterized by supportive ties to at least three or

four teachers and are engaged in active help seeking. Given that supportive ties are sustained

by reciprocity, students are also conscious of the various ways they may be of service to the

teachers that provide them social support.

The third dimension of embeddedness is associated with the systemic forces of class

stratification, racism, and patriarchy on those schools situated in working-class and poor

communities, made manifest in a myriad of ways, including the prejudice and hostility felt

toward immigrants and undocumented students observed through the society (Pérez, 2012).

This is to say that many minority students, including immigrants, enter school already

psychologically burdened and distressed by racial and class segregation and by forms of

racial discrimination against their community. Adolescents also increasingly become aware

that the adults in their community do not have the financial nor political clout to pressure

those who participate in power in their city to invest in the revitalization of their community.

In the school environment, these systemic forces play themselves out in the relational

dynamics between students and teachers, counselors, and administrators; in the worst cases,

these dynamics obstruct the development of trust and authentically supportive relations.

Teachers and other school personnel, by remaining silent, or ignoring such dynamics in the

school, usually only exacerbates the situation. Many students, whether fully conscious or not,

are sensitive to the psychological orientations and gestures exhibited toward their group or

community by staff members (as individuals or as groups)—signals that are usually

communicated tacitly: (1), negative perceptions and prejudices toward their group, (2),


lowered academic standards and expectations for academic performance, (3), social

awkwardness exhibited by some teachers in establishing rapport with marginalized groups of

students, (4), a consistent pattern of punitive action against particular students and others like

them, and (5), a sense of futility and resignation toward the education and life chances of a

particular group of students.

Cumulative experiences across the school and other institutional sites that inform

students of (1), their low-status and constricted opportunities for advancement in the school

system and in society, (2), the aggression and hostility sometime expressed by police as they

patrol their neighborhoods, and (3), experiences with denigrating signals from some teachers

and other school staff members, however, tacit, eventually shape students’ perceptions,

attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions that impact the development of trust toward those adults

that could become sources of social capital and of social and emotional support. A

fundamental aspect of this third dimension of social embeddedness, then, is a cognitive

orientation that allows a student to defuse or neutralize those latent yet imposing structural

dynamics responsible for engendering social distance and distrust between the student’s

social group and the school’s constellation of potential institutional agents. Such an

orientation permits a student to take account of those positive, non-prejudicial, and

supportive interactions with teachers and other school personnel, to maintain high self-regard

and high levels of academic motivation, and, in spite of the psychological risks, engage

school agents as key sources of social and institutional support (Valenzuela, 1999).

Many students from immigrant families and communities, may very well exhibit

cognitive orientations that enable them to perceive and interpret the discriminatory forces of

class and race in community and society through a cultural framework that sustains their


optimism and high aspirations (Ogbu, 1991; Stanton-Salazar, 2001). Also, while many non-

immigrant minority students distance themselves from teachers and other school personnel

they have come to distrust, many immigrant students – once they are proficient in English –

not only exhibit strong inclinations to seek support from available school personnel (Stanton-

Salazar and Dornbusch (1995), they may also find that their distinctive psycho-cultural

features “make them particularly attractive to school agents (i.e., as ‘safe’, ‘nice kids’). [T]his

is especially the case when contrasted with the often defiant and distrustful orientations of

their non-immigrant and low-achieving peers (Matute-Bianchi, 1991; Stanton-Salazar and

Dornbusch, 1995; Valenzuela, 1999; Stanton-Salazar, Chávez, and Tai, 2001).

This leads us to the fourth dimension of social embeddedness, represented here as a

critically important aspect of individual agency in institutional life, and captured in this paper

in terms of students’ help-seeking orientation. We know from the research conducted on

adults that help-seeking orientation matters. Vaux, Burda, and Stewart (1986), using four

samples of college students and one sample of adults, found that persons with positive help-

seeking orientations, relative to those with negative orientations, reported significantly larger

networks—in other words, a greater number of people they could potentially draw upon for

social support. Unsurprisingly, those with positive orientations revealed that when posed

with personal challenges in their life, they exhibited a greater likelihood of seeking assistance

from significant others; in turn, they generally enjoyed more advice and guidance, and more

material, financial, and emotional support, relative to those who registered less than positive

orientations. Vaux and Wood (1987), in a similar study, found that relative to persons

reporting a negative orientation, those with positive orientations were more likely to feel


socially connected and cared for, more likely to actively cultivate support ties with

significant others, and less likely to experience psychological distress.

Research shows that across studies, without the intervention of ethnic cultural forces

fostering resiliency, low-income status and lower educational levels adversely affects coping

behavior. Eckenrode (1983) investigated the help-seeking behavior of a group of adult

women with children, with coping behavior measured following stressful events. As

expected, income and educational level (i.e., SES) registered a positive statistical association

with help-seeking beliefs—in other words, the lower women’s SES, the less inclined they

were to resolve personal and family problems through the mobilization of relationships and

through the seeking of social support. Furthermore, measures capturing the number of

potential supporters, locus of control, and help-seeking beliefs—usual predictor variables—

had much less impact on the help-seeking behavior of those of lower SES and for those of

Spanish-speaking background. Referencing Pearlin and Schooler (1978), Eckenrode states

that lower-status groups “appear doubly at risk for experiencing psychological strain because

they are exposed to more stressors as well as having fewer effective coping resources” (p.

524).

[Studies on Latino immigrant adults would probably provide more complex findings: a high degree of familism, being embedded socially in an extended kinship network, and the practices of compadrazco.]

Gender Influences on Help-seeking Orientation

Considerable attention has been paid to the effect of gender on help-seeking behavior

(see Stanton-Salazar, Chávez, and Tai (2001 for review). “Overall, many studies have shown

that females, compared to males throughout the life-span, are more willing to seek help from

both informal (friends, family) and formal (i.e., professionals) sources in times of need or


distress” Stanton-Salazar, Chávez, and Tai, 2001:10; see Feiring and Coates, 1987, for a

review; Turner, 1994). Researchers have identified a number of explanatory factors. Gender-

role expectation and socialization play a definitive role. Help seeking among women doesn’t

carry a stigma. Among men, the intensity of negative or ambivalent dispositions toward

seeking support vary according to the individual’s adherence to traditional male gender roles

usually learned during early adolescence. Together with what we know about the impact of

lower SES on help-seeking behavior, low-status males may be particularly at risk of having

to confront life stressors without being embedded in a social network that functions as a

social support system.

Adolescents’ Positive Help-seeking Orientation

As stated above, we argue that adolescents’ positive help-seeking orientation, when

manifested as a generalized coping strategy, is a critical indicator of their social

embeddedness within the school (the fourth dimension described above). This is particularly

the case when the school establishes clear norms for help seeking as both a coping strategy

and as an effective pathway to academic success. “Social support” and “help seeking”

become topics to study in the classroom through the social science literature. Complimenting

these norms and classroom study of these phenomena is a pattern of teacher behavior that

positively responds to students’ help seeking, by either providing the help that is needed, or

personally linking the student with a colleague in the school who can help.

In a comprehensive study of the social networks of Mexican-origin students in a

southern California urban high school, Stanton-Salazar (2001) devised three measures of

help-seeking orientation and examined the predictive value of “perceived support” (study


conducted during 1991-1992). He also devised two measures of actual help seeking, which

when analyzed together, were considered as the second dimension of Social Embeddedness

in the school. A description of these measures are provided below. These measures were

developed as part of a school-wide self-administered questionnaire survey. The high school

was divided into three grade levels, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Two-thirds of the

official school enrollment (N=1,513) were Latino (67%), mainly of Mexican-origin; 20%

were White, 11% were Black, and 8% percent were Asian and Pacific Islander. Due to the

high number of absences on the day of the survey, the research team was able to survey 78%

(N=1,187) of the entire student body. That left 772 Latino students that took the survey, and

31% of the Latino sample took the survey in Spanish.

The two principal measures of help-seeking orientation came from a 20-item scale

developed and tested by Vaux, Burda, and Stewart (1986); using principal component

analysis, Stanton-Salazar and associates were able to identify two distinct and interpretable

dimensions. The first factor or dimension was termed Confidence in the Support Process, and

represents the belief that help-seeking is a viable coping strategy, as well as a belief in the

ability of others to provide sound support. The second dimension was termed Interpersonal

Openness, representing the respondent’s ability and willingness to share personal problems

with others.

The third measure of help-seeking orientation was termed Desire for Support, and

originated from a seven-item scale adapted from Hymovich (1983) and used to gauge the

areas in which the student would have liked pertinent information and guidance. Stanton-

Salazar (2001a & b) used one of the seven items: “Advice and guidance from teachers and


counselors in making important educational and academic decisions.” The response format

consisted of three choices, ‘would not’, ‘not sure’, and ‘would like’.

The forth measure was Perceived Support, and consisted of an 11-item scale that

focused on support received from teachers and counselors. The third item in the scale reads,

“I rely on my teachers for advice and guidance in making important school related decisions.

A four-point Likert scale was used to register students’ responses on the 11 items.

The two measures of actual help seeking, comprising the first dimension of

Embeddedness, are as follows:

o Sought Assistance from a Teacher or Counselor Regarding Academic Issues (“during

the past school year”; survey administered in the spring)

o Sought Assistance from a Teacher or Counselor Regarding Post-High School Plans

Confidence in the Support Process proved to be nonsignificant as a predictor of actual

help seeking with regard to Academic Issues. On the other hand, students scoring high on

Openness were more than twice as likely to seek support for academic issues as were

students low on this measure. Interestingly, the findings are reversed using our second

measure of actual help seeking; students registering high on Confidence were nearly twice as

likely to seek support regarding post-high school plans compared to students who were low

on Confidence. Help-seeking orientation appears to be a sound predictor of actual help

seeking from teachers and other school personnel.

Students registering a Desire for Support were nearly twice as likely to seek support

for academic issues as students with low Desire, and again, twice as likely to seek support

regarding post-high school plans as those students low on Desire. Perceived Support turned

out to be a dynamic variable. Students registering high on Perceived Support were 10 times


more likely to seek support for academic issues then were students who registered low on

this measure, and 9 times more likely to seek support regarding post-high school plans than

were students low on perceived support. This also means that students who scored low on

perceived support, and who felt that teachers and counselors were not there for them, would

likely never consider approaching a teacher for academic support.

Analyses by Stanton-Salazar and associates also included Grades and Family

Socioeconomic Status (SES) as predictor variables. As expected, students who reported high

grades (i.e., As) were more likely to seek both forms of support than were students with low

grades. Clearly, we see confirmatory evidence that students registering a positive help-

seeking orientation indeed follow through and actually seek support from school personnel. It

is important to keep in mind, however, that those students who are low on Confidence and

Openness, who register a low Desire for Support and who score low on Perceived Support

are often the most marginalized students in the school and most likely got this way due to

lack of support over many years. In virtually all public urban high schools, structures and

norms are not established to address the help-seeking orientation and network behavior of

low achievers, of other marginals in the school, and of recent immigrants; we see no

organized effort to develop these students’ positive help-seeking orientation and actual help-

seeking behavior.

Using the entire school sample, SES did not register any statistically independent

significant effect on seeking academic support and on post-high school plans. Measures of

socioeconomic status used in studies of some Latino populations are problematic, due in part,

to the insufficient variation in SES in the sample, and because of the wide variation in


cultural life and acculturation. Cultural variables are conventionally difficult to statistically

control.

Social Embeddedness and English Proficiency

As an independent predictor of actual help seeking, English proficiency produced

mixed results. While English proficiency registered a significant positive influence on the

likelihood of seeking help pertinent to post-high school plans, no independent effect surfaced

with regard to seeking support for academic issues. However, “comparing two students, one

an English-proficient Latino and the second, a Spanish-dominant Latino, with all variables

set to averages, …an English-proficient Latino student was nearly twice as likely as the

Spanish-dominant student to seek support for academic issues, even when both reported the

same level of Perceived Support. This analysis suggests that the mobilizing force normally

behind Perceived Support may not be as operative for Spanish-dominant immigrant students,

relative to their English-proficient peers” (Stanton-Salazar, 2001, pp. 240-241). Furthermore,

immigrant students registering at the lowest levels of English proficiency were nearly three

times less likely to seek support regarding post-high school plans than those students with the

highest levels of proficiency (English-proficient Latinos and non-Latino native-English

speakers). Clearly, Spanish-dominant immigrants may be found to be among the least to be

socially embedded within the school; systematic efforts to integrate them would be a

prominent goal in our restructuring initiative.


Predictors of Help-Seeking Orientation (Stanton-Salazar, 2001)

In this section we report on the results of analyses of background variables predictive

of Confidence in the Support Process, Interpersonal Openness, and Desire for Support.

Family SES registered a significant positive effect on Interpersonal Openness—but only

among non-Latinos at the school. Thus, for this sector of the student body, those from higher

SES families reported greater willingness to share their problems with others--in accordance

with published studies.

Mirroring published studies, gender displayed its prominent role in the help-seeking

orientations of the high school sample. Significant statistical effects for gender surfaced

across all 3 models. The findings appear unequivocal, boys, relative to girls, consistently

report lower confidence in the support process, less willingness to share their problems with

others, and less desire for personalized academic support from teachers and counselors. In

our school restructuring design, special attention would need to be given to the help-seeking

orientation of boys.

Measures of English proficiency routinely serves as a key variable differentiating

Latino student samples. In the regression model including nearly all students at the school,

English proficiency had no effect on Confidence; it did, however, show itself to be a strong

predictor of Openness—representing the respondent’s ability and willingness to share

personal problems with others.

The results for Desire for Support varied. English proficiency was operative only

among Spanish-dominant immigrant Latinos. Immigrants reporting the lowest levels of

English proficiency showed a low desire for academic assistance from school personnel.

Seems that as Spanish-dominant students developed their English language skills, the greater


the desire for academic assistance from school personnel. However, such a finding leaves

immigrant students who report the lowest levels of English proficiency in a risky situation.

Similar to the results for actual help seeking, grades showed positive effects across all

three regression models. Students reporting good grades registered the most Confidence in

the support process; the most Openness, and a greater Desire or interest in receiving advice

and guidance on academic matters. Students with moderate to poor grades, the students who

are most in need of academic support from teachers and counselors, exhibit a help-seeking

orientation that dramatically lessens the likelihood of them receiving it. Most social

structures that organize a school are invisible and outside of consciousness; without radical

intervention, there is no impetus for teachers and counselors to come to know, and to think

of, students’ help-seeking orientation. It comes as no surprise that academically-successful

students, particularly high-achieving girls, are the most socially embedded in their school.

The challenge for any community of progressive educators at a school site, specifically one

with a high percentage of both minority students and immigrants, is how to socially embed

low-achieving segments of the student body, particularly low-achieving boys who are not

inclined to seek help from teachers and counselors; another vulnerable group are immigrants

with low-proficiency in English.

Evaluating the Structure, Resourcefulness of an Agent’s Social Networks

A network-analytic account of school restructuring sees teachers and counselors as

embedded in their own social web of colleagues and friends (i.e., alters) as well as situated in

social networks across institutional contexts (e.g. social networks in the school, the district,


and in professional organizations). The capacity for teachers and other school personnel to

empower students and other school staff is dependent on three primary factors:

1. On the resources teachers and other staff directly or personally possess and on the

institutional support they are able to provide (i.e., personal resources).

2. On the resources attached to their position in the school and/or school district (i.e.,

positional resources—i.e., the power and authority attached to a position within

an organization; e.g., school principal).

3. On the resources and support possessed by actors (or alters) in the agent’s

network, but whom a teacher (or a counselor) is able to mobilize on behalf of their

students.

Embedded in their own social web of colleagues and friends, as well as in social

networks across institutional contexts, teachers and counselors readily access resources from

alters situated in their networks. The capacity of teachers to tap the shoulders of different

alters in their network is dependent upon both the structure, composition and quality of their

own social networks, and on teachers’ proclivity and history of tapping alters in order to

secure resources for someone they care for in their personal network. Reciprocity is key to

sustaining such relationships. Teachers and other school staff, in the role of Institutional

Agent, possess a critical awareness of the accessible alters and resources that are embedded

in their social networks and in the networks of their alters. Effective teachers and other

school personnel, as network-builders, learn to construct social networks that they perceive

will become a reservoir of valuable resources needed to accomplish their goals, to meet the

challenges posed by their career, and to help their students. Again, the first rule in

constructing resourceful network with a diverse set of alters is a readiness to provide others


resources and support when needed—without calculated expectations of return (Baker,

2000).

The Structural Features of Educators’ Social Networks

As effective institutional agents, teachers and other school personnel must learn the

value of critically evaluating the structure and composition of their social network. The self-

evaluation process allows for an appreciation of how teachers and other educators can

become overburden and stressed when they attempt to meet the needs of their students alone.

Teachers and other school personnel commit to investing the time and energy necessary to

develop an ample social network of support. Evaluating the structure and resourcefulness of

an agent’s own social network entails determining whether an agent’s network is diverse.

Highly resourceful egocentric networks tend to be diverse and span organizational

boundaries. Network diversity is defined in terms of the extent to which network members

have dissimilar attributes (gender, race, age, occupation, etc.) (Stanton-Salazar, 2001).

Hammer (1981, 1983) proposed a model that suggests that the optimal structure of

educators’ social networks, is a two-dimensional one. On the one hand, educators construct a

relatively small, high-density network of other educators; such an inner network becomes a

source of advice and other key forms of social support (i.e., conferring on the progress of a

commonly-shared student). Such a network also functions as a reliable source of emotional

support. On the other hand, one develops a cosmopolitan network, characterized by weak ties

that stretch into a constellation of different institutional settings, both within the district, and

throughout society.


Directions for Restructuring & the Development of Design

In high schools across the country, high achievers and those involved in school

organizations are the most socially integrated and the most socially embedded—as defined

by our framework. These often overlapping groups exhibit a positive help-seeking orientation

and are the most inclined to seek help from teachers, counselors, and other competent school

personnel. In short, they enjoy relationships with teachers and possess the good deal of social

capital. In response to students’ help-seeking behavior, teachers and counselors step into the

role of “institutional agent.” The impetus behind any serious and major restructuring effort is

to address the needs of the rest of the students in the school; and included in this impetus are

arrangements that empower teachers to effectively address the needs of vulnerable students.

Creating a school where social embeddedness speaks both to the organization of the

school and to the characteristics and experiences of every student; it requires a restructuring

design that is network-analytic, and a group of educators that exhibit what Paulo Freire

terms, a critical consciousness (Freire, 1993). As we saw in the Stanton-Salazar study

(2001), help-seeking orientation is consequential, in the sense that in the process of

exercising a coping strategy oriented toward help seeking, trusting relationships with adults

are solidified, and embeddedness in the resource-networks of the school is ensured. A school

where all the students exhibit a positive help-seeking orientation is a dynamic, highly

effective school. In the realm of instruction and subject matter courses, learning is

accelerated when situated within close and trusting relationships with teachers—relationships

oriented toward enabling the student to empower him or herself. Intimacy and trust are non-

negotiable features of the pedagogical relationship. In the words of Paulo Freire:

...our relationship with the learners demands that we respect them and demands


equally that we be aware of the concrete conditions of their world, the conditions that

shape them. To try to know the reality that our students live is a task that the

educational practice imposes on us: Without this, we have no access' to the way they

think, so only with great difficulty can we perceive what and how they know. ... there

are no themes or values of which one cannot speak, no areas in which one must be

silent. We can talk about everything, and we can give testimony about everything.2

Thus, for positive help-seeking orientations to be a characteristic of all students, the entire

gamut of relationship-building, help seeking, networking, and Freire’s pedagogical intimacy,

have to become explicit norms and practices of the school culture. By explicit, we mean a

discourse emerges for talking about what, traditionally, has been tacit and invisible, yet

standard among high achievers and their select group of teachers. We speak here of a

discourse for talking about network-building, help seeking, institutional agents, and social

capital, and their importance, not only in school, but also in the world outside of school, in

the university, in the workplace, in politics, and in so many other places and arenas in

society.

Such a restructuring effort translates into transforming the culture of the school and

the social structures that manifest as both explicit and latent rules for how people engage in

the schooling process and for how teachers engage in their work as educators. The learning

of a new culture will require new identities, the learning of a new discourse, and adaptation

to new social structures that redefine how the students, teachers, and the school is re-

organized. Nothing less than new curricula for students and for teachers, and the full

commitment of all personnel at the school to radical restructuring, would be necessary.


References

Albrecht, T. L. & Adelman, M. B. and associates (1987) Communicating social support.

Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications.

Alschuler, A. S. (1980). School discipline: A socially literate solution. McGraw Hill.

Anyon, J. (1997) Ghetto schooling: A political economy of urban educational reform.

New York: Teachers College Press.

Baca Zinn, M. & Eitzen, D. S. (1999). Diversity in families. New York: Longman.

Baker, W. (2000). Achieving success through social capital: Tapping hidden resources in

your personal and business networks. University of Michigan, Business School.

Bandura, A. (1969). Principles of behavior modification. New York: Holt, Reinhart and

Winston.

Barnes, John A. (1972). Social Networks. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Barrera, Jr., Manuel (1986). Social support in the adjustment of pregnant adolescents:

Assessment issues. In Benjamin H. Gottlieb (ed.), Social Networks and Social

Support, pp. 69-96. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Barrera, Jr., Manuel (1986). Distinctions between social support concepts, measures, and

models. American Journal of Community Psychology 14 (4): 413-445.

Beam, M. R., Chen, C., & Greenberger, E. (2002). The nature of adolescents’ relationship

with their “very important” nonparental adults. American Journal of Community

Psychology, 30 (2).

Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J. (1977). Reproduction in education, society, and culture. London:

Sage.


Cochran, M., Larner, M., Riley, D., Gunnarsson, L. & Henderson, C. R. (1990) Extending

families: The social networks of parents and their children. Cambridge University

Press.

Connell, J. P., Aber, J. L. and Walker, G. How do Urban communities Affect Youth? Using

Social Science Research to Inform the Design and Evaluation of Comprehensive

Community Initiatives. In New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives:

Concepts, Methods, and Contexts. Edited by Connell, J. P, Kubisch, A.C., Schorr, L.

B. & Weiss, C. H.

Connell, J. P. & A. C. Kubish (1998). Applying a theory of change approach to the

evaluation of comprehensive community initiatives: Progress, prospects, and

problems. In New approaches to evaluating community initiatives, Vol. 2: Theory,

Measurement, and Analysis. New York: Aspen Roundtable.

Eccles, J. & J. A. Gootman, Eds. (2001). Community programs to promote youth

development. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Eckenrode, John (1983). The mobilization of social supports: Some individual constraints.

American Journal of Community Psychology 11: 509-528.

Fischer, C. S. 1982. To dwell among friends. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Freire, P. (1993a). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum

Freire, P. (1993b). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Continuum

Frydenberg, E. (1997). Adolescent coping: Theoretical and research perspectives. London

and New York: Routledge.

Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure, and contradiction

in social analysis. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.


Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration.

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Granovetter, Mark S. (1982). The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited. In Peter

Marsden & Nan Lin (eds.), Social Structure and Network Analysis, pp. 105-130.

Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Hammer, M. (1983). 'Core' and 'extended' social networks in relation to health and illness.

Social Science and Medicine 17 (7), 405-411.

Hood, L. (2003). Immigrant students, Urban High Schools: The Challenge Continues. New

York. Carnegie Corporation of New York

Hymovich, D. P. (1983). The chronicity impact and coping instrument: Parent Questionnaire.

Nursing Research, 32(5), 275-281.

Institute of Research and Reform in Education (IRRE) (2003). First Things First: A

Framework for Successful School Reform.

Lin, N. Dean, A. and Ensel, W. (1986). Social support, life events, and depression. Orlando:

Academic Press.

López, J. and Scott, J. (2000). Social Structure. Open University Press.

Matute-Bianchi, M. E. 1989. “Ethnic identities and patterns of school success and

failure among Mexican-descent and Japanese-American students in a California

school.” American Journal of Education, 95, 233-255.

Ogbu, J. U. (1991). "Immigrant and involuntary minorities in comparative perspective." In

M. A. Gibson and J. U. Ogbu (Eds), Minority status & schooling: A comparative

study of immigrant and involuntary minorities. New York: Garland Press.


Pearlin, L. I. and Schooler, C. (1978). The Structure of Coping. Journal of Health and Social

Behavior. Vol. 19, No. 1

Pérez, W. (2012). Americans By Heart: Undocumented Latino Students and the Promise of

Higher Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Quintanar, I. M. (2007). Defining the mobilization of social capital for low-SES minority

youth participants in the Summer Bridge Program by program leaders.

(Dissertation). University of Southern California.

Sadan, E. (1997) Empowerment and community planning: Theory and practice of people-

focused social solutions. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishers.

Shorr, L. 1997. Common Purpose: Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods to Rebuild

America. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Sewell, William H., Jr. (1992). A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation.

American Journal of Sociology, 98 (1), 1-29.

Stanton-Salazar, R. D. (1997). A social capital framework for understanding the socialization

of racial minority children and youth. Harvard Educational Review, 67(1), 1-40.

Stanton-Salazar, R. D. (2001). Manufacturing hope and despair: The school and kin support

networks of U.S.-Mexican youth. New York: Teachers College Press.

Stanton-Salazar, R. D. (2004). Social capital among working-class minority students. In M.

A. Gibson, P. Gándara, & J. P. Koyama (Eds.), School Connections: U.S. Mexican

Youth, Peers, and School Achievement. New York: Teachers College Press,

Columbia University.

Stanton-Salazar, R. D. (2011). A social capital framework for the study of institutional agents

and of the empowerment of low-status youth. Youth & Society, 42 (2), 1-44.


Stanton-Salazar, R. D. & Dornbusch, S. M. (1995). Social capital and the social reproduction

of inequality: The formation of informational networks among Mexican-origin high

school students. Sociology of Education 68, 116-135.

Stanton-Salazar, R. D. & Spina, S. U. (2000). The network orientations of highly resilient

urban minority youth. The Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education, 32, 3.

Stanton-Salazar, R. D., Chávez, L. F., & Tai, R. H. (2001). The help-seeking orientations of

White and Latino high school students: A critical-sociological investigation. Social

Psychology of Education: An International Journal, 5, 49-82.

Stanton-Salazar, R. D., Vásquez, O. A., & Mehan, H. (2000). Engineering success through

institutional support. In Sheila T. Gregory (Ed.), The Academic Achievement of

Minority Students: Comparative Perspectives, Practices, and Prescriptions. New

York: University Press of America.

Turner, H. A. (1994). Gender and Social Support: Taking the bad with the good. Sex Roles,

30 (7-8), 521-541.

Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring.

New York: State University of New York Press.

Vaux, A., Burda, P. C. and Stewart, D. (1986). Orientation toward utilization of support

resources. Journal of Community Psychology, 14 (2), 159-170.

Vaux, Alan & Wood, J. (1987). Social Support Resources, Behavior, and Appraisals: A Path

Analysis. Social Behavior and Personality: an International Journal 15, 107-111.

Wallace, John L. & Alan Vaux. 1993. Social Support Network Orientation: The Role of Adult

Attachment Style. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 12(3), 354-365.


Wehlage, G. G., Rutter, R. A., Smith, G. A., Lesko, & Fernandez, R. R. (1989). Reducing

the risk: Schools as communities of support. Falmer Press.

Wellman, Barry (1983). Network analysis: “Some basic principles." Sociological Theory,

pp. 155-200. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Weiss, C.H. (1995) Nothing as Practical as Good Theory: Exploring Theory-based

Evaluation for Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families, In

New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives: Concepts, Methods, and

Contexts. Edited by Connell, J. P, Kubisch, A.C., Schorr, L. B. & Weiss, C. H.

Woolley, M. E. and Bowen, G. L. (2007). In the Context of Risk: Supportive Adults and the

School Engagement of Middle School Students. Family Relations, Volume 56, Issue

1, pages 92–104

Documents

The Empowerment of Immigrant Students in School: Using Social Capital Research and Theory to Guide the Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Comprehensive School Restructuring