Edite Amorim THINKING-BIG has been collaborating with Galway Education Centre since 2013. After three sessions developed along one year and a half, the opportunity and means came to evaluate the process.
Galway Education Centre focuses on what is best in children and youngsters’ development. Working with this goal through Maths, Engineering or Arts, they get to achieve a new generation full of power, happiness and well-being, with a creative growth founded from good bases.
In this environment, Edite Amorim was first invited to join on board, working on empowering a group of teenagers from the program “Aviators of the future”. In this program, that had two editions until the present date, two groups of young people very enthusiastic about Aviation went to the USA. There, they were paired with a group of American youngsters and together they learned about the importance of being daring and bold, always fighting for your dreams in a responsible way.
In the two first sessions with Edite (October 2013 and February 2014), the youngsters worked on the notions of entrepreneurship, on creativity, on the relevance of being proactive about their future and having the possibilities of being everything that they could be (you can see more about these past trainings here). According to the words of one of the participants at the end of the second session:
“(…) we do have a role to play in the world and we can make a difference, we can shape our world and shape our future. On the outside we may only be a mere group of individuals but we are much more than that. We all are ambassadors; we are the Aviators of the Future.”
On October 28th 2014, THINKING-BIG’s team and a group of 15 teenagers met for the third time. For five hours we created a group feeling and talked about relevant themes for them, applied through interactive group dynamics that made them move, explore the space and get comfortable with each other. In this third session we finally had the possibility and means to evaluate the impact of the training on the participants.
Among all the possible concepts and variables that could be evaluated, we decided to choose the concept of hope and life satisfaction, since these are two main variables that we believe have been more present in the content of THINKING-BIG’s trainings. Moreover, these two concepts have been consistently studied in the most recent literature in Positive Education and showed reliable relevance in youngsters growth and development.
HOPE
To evaluate the relevant concept of Hope, we used the established scale in the literature entitled Children’s Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1997). According to Snyder, Hope is defined as goal-directed thinking, the thought that sustains movement towards goal achievement. The belief that it is possible to reach our purposed goals even though we might have to go into different directions, choose different pathways to get there. Previous studies have sustained the importance of hope development and training with children and adolescents (see for example some great work done by Susana Marques and collaborators, 2011).
LIFE SATISFACTION
Through the evaluation of the Multi-dimensions of the adolescents’ life satisfaction, we can easily be aware of their satisfaction in important and specific domains such as family, friends, school, living environment and self, as well as their life satisfaction in general. That is why we decided to evaluate the participants’ life satisfaction through the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS) (Huebner et al., 1998).
The 5 hour training focused on the importance of sharing, of opening perspectives and thinking big, and of focusing on the personal strengths, being humble and vulnerable to accept ourselves and the others. Everything was carefully described on this previous post. The evaluation was conducted at the beginning and at the end of the session, having the participants to answer to the two questionnaires at both moments for us to get their evaluation in the pre- and post-training. All the questionnaires were filled anonymously, having the participants the possibility of choosing a personal code to get the pattern of results of each one individually at the end of the process. There were 10 participants in the session (6 girls and 3 boys; Mage=15.7, SD=1.34).
RESULTS
When looking at the results, we focused on the total results of both scales on the two different moments of evaluation, i.e., CHS pre vs. post and MSLSS pre vs. post. Moreover, we looked at the different dimensions of life satisfaction on MSLSS (Family, Friends, School, Living Environment, and Self). The obtained results are presented in the following graphs:
Galway Education Centre focuses on what is best in children and youngsters’ development. Working with this goal through Maths, Engineering or Arts, they get to achieve a new generation full of power, happiness and well-being, with a creative growth founded from good bases.
In this environment, Edite Amorim was first invited to join on board, working on empowering a group of teenagers from the program “Aviators of the future”. In this program, that had two editions until the present date, two groups of young people very enthusiastic about Aviation went to the USA. There, they were paired with a group of American youngsters and together they learned about the importance of being daring and bold, always fighting for your dreams in a responsible way.
In the two first sessions with Edite (October 2013 and February 2014), the youngsters worked on the notions of entrepreneurship, on creativity, on the relevance of being proactive about their future and having the possibilities of being everything that they could be (you can see more about these past trainings here). According to the words of one of the participants at the end of the second session:
“(…) we do have a role to play in the world and we can make a difference, we can shape our world and shape our future. On the outside we may only be a mere group of individuals but we are much more than that. We all are ambassadors; we are the Aviators of the Future.”
On October 28th 2014, THINKING-BIG’s team and a group of 15 teenagers met for the third time. For five hours we created a group feeling and talked about relevant themes for them, applied through interactive group dynamics that made them move, explore the space and get comfortable with each other. In this third session we finally had the possibility and means to evaluate the impact of the training on the participants.
Among all the possible concepts and variables that could be evaluated, we decided to choose the concept of hope and life satisfaction, since these are two main variables that we believe have been more present in the content of THINKING-BIG’s trainings. Moreover, these two concepts have been consistently studied in the most recent literature in Positive Education and showed reliable relevance in youngsters growth and development.
HOPE
To evaluate the relevant concept of Hope, we used the established scale in the literature entitled Children’s Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1997). According to Snyder, Hope is defined as goal-directed thinking, the thought that sustains movement towards goal achievement. The belief that it is possible to reach our purposed goals even though we might have to go into different directions, choose different pathways to get there. Previous studies have sustained the importance of hope development and training with children and adolescents (see for example some great work done by Susana Marques and collaborators, 2011).
LIFE SATISFACTION
Through the evaluation of the Multi-dimensions of the adolescents’ life satisfaction, we can easily be aware of their satisfaction in important and specific domains such as family, friends, school, living environment and self, as well as their life satisfaction in general. That is why we decided to evaluate the participants’ life satisfaction through the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS) (Huebner et al., 1998).
The 5 hour training focused on the importance of sharing, of opening perspectives and thinking big, and of focusing on the personal strengths, being humble and vulnerable to accept ourselves and the others. Everything was carefully described on this previous post. The evaluation was conducted at the beginning and at the end of the session, having the participants to answer to the two questionnaires at both moments for us to get their evaluation in the pre- and post-training. All the questionnaires were filled anonymously, having the participants the possibility of choosing a personal code to get the pattern of results of each one individually at the end of the process. There were 10 participants in the session (6 girls and 3 boys; Mage=15.7, SD=1.34).
RESULTS
When looking at the results, we focused on the total results of both scales on the two different moments of evaluation, i.e., CHS pre vs. post and MSLSS pre vs. post. Moreover, we looked at the different dimensions of life satisfaction on MSLSS (Family, Friends, School, Living Environment, and Self). The obtained results are presented in the following graphs:
The differences on the Friends and Living Environment dimensions were not statistically significant (t(9)=.494, p=.63; t(9)=-1.872, p=.094). Moreover, the participants showed higher life satisfaction evaluation on the post-training than in the pre-training on the dimensions of Family (marginally significant - t(9)=-2.034, p=.073), School (marginally significant – t(9)=-2.113, p=.064), and especially Self (t(9)=-2.284, p=.048). The difference between the total results of MSLSS on the pre- and post-training was also marginally significant (t(9) = -2.128, p=.062). The results on the CHS were not statistically significant, even though there was a tendency also for higher Hope evaluation at the end of the training than at the beginning.
DISCUSSION AND LIMITATIONS
The present results are the preliminary outcomes of the first formal evaluation done at THINKING-BIG’s trainings. Even though these results are still in an open phase since we want to continue evaluating this group of youngsters in a 6 month and 12 month distance (follow up), it seems really valuable that we were able to find these results only after a 5 hour training. We are dealing here with variables that are usually very stable along time and that are not changeable very easily.
That is why we feel pleased for seeing these marginal differences at the end of a short (5 hours) training in terms of hours but that felt really powerful and strong.
Moreover, we have also to consider that these youngsters were not the ideal baseline for this kind of evaluation since they had received training from Edite twice before this one. In fact, their Hope level at the beginning of the training, for example, was already higher than the result obtained by Susana Marques and collaborators at the end of their first session of training in 2011 (The average result for Susana’s evaluation at the end of the first session was 26.21 and our average result for the pre-training was 27.3).
At the end of this first analysis of the training results, we must say that we are in fact really excited for seeing confirmed and validated our belief that we are working on the right track in a formal and ground-based way. It is very reassuring to see that we can in fact be changing the world, our world, one project at the time.
Relevant readings:
Marques, S. C., Lopez, S. J., & Pais-Ribeiro, J. L. (2011). “Building hope for the future”: A program to foster strengths in middle-school students. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12(1), 139-152
Snyder, C. R., Hoza, B., Pelham, W. E., Rapoff, M., Ware, L., Danovsky, M., ... & Stahl, K. J. (1997). The development and validation of the Children’s Hope Scale. Journal of pediatric psychology, 22(3), 399-421.
Huebner, E. S., Laughlin, J. E., Ash, C., & Gilman, R. (1998). Further validation of the multidimensional students' life satisfaction scale. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 16(2), 118-134.
DISCUSSION AND LIMITATIONS
The present results are the preliminary outcomes of the first formal evaluation done at THINKING-BIG’s trainings. Even though these results are still in an open phase since we want to continue evaluating this group of youngsters in a 6 month and 12 month distance (follow up), it seems really valuable that we were able to find these results only after a 5 hour training. We are dealing here with variables that are usually very stable along time and that are not changeable very easily.
That is why we feel pleased for seeing these marginal differences at the end of a short (5 hours) training in terms of hours but that felt really powerful and strong.
Moreover, we have also to consider that these youngsters were not the ideal baseline for this kind of evaluation since they had received training from Edite twice before this one. In fact, their Hope level at the beginning of the training, for example, was already higher than the result obtained by Susana Marques and collaborators at the end of their first session of training in 2011 (The average result for Susana’s evaluation at the end of the first session was 26.21 and our average result for the pre-training was 27.3).
At the end of this first analysis of the training results, we must say that we are in fact really excited for seeing confirmed and validated our belief that we are working on the right track in a formal and ground-based way. It is very reassuring to see that we can in fact be changing the world, our world, one project at the time.
Relevant readings:
Marques, S. C., Lopez, S. J., & Pais-Ribeiro, J. L. (2011). “Building hope for the future”: A program to foster strengths in middle-school students. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12(1), 139-152
Snyder, C. R., Hoza, B., Pelham, W. E., Rapoff, M., Ware, L., Danovsky, M., ... & Stahl, K. J. (1997). The development and validation of the Children’s Hope Scale. Journal of pediatric psychology, 22(3), 399-421.
Huebner, E. S., Laughlin, J. E., Ash, C., & Gilman, R. (1998). Further validation of the multidimensional students' life satisfaction scale. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 16(2), 118-134.
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