The possibility to achieve

Description

This dissertation compares culturally-constructed understandings of achievement among street children ( n =60, M age =14.8), former street children ( n =63, M age =13.1), and school-going children ( n =60, M age =15.6) in Tanzania. It does so by considering children's divergent living contexts and their shared context of Kilimanjaro. Qualitative data were short-story responses to the adapted Thematic Apperception Test (Morgan & Murray, 1935). Achievement-related narratives generated from this projective test, which are typically analyzed diagnostically, were instead analyzed thematically. Here, stories were used as the basis for establishing an emic coding system. Member-checking, multiple coders, blind coding, and triangulation were used to help ensure validity and reliability of codes. Street children's emergent themes indicated a "heroic" orientation that was tempered by "paralytic" achievement strategies. Emergent themes in former street children's stories displayed a "determined" orientation, complemented by "choice" strategies which signified careful decision-making. School children's emergent themes showed a "deserved" orientation which was related to "control" strategies. Emergent codes specified a spectrum of possibility to achieve : street children's constructions reflected a fantasy possibility, former street children's reflected a realistic possibility, and school children's reflected an idealized possibility. The resulting model suggests that groups construct meaning of achievement differently, but share achievement concerns according to the collective knowledge of "a difficult life" in Kilimanjaro (Vavrus, 2003). Quantitative data were responses to the Importance Scale which measured children's perceived value of life events. Through ANOVA, contingency tables, and Bonferroni post-hoc analyses, the data demonstrate that former street children and school children were similar, and both different from street children. However, all groups shared values on particular life events, indicating collective ideologies concerning, for example, being happy and going to school. Significant differences between street children and the other groups illustrate the importance of basic needs, especially when they are unmet. These findings offer reasons, by tangible life events, for differences in achievement constructions. Implications involve including achievement consequences into achievement models, using longitudinal designs, examining causal relationships between living context and achievement understandings, using complementary theoretical frameworks, and paying more attention to street children's agency and contributions to success.

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