In-Between: Late-Arriving Teens in Adult Education Programs Navigating Child and Adult Immigrant Narratives

© The Author(s) 2020. We report on a grounded theory study of late-arriving immigrant youth (LIY) who arrived in the United States at 16–18 years of age and were referred to daytime General Education Diploma (D-GED) programs. These programs provide an alternate path to a high school diploma for youth with insufficient knowledge of English to complete graduation requirements before turning 19 years. Based on interviews with 38 youth from Latin America, we propose the core category of our grounded theory to be students Navigating Child and Adult Immigrant Narratives while making educational and career decisions. This process begins before immigration when youth imagine ambitious alternate selves—ideal educational and career selves in the United States, consistent with the American Dream and immigrant child narrative. The D-GED programs represent a compromise between a child and adult educational pathway. Students in these programs felt excluded from the regular high school but received social and emotional support while on a faster track to graduation and self-sufficiency as adults. However, students lacked concrete information and roadmaps for how to attain their ambitious goals. The study highlights the unique challenges faced by LIY as they develop ambitious and realistic education and career goals

‘Memory boxes’ as tool for community-based volunteers

This article describes an action research intervention to augment community-based volunteer counsellors’ support capacity. We conducted a case study with purposefully selected community-based volunteers (N=30). From a narrative and positive psychology framework we developed and implemented an intervention which focused on memory box-making (MBM). The participants’ ranges of psychosocial competencies were explored pre- and post-intervention by way of observation, focus-group discussions, as well as informal conversational interviews. We found that the volunteers acquired the skills and applied them competently

Teachers becoming lay practitioners of school community psychology

This article reports on a study that explored how a community-based intervention with ten teachers could enhance their knowledge and skills related to supporting community members coping with HIV/ AIDS. We conducted a case study using participatory action research methods. Individual interviews, observation, field notes, visual data and reflective journals were utilised as data sources. We found that the participating teachers displayed a willingness to support their community in coping with HIV/AIDS, yet did not perceive themselves as being adequately equipped to do so, and therefore refrained from acting intuitively. The intervention did, however, show signs of an emergent sense of ‘becoming’ lay practitioners in the face of the social upheaval brought on by the pandemic