This paper uses James Marcia\u27s Adolescent Identity Development Theory to expand high school juniors and seniors\u27 awareness of the importance of setting goals for themselves. Goals provide accountability, a healthy mindset, and the practice of self-regulation. This project provided juniors and seniors time to reflect and set their goals for their future plans as they embark on a life without the systematic structure the public school has provided

Carpenter, Laura

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California State University, Monterey Bay Digital Commons @ CSUMB Capstone Projects and Master's Theses 5-2023 Creating Goals with Adolescent Teenagers Laura Carpenter Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/caps_thes_all This Capstone Project (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ CSUMB. It has been accepted for inclusion in Capstone Projects and Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ CSUMB. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@csumb.edu. CREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 1Creating Goals with Adolescent TeenagersLaura E. CarpenterA Capstone project for the Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Family ScienceCREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 2IntroductionMany adolescents have not had instruction in goal setting and creating life goals. Asadolescents graduate high school, they lose the systematic structure of schooling that shapes theirgoals. If students are not taught how to replace this type of systematic structure with their own,they may not have clear goals set post-high school and may fail to develop their own potential.Without clear life goals, adolescents may feel frustrated and lost and have negative mental healthoutcomes like anxiety and depression. Adolescents taught how to structure and create life goalsmay increase personal accountability, feel more self-efficacy, and avoid poor mental healthoutcomes. To increase adolescents’ goal-setting skills and their importance in leading to positiveoutcomes, I have created a two-hour workshop session for seventeen and eighteen-year-oldsfrom San Lorenzo Valley High School, California.Need StatementAs students graduate from high school, they lose an important systematic structure ofschooling and adults within the system who hold them accountable for their academic learning.When the loss occurs, they become vulnerable to self-handicapping, which is any action orchoice of performance setting that enhances the opportunity to externalize (or excuse)failure.(Schwinger & Stiensmeier-Pelster, 2011). Self-handicapping has been shown throughliterature to negatively affect important educational processes and outcomes like motivation andachievement. (Schwinger & Stiensmeier-Pelster, 2011). A promising prevention factor againstself-handicapping is for students to set goals.(Schwinger & Stiensmeier-Pelster, 2011). Settinggoals provides a sense of accountability, promotes self-growth, and increases better healthoutcomes.CREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 3To practice accountability, particularly effective goals to practice writing are specific ones.Adolescents who can write specific goals begin the personal journey of understanding what theycan accomplish in a set amount of time, holding them accountable for their actions or lackthereof (Martin et al., 2021). The actions taken on specific goals can be tracked and altered asadolescents engage in ways to attain their goals leading to a higher sense of self-satisfaction.Moreover, holding themselves accountable by understanding their results builds their confidence(Pilcher et al., 2022). This confidence will lead them to take on more challenges supporting theirpotential.As adolescents establish their life goals, it will aid their understanding of the tasks involvedfor success. Their understanding of the tasks involved will help them take the necessary actionsto complete their goals. Actions may involve finding community resources to be better informed.The more resources adolescents can find, the more likely they will succeed (Nielsen & Bauer,2018). Resources in their community can provide information about higher education,rehabilitation services, trade schools, travel, free health care, and food. Resources not onlyprovide the information, but they also provide a support system for adolescents as they work toachieve their goals. Adolescents who actively find and use the resources for support andinformation feel more positive and optimistic about the outcomes. (Hartwig & Taylor, 2022). Thepersonal self-growth the adolescents' experience strengthens their potential and their belief inthemselves.Lastly, as adolescents establish their goals, they have more positive health outcomes in thelong term. Goals can be clarified and prioritized, which helps flush out any conflicts that can beresolved, and reduces prospective failures. Resolving conflicts leads to long-term benefits like ahigher, more resilient self-esteem. (King, 2001). Also, King (2001) noted that individuals couldCREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 4imagine their best possible selves by writing goals. The action of writing helps reduce stress andboost self-regulation. Self-regulation helps adolescents reduce the stress on their nervous systemand enables them to enjoy their potential as human beings.Creating goals is a positive and healthy habit that adolescents can benefit from in or outof a classroom setting. Adolescents taught how to structure and create life goals may increasepersonal accountability, feel more self-efficacy, and avoid poor mental health outcomes. Toincrease adolescents’ goal-setting skills and their importance in leading to positive outcomes, Ihave created a two-hour workshop session for seventeen and eighteen-year-olds from SanLorenzo Valley High School, California.TheoryErik Erikson's fifth psychosocial stage, Identity v. Role Confusion, is the stage adolescentsresolve conflicts between self-identification and the expectations of society (Mcleod, 2023).James Marcia popularized Erikson’s theory in nineteen sixty-six when he developed his identitydevelopment theory. He studied the behaviors of at-risk youth and proposed it was morebeneficial to understand adolescents through the extent to which they had explored andcommitted to developing their identity. (Adams et al., 1984).Adolescent Identity Development by James Marcia is based on two criteria: crisis/exploration and commitment. During exploration and commitment, adolescents reexamine oldvalues, and new alternatives are sought and chosen. (Adams et al., 1984). The exploration andcommitment processes contribute to differences in outcome depending on how much exploringthey do and how committed they are to the alternatives they find. For example, suppose anadolescent’s family members are all nurses, and the adolescent is expected to study and become anurse. However, the adolescent finds himself/herself shifting away from this family careerCREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 5tradition and wants to explore other options. How the family reacts to this type of explorationcould contribute to any level of conflict and impact the adolescent's commitment to thisself-identification process, either negatively or positively.Along with James Marcia's criteria of exploration and commitment, he created fourcategories or statuses of identification. The statuses include diffused, foreclosed, moratorium,and achieved. A diffused status signifies low exploration and low commitment. A foreclosedstatus signifies a low exploration and high commitment. A moratorium status signifies a highexploration and low commitment. Lastly, an achievement status signifies a high exploration andhigh commitment (Crowe & McGarr, 2022).Since this project is based on adolescents setting goals to promote positive outcomes, Iused James Marcia’s Theory of Adolescent Identity Status. This will allow participants to beginto understand and name the status they are currently experiencing. Thereby giving them a senseof autonomy as they set goals for themselves. It will also allow them to have the opportunity tounderstand what their peers are experiencing and why their goals are different or similar.Additionally, since the activities I have created are based on individual interests, the studentsmay flush out conflicting ideas they have about themselves or their social environments. Theactivities are designed for each person to be able to go a little deeper with setting goals. First,they will identify their interests and then build goals step by step with their interests in mind, andlastly, be able to construct a vision board to ease the burden of knowing exactly the right steps totake to achieve their goals. The activities will provide various explorations supporting them to amore achieved identity status in this stage of their lives.CREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 6Consideration of DiversityMy curriculum will be presented during a two-hour San Lorenzo Valley High SchoolPhysical Education class. The target participants are junior and senior class students. Accordingto the Schools Accountability Report Card (SARC) for 2021-2022, published in 2022, the totalnumber of students enrolled was 707 students (49.4% female and 50.6% male). The participantsrepresent the school's gender population, as well as the ethnic population which is 76% white,14% Mexican, 9% biracial, and 1% Asian (SARC, p. 3, 2021-2022). The participants will alsorepresent the students with disabilities, which is 9.6% of the student body (SARC, p. 3,2021-2022). The participants do not represent all of the ages or stages of the school because thefocus group’s ages are seventeen and eighteen.The curriculum will be presented in English, and the materials will be pen, paper, magazines,scissors, and glue. The students will conceptualize their goals for the years after high schoolgraduation. Hence, the curriculum content and materials would need modifications to supportstudents with different abilities and younger students. This could be done by precuttingmaterials, providing glue assistance, and providing a more general-based curriculum for settinggoals.Learning OutcomesI intend to provide a two-hour session to junior and senior high school students at San LorenzoValley High School.By the end of the project, participants will be able to:1.) Write two specific goals in either personal, career, or interpersonal domains.2.) Indicate one specific goal and write three steps towards achieving the goal.3.) Create a visual representation of larger life goals using a collage as the medium.CREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 7MethodFirst, I introduced myself to the students and explained that I was a Human Development andFamily Science Major. This workshop on goals was part of my capstone for graduation. Ithanked them for allowing me the time. Then, I verbally explained James Marcia's Theory ofAdolescent Identity Status and how it pertained to their current stage of development. I wrote theelements of the statuses on the greaseboard. See Appendix A.Next, I talked about identifying their interests and setting goals related to those interestsspecific and vision. I started them with a mind map exercise to help them identify their interests.As a class, I discussed what a mind map was and how to use one. I wrote it on the greaseboard asan example.I asked the class, “What are your interests?”A student from the back of the class answered, “Staying alive. Because I am afraid of dying.”I wrote this on the board and asked, “How do you like to stay alive or live?”Several students answered, “Good nutrition, music, nature, and exercise.” See Appendix A.After the discussion, I gave them blank sheets of paper, and they began creating their ownmind map. See Appendix B. I walked around the class to answer any questions.For the next twenty minutes, I explained specific goals and how they are helpful because theyare measurable and can be modified. I gave them the task of looking at their interests and writingtwo specific goals related to them and the steps to achieve them. I walked around the class andanswered questions.As the individual work ended, they came back together as a class, and for forty minutes, weworked on vision boards/ treasure maps. First, I explained vision boards/treasure maps and howthey work to help build on goals. I provided fifty magazines, small poster boards, scissors, andCREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 8glue. Then, I tasked them with creating a board for goals or things they wanted to manifest forthemselves in the next twelve months. I walked around the classroom, helping with materials andanswering questions.The final task I gave them was to write a best-case scenario. The prompt I gave was toimagine themselves five years into the future after achieving their goals. And to answer thequestions: did it change anything? Are you still working on the goals? Did the goals change?They spent thirty minutes writing. I wanted to honor their privacy and not photograph or keepcopies of their writing.I concluded the workshop by talking about James Marcia’s theory again. And then, weworked together using the written work on the board to identify which status diffuse, foreclosure,moratorium, or achieved the goal-setting actions put them regarding their development.ResultsThe first learning outcome was for the participants to write two specific personal, career,or interpersonal goals. I prepared the students by introducing them to a mind map to identifytheir interests. The students used pen and paper to start this process. Once this step wascompleted, they picked two of their interests and wrote out specific goals pertaining to theirinterests. I reviewed the individual work of twelve junior and senior students. All twelvestudents met this learning outcome by writing more than two specific goals. See Table 1. Thelearning outcome for this age group was met one hundred percent.The second learning outcome was for the students to indicate one specific goal and writethree steps toward achieving the goal. I asked the students to choose one of their written goalsand write three steps toward achieving it. I reviewed their individual goals and the steps aswritten. Nine students wrote more than one specific goal and more than three concise steps forCREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 9action that needed to be taken to achieve the goals. Their goals and action steps reflected a higherlevel of focus and motivation than I anticipated. Three students wrote more than one specificgoal with three vague steps on actions that needed to be taken to achieve the goals. Compared tothe previous students who wrote concise steps to achieve their goals, these students used vaguelanguage and less than five-word steps to achieve them, which seemed to reflect a gap ofunderstanding for what they were asking of themselves. I think this learning outcome was metwith higher-than-expected results pertaining to the number of goals they wrote.The last learning outcome was to create a visual representation of larger life goals using acollage as the medium. I provided magazines, scissors, glue, and poster board for the students torepresent their life goals visually. I prompted the exercise with this question, what do you want tosee happen in your life in twelve months? I reviewed their individual vision boards, and thetwelve students met this learning outcome one hundred percent. The vision boards werewell-designed and represented what each student wanted to achieve for themselves individually.The vision boards held pictures of relationships, words of encouragement, success, and manypictures of healthy food choices.Overall, the project was successful because the students stayed engaged and focused. Theyenjoyed the work of mapping out their interests and compiling goals with related steps towardachievement.DiscussionThe goals workshop was successful because all students met each learning outcome, anda few surpassed my expectations. The students were focused and worked diligently through eachexercise. The students were engaged with me during the opening introduction and at the end ofthe workshop and concluding discussion.CREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 10The results were consistent with Marcia’s theory and supportive of the exploration andcommitment needed to resolve identity as described in his Theory of Adolescent Identity Status.Self-reflection can be considered a step in exploring to understand oneself. The goal activitiesprovided the time and materials for students to reflect on their interests and the direction theycould take with them. Also, the activities prompted the students to take steps to commit tothemselves and their goals.Overall, the project was open-ended and included a diverse group of students. Onestudent in a wheelchair verbally expressed his goals and steps, and an aide helped him completea vision board. I think to add to the diversity of the project, I could have included more classesand worked with a wider variety of ages.If I were to do this project again, I would include more days to support students inunderstanding the success of their written goals and where to shift the goals or steps asnecessary. I hope that the students will be able to use what they learned from the workshop andcontinue to practice writing goals and creating vision boards. Moreover, I hope the peoplereading this project will include ideas from it in their curriculum plans to get to know andunderstand their students better.CREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 11ReferencesAdams, G. R., Ryan, J. H., Hoffman, J. J., Dobson, W. R., & Nielsen, E. C. (1984). Ego identitystatus, conformity behavior, and personality in late adolescence. Journal of Personality andSocial Psychology, 47(5), 1091–1104. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.47.5.1091Crowe, F., & McGarr, O. (2022). “Foreclosing” a teaching career? An exploration of the careerdecisions of undergraduate preservice teachers through the lens of Identity Status TheoryElsevier, 115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2022.103744Hartwig, E. K., & Taylor, E. R. (2022). Small steps can lead to big changes: Goal setting inschools using solution-focused play therapy. International Journal of Play Therapy, 31(3),131–142. https://doi.org/10.1037/pla0000179King, L. A. (2001). The Health Benefits of Writing about Life Goals. Personality and SocialPsychology Bulletin, 27(7), 798–807. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167201277003Martin, A. J., Burns, E. C., Collie, R. J., Bostwick, K. C. P., Flesken, A., & McCarthy, I. (2021).Growth goal setting in high school: A large-scale study of perceived instructional support,personal background attributes, and engagement outcomes. Journal of EducationalPsychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000682Mcleod, S. (2023, March 29). Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. SimplyPsychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.htmlPilcher, S., Schweickle, M. J., Lawrence, A., Goddard, S. G., Williamson, O., Vella, S. A., &Swann, C. (2022). The effects of open, do-your-best, and specific goals on commitment andcognitive performance. Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, 11(3), 382–395.https://doi.org/10.1037/spy0000301CREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 12Schwinger, M., & Stiensmeier-Pelster, J. (2011). Prevention of self handicapping - the protectivefunction of mastery goals [Review of Prevention of self handicapping - the protective functionof mastery goals]. Elsevier, 21(6), 699–709. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2011.09.004CREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 13AppendixAppendix ALecture Notes:James MarciaTheory of Adolescent Identity StatusTwo criteria - exploration and commitmentFour StatusDiffused - low exploration; low commitmentForeclosed - low exploration; high commitmentMoratorium - high exploration; low commitmentAchievement- high exploration; high commitmentAppendix BClass Mind MapCREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 14Appendix CStudent Mind MapsCREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 15Table 1: GoalsAcademic12/12 studentsCareer12/12 studentsPersonal8/12 studentsSpiritual4/12 studentsFigure 1: Samples of student’s goals with stepsCREATING GOALS WITH ADOLESCENT TEENAGERS 16Figure 2: Samples of student’s visual boards

Creating Goals with Adolescent Teenagers

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Creating Goals with Adolescent Teenagers

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