Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar (2011) A Social Capital Framework for the Study of Institutional Agents and Their Role in the Empowerment of Low-Status Students and Youth. Youth & Society, 43(3) 1066-1109.
This is a long reading, so please focus on the following sections: pp: 1066 - 1079 Introduction & The Influence of Nonparental Adults on the Adolescent Development: A Review pp: 1080 - 1083 The Concepts of Social Capital and Social Structure Table 1. The roles of Institutional Agents as each are manifested through a specific set of actions. pp: 1097 -1102 Conclusion Appendix: Table A1. Forms of “Institutional Support” & Kinds of Institutional Agents Please address in your reflections how the concept of "Institutional Agents" described in this reading can inform our design concepts for OEF. Think about the roles and participation structures described and how agent actions could be translated into hybrid online and face-2-face systems designs that support empowering forms of adult-youth interaction.
Christine Kwon
4/20/2016 21:21:05
In today’s society, young adults have the ability to engage in the social world outside of their immediate family and friends, but they have the potential to reach out to agents. Thus, given that agents are also able to engage with young adults, they should hold a responsibility of participating in the socialization process and development of these adolescents. Approximately ¾ of students identified having a supportive adult aside from their parents since they were 14. However, most of these relationships are stratified by social hierarchies of class, race, and gender. This carries on to institutional relationships because students who have key networks with their families and schools are able to create egocentric networks with institutional agents as well. Looking at social structures, resources usually gravitate towards “higher class” students whether its credentials or socioeconomic status even in schools. Institutional agents need to be the “coordinator” for those whom don’t have the ability to receive the resources or support that they need. The agent can either be one that can give resources because of their high placement or one that is able to connect the student with people who do have those resources and create a network for them.
Jinny Kim
4/20/2016 22:19:40
Youth with a wider network of people and institutions are more likely to succeed academically, socially, and culturally. Youth in middle class are likely to have such a network that extends beyond their family, having a much more advantage in their academic and nonacademic pursuits. It is therefore also important to provide such access to “institutional agents” for minority, working-class students where they can acquire acquaintances, recognitions, communities, and other resources that can implant and foster those important positive values and identities that can empower them to move up in their socio-economic status.
Anne Kim
4/21/2016 01:50:48
Institutional agents are integral to the framework for empowering low-status students described in the article. An institutional agent is someone who is of “relatively high-status and authority” who can “manifest his or her potential role as an institutional agent...to directly transmit, or negotiate transmission of, highly valued resources” to students (1067).
Cory Bird
4/21/2016 02:24:20
“Socialization is cast here as the process by which young people, engaged with various agents and significant others, learn to negotiate and participate in multiple sociocultural worlds.” Adapting to these various “worlds” can be a very difficult process for some children coming from different socioeconomic statuses. For instance, students coming from middle-class or higher generally have larger networks comprised of different people and resources at their disposal. This leads to a higher success rate both academically and culturally. As we progress into an era where many young minds are tending to receive more social and institutional support than support from immediate family and friends, outside “agents” are making a stronger presence in the learning process for our youth. While there is empirical evidence that these larger networks with various agents provide a stronger academic experience, it is important to not forget the issue of socioeconomic status mentioned earlier. Students coming from a working-class family tend to rely less on the staff at their schools and more on their immediate families. “In contrast, in middle-class families, both parents and adolescents themselves coordinate to incorporate nonparental adult figures into their social networks.”
LeRoy Gary
4/21/2016 04:04:04
The Salazar text focused on the success of working-class minority youths and how institutional agents play a role in that success through the youth's’ social circles. To preface, institutional agents are essentially non-family, non-teacher adults that have some form of power or status within an institution. When the general population of youths were asked about significant adults in their lives most could point to quite a few institutional agents, but when looking at working-class youths, especially minorities, far fewer could think of a significant adult. Most saw close kin as persons in their life that had an impact on their social development but even those with significant others in mind very few of those possessed any actual power beyond giving the youth a sense of ease or belonging. The paper goes on to talk about how youths go through a socialization process where they learn how to exist and behave with regards to a certain crowd or setting where there are key institutional agents. A student’s success, at least in high school, can be heavily attributed to how well they “fit in” within the school setting, since the teachers would reward and give high marks to students who seemed to “get” the school system. Working-class minority students may not be the main focus of the general discourse of high school and this friction is a place for agents to step in and assist youths along the way. Also, many students evaluate themselves based on what their peers and significant agents see in them, which can cause a feedback loop of an ego boost leading to better performance leading to more ego boost, so long as the agents are there to promote the student.
Aliya Blackwood
4/21/2016 07:42:37
Stanton-Salazar discusses the concept of institutional agents and their larger role in the learning environment of young adults. In modern society in industrialized nations, it is more customary young adults to spend more time interacting with social groups than in the past. With physical groups and recreational time, as well as the rise of social media, social group circles are wiider than in previous generations. This also means that agents are plentiful, and able to engage with young adults. They should hold a responsibility for participating in the socialization process and development of these adolescents. Salazar categorizes such institutional agents’ support into four types - direct support, integrative support, system development, and system linkage and networking support. Individuals such as resource agents, knowledge agents, advocates, and advisors provide direct support. They are knowledgable about the system and can provide access to other resources.They also have access to two major categories of institutional resources, positional resources (which are linked to advantageous positions in a heirarchy) and personal resources (which are resources that a person in a position can give without having to worry about accountability for other people). The quality of social capital sometimes depends on the agent consulting with experts and other
Yvonne Chen
4/21/2016 08:56:42
In Salazar’s paper, he delves into the fact that students from different socioeconomic statuses are likely to receive different levels of academic support, and thus, succeed at different levels. Students in middle to high socioeconomic classes are more likely to have a larger academic support network beyond their parents and teachers, giving them an advantage against students in low socioeconomic classes. Because of this, students in middle and high socioeconomic classes succeed both academically and nonacademically at higher levels. Salazar goes on to examine why specifically this is, and possible ways to solve this problem. He identifies four institutional agents that separate students from lower and higher economic classes—direct support, integrative support, system development, as well as system linkage and networking support. He suggests that by providing these institutional agents to students from lower socioeconomic statuses, we can help decrease the achievement and education gap between the socioeconomic brackets.
Samiha Dawalbhakta
4/21/2016 10:06:02
It is a well known fact that students from different socioeconomic levels will receive different amounts of academic resources, causing them to reach different levels of academic success. Studies included in Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar’s paper, “A Social Capital Framework for the Study of Institutional Agents and Their Role in the Empowerment of Low-Status Students and Youth”, show that students in middle to high socioeconomic statuses will receive more academic help and support, through resources available to them or support systems of parents, teachers, and mentors. Due to this offset, students lower socioeconomic statuses are academically disadvantaged compared to their peers from middle and high socioeconomic statuses.
Madeline Duque
4/24/2016 19:40:05
The Stanton-Salazar article focuses on minority youth’s access to social capital. Social capital here is defined in terms of key resources and support provided by institutional agents. It offers a framework for social capital focuses on two principles: student participation in a world that contains people of multiple socioeconomic backgrounds and having non family adults become key agents in the social development and education attainment of students across backgrounds. The article describes the importance of an “institutional agent”. That is, an individual who occupies some sort of position of hierarchy, or possesses a high place in authority. This person can act as a medium between a student and highly valued resources a student can have access to. Thus, social capital allows a student to gain vital resources through these relationships with institutional figures. The article divides institutional agents into four distinct categories: direct support, integrative support, system development, and system linkage/networking support. Direct support is where an agent has access to major resources themselves and can advise or advocate a student into using them. Integrative support can come from coordinating a student’s relationships by making use of a venue, like a science fair. A system developer “entails developing a program that embeds students/youth in a system of agents, resources, and opportunities.” Finally, system linkage and networking support entails recruiting youth into some kind of program. Comments are closed.
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