Center Projects Under Dr. Solberg
The BU Center for Future Readiness consists of two faculty co-directors – Kimberly Howard and Scott Solberg. Each faculty manages their own portfolio of research programs as well as supports the development of research programs for their doctoral students. The projects below are being conducted by Dr. Solberg and his team.
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This cross-cultural investigation of educator perceptions regarding the nature and value of social emotional learning (SEL) is led by Drs. Solberg and Park at BU and Dr. Lea Ferrari at the University of Padova, Italy. Research teams from 17 countries are participating, and the World Research Education Association has formally recognized the work as an International Research Network (IRN). Research team members have been analyzing SEL themes that emerged from the data collected in 2019 and developing a new survey that will be used in a multi-national data collection in 2020. The analysis of the new survey will be supported by a doctoral student Hayoung Kim. The team uses a social justice and liberation psychology lens to analyze the data. In Spring 2020, the IRN launched an international webinar series on SEL and Career Development.
The Institute of Educational Leadership (IEL) manages this 5-year grant awarded by the Rehabilitation Services Administration, and we are responsible for evaluating the technical assistant training. The project goals are to increase capacity among state Vocational Rehabilitation staff to more effectively support the career and workforce development needs of youth with disabilities as well as other high need youth populations such as homeless youth and those involved in the foster care and juvenile justice systems. We are in the fifth year of this evaluation project directed by Drs. Martin and Solberg with support from doctoral students Hayoung Kim and Bushra Ismail and masters students Turner Block and Yanling Dai. The project team develops evaluation tools, analyzes the results of the various evaluation efforts, examines the overall impact of this work, and prepares reports that the federal government will use to assess the efficacy of the technical assistance efforts and determine future technical assistance needs.
This Network began as part of a grant from the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth (NCWD-Youth) and is currently coordinated by Dr. Solberg. This Network includes leaders from over 30 states who meet monthly to discuss their career development implementation efforts, especially as they apply to the use of individualized learning plans (ILP’s). Participants include leaders from state education agencies (e.g., school counseling, special education, career and technical education, college and career readiness), state workforce development agencies, vocational rehabilitation agencies, and higher education. This group meets once a month to share how they are engaged in the design, implementation, and evaluation of career development and specifically ILP-related activities. Participants share resources, ask questions, discuss challenges, and learn innovative strategies on how to introduce, implement, and evaluate individual career planning processes for youth.
The project is led by a Doctoral Student Mason Blake specializing in Sport Psychology. He is studying and designing curriculum to support the career development of UK youth involved in Football academies. He is conducting an online survey of UK youth that will be used to assess their SEL and resiliency skills with respect to both their academic and football skills and the relationship between these skills and coaches’ ratings of their football abilities, wellness, and career and life goals. Mason will develop career development modules that will be delivered to the youth in Summer 2020.
In Spring 2020, Dr. Qi and Solberg launched a comparative study of promising career and workforce development efforts in rural areas of China and the U.S.
Dr. Solberg is collaborating with career specialists from two universities and Rhonda Basha, a former policy analyst from the U.S. Department of Labor, to produce a career advising toolkit for higher education institutions. The toolkit is an extension of Drs. Solberg and Martin’s work on individualized learning plans and will include resources that target high need populations that historically have not completed their postsecondary education. These populations include youth with disabilities, lower income youth, and youth from underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds. The project is supported by a masters student Yajing Chen.