April 23rd Inquiry Update

By Jorge Luis Aguilar Cruz

April 23^rd marked the end for the interviews for our Positive Deviance Semester Inquiry. At this point I have interviewed 5 brave and more than willing youngsters that all perfectly the screening criteria before being interviewed. Once again, not to give much away or sound repetitive, my semester Positive Deviance Inquiry is based in Segundo Barrio, with high school students that fit a criteria, the criteria concerns their personal behavior in and out school, activities involved in at school, work, if involved in risky behavior, etc. In addition, their socio economic standing, and household make up were factors on whether the participants qualified to be interviewed.

            Insights gained from the interviews thus far, is that some of the participants have participated in past UTEP studies, this lead to a very interesting part of the process. Since some of the participants had taken part in past UTEP studies, they knew very well that “incentives or rewards,” were offered for their participation in previous studies. With a lot of humor one of the participants asked, “sooooo am I going to get a gift card or something.” I replied, “Sure, is there anything else you might want?” The participant responded, “ Well, I always hear you talk about Cheddar’s and how awesome it is, can you take me to eat there, I’ve never been.” I said, “Yes, I will take you, but you have to give me your all in the interview and convince your Ma not beat me up okay.” The participant responded with huge laugh. Moreover, the participant proceeded to tell the other participants that I was offering incentives for their participation, now I have to give the rest of the participants a “a little something.”

            In closing, this  Positive Deviance inquiry has allowed me to get to know local students at a more deeper level, with their responses I will do my best to put forth an inquiry response that is worthy of these young men and women’s character.  The inquiry also helped me build bridges with parents, local officials, and mentors in the community, not always do the mentors have to be figure heads in the local area, but in this case, the mentors include people such as, “Enrique The Old Gangster,” the janitor, and many other people, all of which will be gone through more thoroughly in the final inquiry paper and presentation.

            

Positive Deviance Inquiry Update

By Jorge Luis Aguilar Cruz

As of April 17^th our Communicating Positive Deviance for Social Justice inquiry was nearing its ends. As of this date 4 out of 5 interviews have been completed. On April 18^th, we were asked to give a brief update on our inquiries for the semester. The purpose of this exercise was to further narrow down our inquiries, but more importantly to listen to suggestions, input, and ideas from our colleagues to strengthen our case studies. This was the third or fourth time we collectively shared our thoughts and suggestions, to further narrow our inquiries.

The final  My PD inquiry is: What are high school Junior and Senior students, who are 17 and older, are from El Segundo Barrio and Central, are in a single parent household that is low income, are drug free, make consistent A’s B’s and are either employed or involved in school or household activities, doing or enacting to breakaway from stereotypes that are expected from them?

The inquiry above will allow for careful selection of the partcipants. I will also ask open ended question to allow for more in depth  and thorough responses to properly allow our participants to fully answer the questions, but more importantly give their opinion without judgement, fear, or discrimination.

Are you 17 or 18 year old high school student who resides in Segundo Barrio?

1.      Do you reside in a single parent household, and is your household considered low income?

2.      What kind of activities are you involved in and out of school?

3.      Are you drug free and make consistent A’s and B’s in school?

4.      When you aware of your sorroundings, an outsider looking in might expect certain behaviors or stereotypes from you, what do you think those behaviors and stereotypes are?

5.      What good and bad examples do you see from your community?

It is important within this process to acknowledge that the participants will be allowed to expand on their answers as much as they chose too.  Asking simple questions, such as “how so, can you give me an example, can you add more, please explain”?  Within the interview process many other open ended questions were used, which will be addressed in the final inquiry report.

Diffusion of Innovations by Everett M. Rogers

By Milena S. Murta

As I’ve already written here, while I was reading this book, some premises of the positive deviance approach came to my mind all the time…then I concluded: positive deviants are innovations! And the whole book made total sense of being inserted in this class. Interestingly, the book, which was first published in 1962 keeps inspiring not only students and professors, but a lot of people from different fields. After reading it all I must say that “Diffusion of Innovations” answers some questions…but more importantly, it proposes a lot more other interrogation marks…they popping into my mind! What you will see below is the summary of my book club presentation: I decided to choose 4 vignetes and then discuss the mechanisms of diffusion, the characteristics of innovations and the main points in common (PD and DI).

The first vignette was the very first in the book: water boiling in a Peruvian village. The office of public health service in Peru was willing to improve the health of the villagers, which did not understand how sanitation is related to illness. Usually, village residents have 3 sources of water: seasonal irrigation ditch, spring water or public water. All of them are subject to pollution at all times…because they show contamination whenever tested. The campaign to teach people to boil water before cooking was done in the “Los Molinos” village, with about 200 families. Only 11 were persuaded. Public health agents went door by door explaining germ theories and so forth but didn’t have success in the rate of adoption of the theory. Why? They were strangers…they didn’t pay attention to cultural beliefs…for example, local tradition links hot food with illness. The agents also focused on the wrong housewives…the ones who had extra resources. The agents were “too innovation-oriented and not client-oriented”.

The second vignette portrays another situation…when technological innovations aren’t diffused and adopted rapidly even when it has obvious and proven advantages. And the example of that I’m using right now, to write this post: the keyboard. The history is about the nondiffusion of the Dvorak keyboard, created in 1932. It has 70% of the typing done on the home row and the amount of work assigned to each finger, in this keyboard, is proportionate to its skill and strength. The QWERTY keyboard (the one I’m using now!) was created in 1873 and believe it or not, it was developed to slow the typist down in order to prevent mistakes). In this keyboard, only 32% of the typing is done on the home row. Even so, this is the most common and used still today.

Another vignette has to do with the hybrid corn in Iowa. The year is 1928 and this hybrid corn yielded about 20% more than other varieties, is more drought resistant and it is better suited to harvest with mechanical corn pickers. The only “disadvantage” is that farmers would need to purchase the seed each year. Interestingly, although the innovation was with a high degree of relative advantage, the typical farmer moved slowly. Neighbors (and not salesmen) were more important channels to diffuse the innovation…farmers preferred to wait their peers’ experiences.

The final vignette I choose to discuss highlights the risks of the adoption of an innovation, and how we should be aware of all of its consequences. The case is about bottle feeding in the third world. This was an innovation that diffused widely and had disastrous consequences for most adopters….let me explain why. The bottle feeding with prepared infant/formulas started being promoted by multinational corporations with massive mass media campaigns. This campaigns usually showed the practice of bottle feeding as essential to raising health babies, the pictures were all of fat and happy infants with young, beautiful and modern mothers. In summary, the bottle feeding was depicted as a practice used by high-income well educated families who live in attractive urban homes…so, all people, including the lower classes, urged to think that they will become more like the modern when they adopt the bottle feeding practice. The rate of adoption increased rapidly…but then, the problems started to come. The powdered milk/formula was very expensive, there were no sanitary conditions available to prepare the formula…the water was polluted and the mothers were unable to clean the bottles after used. Bacteria multiplied in the bottles and a lot of babies were killed.

With this stories in mind, it is easy to understand the mechanism of diffusion, which is based on: Knowledge – person becomes aware of an innovation and has some idea of how it functions, Persuasion – person forms a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the innovation, Decision – person engages in activities that lead to a choice to adopt or reject the innovation, Implementation – person puts an innovation into use and Confirmation – person evaluates the results of an innovation-decision already made. (p. 162). Also, it is clear to understand the characteristics of an innovation: relative advantage - what makes it a better change than had it not been adopted; innovation’s compatibility with the preexisting system; innovations tend to be more successful when they are fairly compatible with what is already in place. The complexity of an innovation - how difficult is a new idea to learn or implement? The trialability of an innovation, or whether or not people can try it on a limited basis. The observability of an innovation. Can we see the potential and actual effects of an innovation?

Finnaly, in my opinion, the main points Diffusion of Innovation and Positive Deviance have in common are:

-     Opinion Leaders - For an innovation to succeed, influential members of a social system must have an active part in its spread.

-    Social Networks - People in social systems often adopt ideas or innovations because they have been influenced by other members in a social system.

-    Consequences - innovations forever impact social systems and indelibly change them.

PD Inquiry Formats

Dear Class Participants:

Here –attached -- is the suggested format for your PD reports emerging from your PD Inquiry (click to enlarge).

Best wishes….

Arvind

The Essential 55: An award-winning educator’s rules for discovering the successful student in every child

By Mario A. Dozal

http://smartshopbuy.com/images/books/the-essential-55-an-award-winning-educators-r.jpg           

            The Essential 55: An award-winning educator’s rules for discovering the successful student in every child is a book written by Ron Clark, an educator who currently runs a charter school in Atlanta, Georgia. I originally chose this book because of the great word of mouth reviews it had received and because I thought it fit the topic that I wanted go with that looked at what behaviors educators in middle schools were doing to inspire students to strive to continue their education. However after reading a bit of the main text, I didn’t see it as being as positively deviant as other books we’ve read on the subject. The examples of PD we’ve dealt with so far have mainly focused on malnourished children in Vietnam and MRSA prevention in hospitals, things that are directly in front of you and easy to see. Instead, here was a long list of rules with Ron Clark providing real-life experiences as examples under each one. However I went back and re-read the introduction to look for clues and it was there that several popped out at me that hadn’t the first time through. The first of these was the area in which Ron taught. Ron Clark describes his first teaching job ever as being in North Carolina school that was “75 percent minority and most of the kids were on free or reduced-price lunch,” and his class as being “demanding, high-energy fifth graders, many of whom had behavior problems and learning disabilities.” (Clark, p. xxiv) Ron would later go on to teach in Harlem, another area with a high number of minorities. This area that he first began teaching in is close to the demographics of the area that I’d like to study so this itself is a perfect fit for comparing his traits to those of other teachers. Also, if one of the main characteristics of PD is that you get others to take action and improve their status with resources they already have, then Ron Clark teaches PD. If he could use the students that other teachers had no success with, in parts of the U.S. that are traditionally looked down upon, and manage to inspire them, change the way their outlook on life, and the way society looks at them too, then he obviously is a positive deviant. Thus although I didn’t think so, his rules show that not only is he a positive deviant but he helps create future ones.

            Some of the actions that he tells students to take are simple enough that it makes you wonder why the students aren’t already doing them. For example, one of the rules states that students should make eye contact at all time and give their complete attention to whoever is speaking. Once again, this is something that I think we assume children should already know and be practicing but he’s re-enforcing the action in the classroom and teaching the kids who may not already be practicing basic manners. Another one of his rules says that students must say thank you within three seconds of receiving something or it will be taken away. The fact that he recounts a story of an ex-fifth grade student who still says thank you in the twelfth grade shows that his method works because even after all these years that student still says thank you when receiving something. The student does the action they were taught and they don’t deviate from that at all. It should also be noted that Ron Clark only mentions the more formal “thank you”, not “thanks” or any other variation as a response which seems to support the idea of teaching students proper manners.

            My favorite rules however were the last 7 rules because they focused on giving the students life lessons that would help them through life. Many times, and especially in today’s teaching world, teachers are expected to teach whatever is in a book and they never deviate from that path. Instead Ron Clark preaches that in addition the lesson, teachers should teach their students about being happy in life and standing up for what they believe in and what is right. With teachers playing a big role in the development of children throughout life, what Ron Clark preaches there is very important as it informs students that they don’t have to just settle for what is expected of them. These rules re-enforce the idea that a child can make something more of themselves if they work hard and that above all else, they should be happy in their lives and surround themselves with people they love.

            In conclusion I found this to be a great book choice and one that while not directly associated with positive deviance, certainly displays some characteristics through its author Ron Clark and the rules themselves.

Leading Causes of Life: Five Fundamentals to Change the Way You Live Your Life

By Gabby Morales

The Leading Causes of Life—where have we heard a version of that very phrase? All of us must be familiar with the leading causes of death, but not the Leading Causes of Life. While reading this book I kept asking myself, “Why don’t we use this sentence instead? Could this statement be a positive deviant all on its own?” The more I read the book, the more I was able to answer those questions with certainty. Yes, we can start using this statement and a definite yes to it being a positive deviant.


Authors Gary Gunderson and Larry Pray form the content of the book as an easy-to-read process of what it means to say and what entails the Leading Causes of Life. There is much more than just getting used to saying the sentence just like there is a lot more that involves being a positive deviant than just saying you are. Gunderson provides the information, his journey through establishing the Leading Causes of Life while Pray writes stories that pertain to whatever Gary is writing about in each chapter. The information from both writers compliments the other well and makes for a smoother flow of the content. Gunderson starts his book by writing “I want to talk about life, not death.” That says it all. This book is about finding out and learning about the other side of the coin. We know what the phrase leading causes of death means. It is finding that which will eventually kill us without being able to do a single thing about. It is what plagues our society, according to the authors, and shapes our way of thinking. Leading Causes of Life, makes you look at what makes life.


Gunderson provides a small chart of examples called A Difference in Perspective: Life’s View.
This is an example of that very chart which emphasizes the perspective of life and not death. It shows the reader what we commonly associate with death and flips the script to make it about life.
Death Sees                                          Life Sees                           So What?

Cancer                                        Experience of Connection, Focus              Life focuses on what is
And its losses that                        on essential meaning, choices and            left, not what is lost.
feed fear and separation               actions to be made, hope for the           "Patient remains
                                                        things that last                                           a human who is still
                                                                                                                             a blessing. Life focuses
                                                                                                                           on the rest of the body
                                                                                                                            that doesn’t have
                                                                                                                        cancer and asks what it
                                                                                                                            can do.

There are elements Gunderson provides that need to work together as an “ensemble,” as he calls them. There cannot be one without the other. Four of them cannot stand on their own while one is missing. All of these elements have to be present in order to work and make something happen. These elements are Connection, Coherence, Agency, Blessing and Hope. Though some of these elements have a religion connotation, the author claims that no matter what the religion, these elements will work if the correct amount of dedication is given to each and every one of them.


Connection is “like a breath of fresh air on which our very lives depend on” (Gunderson & Pray, 2009, p. 65). This statement refers to relationships, being social and being what makes humans thrive. Gunderson and Pray present examples of what they mean with connection by acknowledging that shutting away those from the local community by having experts run the show, does not lead to connection. Connection has to come from those around the community, those who know the ins and outs of the community, in order to make it a healthy one. Gunderson also mentions how conditioned we have become to trust a professional with a name tag which automatically make those without one not reliable or trustworthy. Trusting that the community has the answers is PD. This is one of the main aspects of PD. The solutions are with the people, not outside experts as we have been conditioned to think.


Coherence is what helps us adapt and gives us the tools to manage our complex relationships that keep us alive. For PD, this part would be looking for the donkeys that are right in front of us but which we disregard as unimportant.


Agency is to act, to DO. Agency is to act towards life, to move, to chose. It means not letting oneself sink in the negative pool, but doing something to get out. Again, this word contributes to PD and the donkey factor. There is always something that can help people through; they just need to open their eyes to see it. Gunderson points this out and quotes other authors that have said some professionals undermine the agency of communities. This is PD, just with another name, Leading Causes of Life in health. The same goes for the story the authors mentioned regarding Masangane in which women from a community in South Africa chose to act instead of waiting around for experts to help with the HIV/AIDS problem among their people which as a result led to many orphaned children. They took it upon themselves to provide nurturing, food, clothing and anything else the children needed while big, important agencies kept thinking about how to even start addressing the problem.


Blessing goes from one generation to the next. Blessings are received not individually but through generations which keeps them going. “…blessing is the quality that seeks life that bridges terrible mistakes with a sense of accountability to those that come long after them” (Gunderson & Pray, 2009, p. 125). Gunderson also points out that blessing are received, but one cannot bless oneself. Blessing are received or given.


Hope is not to be confused with optimism that lacks reality. Hope for Gunderson is informed hope that is “risk-able expectation.” Hope drives people to see a future; a clear vivid picture tells us what to do, instead of waiting for it to happen. Such was the case with Pastor Diane Young and her church children. The vivid picture she had, the hope, was to see these children who were not expected to get anywhere in life, be honor students. Her hope drove her to act which is why Gunderson points these five fundamentals as an ensemble, not separate elements in which we can pick and choose which one we want to use today to impress others.


These five elements are crucial for the Leading Causes of Life. Gunderson’s guidance through it and Pray’s examples to sustain the words of Gunderson come in full circle. What is it that we have to have in order to lead life to life and not death? The answers are connection, coherence, agency, blessing, and hope. I, not being a religious person, understood the elements. Even though the book has religious connotations it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a Methodist to understand. You can be Catholic, Protestant, Christian, Muslim, Jewish; these elements transcend religion, boundaries, and any other form of separation we have formed to keep us from each other.


Leading Causes of Life is like reading PD using different words. Giving a voice to those who are living and know what they are living for, acknowledging that there is more than one way to look at things, knowing that experts don’t always have the answers, looking for donkeys, all of these elements are in this book.

“Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so.”

By Jenny Cisneros 

 In everyday life we find ourselves doing the most repetitive, somewhat, mundane activities. However, there are those days in which we slip up and forget key steps to executing certain activities.  Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto: A Guide to Get Things Right, describes how the sheer volume and complexity of knowledge people are expected to retain eventually gives way and is a major cause for common human errors. Human errors are often attributed to a number of factors such as, stressful circumstances, overlooking important but necessary steps or people just completely forget. Gawande provides insightful yet persuasive arguments for why people in any profession should consider implementing checklists.

Walmart to the Rescue?

 
In the summer of 2005, the unthinkable happened, Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans. Dumping sheets of heavy rain on the city that caused the protection of the levees to breach, leaving parts of the city virtually under water. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina still haunts those left behind during the natural disaster. Initially, the reports of what was really happening were vague. When the “command-and-control paradigm” collapsed in New Orleans, government officials were unsure who to turn to, to send aid. While all levels of government officials were halted by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, the most unlikely of organizations stepped forward and took initiative to help the victims of this terrible disaster.  Although, the corporate giant Wal-Mart has been under major controversy and scrutiny because of the treatment of their employees, they stepped forward and lent a hand to those in need. While government officials were still scrambling around unsure who to blame or how to help, 48-hours after the Katrina made landfall, Wal-Mart store managers began distributing bottled waters, diapers, baby formula and much more to New Orleans residents. Corporate Wal-Mart officials maintained all forms of communication with every store that had been damaged during the storm, however, despite all the mayhem they left the solution of this complex situation to those who were in the midst of all the destruction. As the days trudged on, Wal-Mart employees found ways to coordinate with other stores and began setting mobile pharmacies and clinics that would  help and distribute medications to evacuees. In the end Wal-Mart provided New Orleans with a total of 2,498 truck loads of emergency supplies and donated about $3.5 million worth of Wal-Mart merchandise. 

Sometimes help can come from the most unlikely sources. The truth is that while FEMA was still figuring the logistics of how to help, a private organization stepped forward and allowed people from all levels of the corporate ladder make executive decisions. Gawande’s writes, “The lesson of this tale has been misunderstood. Some have argued that the episode proves that the private sector is better than the public sector in handling complex situations. But it isn’t...under conditions of complexity, not only are checklists a help, they are required for success” (Gawande, 2009, pgs. 78-79).  Although, Wal-Mart officials did not follow a formal checklist, as the days continued they managed to create one amongst all the chaos. People were able to strip themselves of their titles and make educated decisions that were for the greater good of the people. 

Agents of Change

In late 2006, Dr. Gawande was approached by the World Health Organization, to help organize member countries in a conference and try to find a solution to unsafe surgery practices. During a two-day conference in Geneva in January 2007, Dr. Gawande heard hundreds of stories of surgeries gone wrong. The list just went one and the results seemed grim. In the process of finding a simple solution, Dr. Gawande recalled a project conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control and project HOPE in Pakistan some years back. The death rates of children around Karachi, Pakistan were due to poor living conditions, water sources were contaminated by sewage and one in every ten children died of from diarrhea or acute respiratory infections. How do you reconstruct a society in a country where so many things have gone wrong? A public health worker from Nebraska provided a simple yet obvious solution to such a large problem. Stephen Luby persuaded his colleagues to supply cases of Safeguard antibacterial soap and just plain soap to the people of Karachi. Each family received approximately 4 bars a week for a whole year. Some families received antibacterial soaps and others received soaps with no antibacterial agent. Case workers encouraged families to use the soap to wash their bodies once a day, wash their hands doing their business, cleaned an infant or were about to prepare and eat food.  While the families were encouraged to use the soap daily, researchers found that during this time diarrhea among children fell 52 percent, pneumonia in children dropped 48 percent and bacterial skin infections dropped 35 percent. In the end the results spoke for themselves. Although some received soap without an antibacterial agent, the significance of that the soap provided was a major behavior change in the people of Karachi. As a result, researchers provided  Karachi villagers with the necessary information on how and when to use the soap. Luby’s deviant behavior led researchers to use the same methodology in places like Bangladesh and various countries in South Asia. For most Americans, soap is just another overlooked luxury that we take for granted. The solution had been there all along, it just took a deviant to point out the obvious solution. 

 A Checklist that saved a life

 
Throughout the text Gawande provides some of the most compelling arguments for using a checklist in any profession. He uses a number of examples where checklists have saved hundreds of lives during commercial flight crash or just one life during a routine surgical procedure. Although Gawande became well known as an acclaimed author of a New York Times Bestseller, he is best known as a general and endocrine surgeon at The Women’s Hospital in Boston and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.  In the spring of 2007, Dr. Gawande decided to put these surgical checklist to use in his own operating rooms. A patient he had that spring was a fifty-three year old male who came in to have one of his adrenal glands removed because it had an unusual tumor growing inside. The adrenal glands are endocrine glands that sit on top of the kidneys. Tumors, like this patient’s, can be difficult to remove, but generally removed without complications. However, there was a slight but small possibility that if the main vessel that returns blood to the heart, the vena cava was torn during surgery, the consequences could be deadly. Feeling confident enough Dr. Gawande conducted the surgery laparoscopically. Much to his dismay, as he was about to remove the tumor completely, he made small tear in the vena cava.  As a result, the patient lost way too much blood in short time that sent him into a cardiac arrest. Before starting the surgery, Dr. Gawande and his surgical staff reviewed their surgery checklist, that included having four extra units of blood on hand in case of an emergency.  During the mayhem, all members of the surgical staff remained calm and level headed, followed the proper procedures and were able to resuscitate the patient. However, while the patient’s pressure had dropped so low for a short period of time, it damaged his left optic nerve, leaving him blind in one eye. Although Dr. Gawande’s patient survived the near fatal experience, Dr. Gawande was grateful for having his checklist. This particular experience served as a lesson learned that although things may never go according to plan, we can take the necessary steps to avert complete disaster and in order to avert disasters, use a checklist to jog your memory.