Educating Others: A Vocation Promoting Meaning and Purpose
Educating Others: A Vocation Promoting Meaning and Purpose
Project Summary
True North is a web application and curriculum that helps prospective and current college students navigate transitions in college, career, and life. Originally a transformative, in-person curriculum, the contents of True North have been adapted into a web app with bite-sized, in-app activities and journaling prompts meant to connect students to mentors and formative experiences.
Approach
We have partnered with the department of Measurement, Statistics, Assessment and Evaluation by using their newly developed scale: the BC-LAMP. In comparing UCTC members’ results to the original participants utilized in the scale development, we were ablt to understand the trends within members’ meaningfulness, goal-orientation and beyond-the-self. By doing this, we are contributing to the BC-LAMP goal for this scale to help institutions understand their students’ developing purposeful lives and the analyses of the data has helped us to identify how our members vary on several key constructs that may contribute to their choice of careers/vocation, commitment to their teaching career, and overall goals in life.
Measurement & Metrics
We engage in mixed methods to understand teachers' purpose and meaning in life. The Living a Life of Meaning and Purpose Scale (Ludlow et al., 2020) measures teachers’ meaningfulness, goal orientation, and beyond-the-self. In addition to measuring meaning and purpose, we measure compassion, moral development, moral agency, and religiosity. To complement these quantitative findings, teachers participate in the Youth Purpose Interview (Malin, Reilly, Yeager, Moran, Andrews, Bundick & Damon, 2008) which helps identify what is important to young adults, specific personal goals, and their potential plans to achieve those goals.
Project Timeline
2019–Present
Affiliations
Urban Catholic Teacher Corps
Department of Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics and Assessment
Key Findings
- UCTC educators have high levels of purpose, moral agency, compassion, and religiosity.
- UCTC educators’ responses were grounded in strong purpose and meaning, which organized actions toward goals.
- UCTC educators identified family, education in service of vocation, friends, faith, health, and social justice as the most significant factors in their lives.
- Religiosity is positively associated with purpose, particularly goal orientation.
- Moral agency is strongly associated with goal orientation.
- The majority of participants had goals that met the "Beyond-the-Self" purpose, meaning they wanted to serve others.
Publications
Principal Investigators
Charle Cownie
UCTC Director
Director of Catholic Teacher Formation
Co-Director of Jesuit Education in a Global World MEd
Audrey Friedman
UCTC Academic and Research Coordinator
Associate Professor (Retired) of Teaching, Curriculum, and Society
Ella Anghel
Doctoral Candidate
Henry Braun
Boisi Professor of Education and Public Policy and Education Research
Director, CSTEEP
Larry Ludlow
Professor
Chair, Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics & Assessment
Kierstin Giunco
ELA Teacher, Mission Grammar School
Myra Rosen-Reynoso
UCTC Research Director
Cristina Hunter
UCTC Assistant Director
Notes
Our work is based on Braun and Ludlow's work: Ludlow, L., Anghel, E., Szendey, O., O’Keefe, T., Howell, B., Matz-Costa, C., & Braun, H. (2020). The Boston College Living a Life of Meaning and Purpose (BC-LAMP) Portfolio: An Application of Rasch/Guttman Scenario Methodology. Journal of Applied Measurement, 21(2), 134-153.