1. Figure 1 – Map of Trinidad and Tobago (p.10) 2. Figure 2 – Positioning the Research – A Conceptual Framework (p.30) 3. Figure 3 - Line by Line Coding (pp. 71, 72) 4. Figure 4 - GTM analysis and coding – a representation (p. 73) xii LIST OF TABLES
After the pilot study was completed, I began to collect data from the schools which I had contacted and where the discussions would be held. The individual semi-structured interviews were held at different locations – at the school, at my office or at the offices of the various expert participants who were part of the research. I will now examine the research method of the Interview in some detail. 3.4.1. The Interview Kvale (2008) likens the qualitative interview to a ‘wandering together’ with the interviewee. He sees the interviewer ‘as a travelling companion of the interviewee, trying to elicit his/her stories of the lived world’ (p.4). He goes on to state that ‘if we genuinely want to hear, to understand an individual we must provide a way for him/her to speak in a genuine voice’ (p.7). To elicit this ‘genuine voice’. I conducted one-on-one meetings (at my office in TT and at my sister’s home in NYC) with students who were not part of the FGDs and who were able to give their personal views about how parental death affected them. These participants were asked the same questions as were asked of the participants in the focus group discussions. I chose to include individual interviews as I wanted to hear the adolescent’s voice, in a private space apart from other voices, for two reasons. Firstly, to compare the narratives with the adolescents in the focus groups and secondly, to determine if the adolescent’s viewpoints were similar, in a setting (my office) where he/she was not ‘influenced’ by other voices. In my research, as the FGD progressed, I thought it necessary to also include ‘key informants’ in the process (family and sibling interviews). These interviews were included to give more clarity to the analysis in light of the research questions that were asked, and the narratives as told by the students. Denscombe (2007) suggests that group interviews such as these, can be added to the research process, as a broader spectrum of persons are covered by
THEME 1. – FAMILY CONFLICT Sub-theme: Dysfunctional Coping Styles Formal Theory – Power Differentials Theory THEME 1. – PENALIZATION OF REACTIVE BEHAVIOURS DURING BEREAVEMENT Sub-theme: The suppression of adolescent male grief – impact of gender socialization Sub-theme: The patriarchal culture of the school influences penalization THEME 2. – ADOLESCENTS AS ‘CAREGIVERS’ Sub-theme: Impact on academic performances Sub-theme: School drop-outs THEME 2. – DEVALUING THE GRIEF RESPONSE Sub-theme: Perceived lack of empathy by teachers and parents Sub-theme: Use of ‘shock’ therapy as a deterrent THEME 3. – SURVIVOR’S GUILT Sub-theme:Perception of missed opportunities THEME 3. – SEVERING OF THE ATTACHMENT BOND BEFORE THE DEATH Sub-theme: The ‘stigma’ of loss Sub-theme: The shame of a parent’s death THEME 4. – INFLUENCE OF RELIGION THEME 4. – THE ADOLESCENT PEER GROUP AS SUPPORT Sub-theme: Fostering a ‘culture of care’ 4.2.1. EMERGENT THEMES
coping skills to do so, that is, their Resilience Trajectory: Whose perspectives (the cognitive capacity to consider the world from another individual’s viewpoint), did they adopt? What were the various influences in their social contexts? 4.3.1. THE RESILIENCE TRAJECTORY Adolescents in a Resilience Trajectory - frames of reference which influence their thoughts (see Appendix 11) have intense feelings of sadness after a death has occurred, but fairly quick resiliency – ‘the demonstration of social competence or success at meeting any particular tasks at a specific life stage’ (Luthar, Cicchetti and Becker, 2000, p. 110) - and low symptoms of grief. They find happiness and solace when thinking about or talking about the person who died (Balk, 2014). The following are some examples of questions that were asked in the follow-up FGDs that were conducted, to determine the adolescent’s resilience or lack thereof. The motivation for the question formulation was derived from the many theorists who write that resilient adolescents are those who have developed productive strategies to cope with their difficulties. Q2 – Tell me how your family has been coping with these experiences? Q3 – Is there anything that you remember, about what your (deceased) parent may have said about coping with painful experiences? Q5 – Do you think that you are in control of situations in your life at present? Q11 – Who supported you the MOST during this time? Is there any one person you can identify who was there for you? What qualities did this person have? Q12 – Can you describe your ability to solve problems or to cope with difficult situations? From the analysis of the data, the conclusions made are that resilient adolescents are able to respond positively in the face of challenging odds (Balk, 2014); are resourceful and flexible (Bandura, 1986); and when adolescents observe adults coping in a positive way, they are more likely to choose the same kind of response for themselves (Cobb, 2010).
Chapter 5 - Discussion 5.1. Introduction This chapter is divided into four sections. In Section One, I will present the research questions and discuss the main findings of the study against the backdrop of the substantive and formal theories that were generated. Section Two links the main findings to the current literature in an attempt to identify similarities and/or differences in the research. Section Three discusses the implications of my findings from the data and in Section Four, I state how my research is differentiated from other research done on adolescent bereavement. The chapter continues with a personal reflection on the process and ends with concluding thoughts. 5.2. The main findings – Section One In this section, the main findings will be summarized and linked to the research question which comprised of two parts. Each part will be discussed separately and in some detail. 5.2.1. The MAIN Findings The main findings in the study were put into two categories: The emergent themes and the researched themes. The emergent findings which are culture specific to TT are the invalidation and devaluing of the grief responses; the penalization of grief behaviours and the severing of the attachment bond between the adolescent and the parent while the parent is dying. The sub-themes of these emergent findings explore the impact of gender socialization, the peer group as support and the shame of a parent’s death. The researched themes which are cited in western literatures are concepts such as family conflict;
the context of wider institutional structures, such as the school. Their awkward social position is perhaps not in their favour, as they are perceived as no longer children to be treated with kids’ gloves, yet ‘old enough to take increasing responsibility for the management of their own emotions’ (p.143). In the study, power relationships were evident in the dynamics between teachers and students and parents and their children. These ‘negative’ power relationships as were noted from the data, need to be acknowledged by educators and converted into a powerful and essential source for healing for grieving students. 5.3.2. The Patriarchy of the schools Much literature is written on the benefits of schools (Rowling, 2003; Servaty-Seib, 2006), but no literature has examined the perceptions of students of the top-down, punitive relationships that may continue to exist in these institutions. Research on adolescents who continue to thrive despite traumatic events, has identified that the dependability and availability of the school are important elements in maintaining and strengthening young people’s well-being (Benard, 1991). These are schools which create an environment where children feel comfortable coming forward when they are having personal problems that are impacting their day-to-day functioning (Schonfeld and Quackenbush, 2010). Freire’s (1970) ‘banking concept of addresses an oppressive, patriarchal structure when he posits that ‘knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable, upon those whom they consider to know nothing’ (n.p.). In the present study, the teachers treated the grieved adolescents as marginal persons who deviated from the general configuration of a ‘good, organized, and just’ school and their actions instilled in the bereaved children and teenagers, a ‘negative, silenced and suppressed self-image’ (n.p.). Schools need to serve as a protective buffer for children against the adverse effects of stress and ‘more than any other way, [they can] build resiliency in students through creating an environment of caring, personal relationships’ (Henderson and Milstein, 2003, p. 17). These viewpoints support the ‘collective efficacy’ model of schools, as spaces where educators and teachers are positive role models and facilitators of care, empathy and good
became clearer to me that when Western psychologists attempt to generalize Caribbean ways of behaving and seeing, they become colonizers once again (Arneaud and Albada , 2013) as they purport to tell ‘our’ story from their own lens; to understand ‘our’ children from the sidewalks of their own differences and customs and rituals. From the responses in both the pilot study and the focus group discussions, there was the recognition of the students’ more personal language, that of creole or kweyol that weaved through the discussions as they sought to construct their stories. I pause to consider this recognition here, not because of their shifts only, but essentially due to my own ‘shifts’ that were occurring. Why did these shifts take place? 2. The Moko Jumbie emerges The ‘Moko Jumbie’ is a Carnival character on stilts (aloof from the real concerns of others, masking his true self and top-down in his regard of persons). I found that in my earlier transcriptions of the data, I had begun to isolate the students’ language with quotation marks; in a sense, to be a ‘moko-jumbie’ to what they represented. As I translated, I had to be constantly aware that even though I was a multicultural subject also, influenced by history and research traditions, that I was not conducting my research in a way that reflected a legacy of language supremacy or allowing myself to slip into Eisner’s ‘pit of solipsism’! I had to reflect on the imbalances that were temporarily created in my mind, and I welcomed the opportunity to refocus my gaze through the lenses of the language of these Caribbean adolescents. As I sought to understand the experiences of the students through their stories, I again wondered how ‘language’ was appropriated by these adolescents. As the researcher, in my interactions with the adolescents, I used the ‘standard’ English language. Did I come across to them as the ‘intelligent’ researcher or should I be the ‘grounded’ researcher, speaking the creolized English that the students used? Was this perception important to them, I wondered. What could be the ‘power differentials’ here, the disparity of power between the researcher and the researched (Fisher and Rosendahl, 1990) even in the language that I used. Are
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Joanne, Guidance Counsellor (Trinidad): I knew Joanne for more than14 years, and had worked alongside her on several Projects in schools that were termed ‘high risk’. I knew of her expertise and her interactions with many groups of children, especially teenagers. She readily said that she did her own research and essentially ‘did my own thing with the children’, as grief counselling was not a topic of concern to those in Administration. Joanne had developed a Grief Counselling Intervention with strategies for bereavement recovery, based on her experiences over the years. APPENDIX 6: The Pilot Study Please note: (The original Pilot study was to be conducted with a group of fifteen participants, aged 14 – 20 years old who were part of a workshop conducted by an NGO which had given permission for the youngsters to be interviewed. These adolescents were selected from amongst 75 students and who fell within the parameters as described in the Information List. The workshop ended in August, 2014. Consent was given by Sheffield to carry out research in October, 2014, so that this group was no longer available for study). Participants – The Pilot study was conducted with a group of first year university students (18 – 22) years of age, the period of late adolescence (Balk, 2014). N = 8. These students were recruited to give their views on the questions that I had posed in the Grief questionnaire, and to determine whether any adjustments to the questionnaire had to be made based on their responses and questions. Location – A local University. Measures – An Audio Recorder was used to tape the discussion for analysis and transcription. Oral consent was obtained from the participants to conduct the interview, and to tape their voices. Results - Based on their responses, the following occurred: 1. Additional questions were included into the original questionnaire (please see Appendix). These questions related to: The moments shared with the child and the dying parent just before death occurred Family support Family conflict Different types of grief
AUDIO TRANSCRIPTIONS MY NOTES R: How did Daddy take the death of your Mom? Cin: He bang up the wall and shout …. Ch: When Mummy was alive, he used to be just there. So now he now trying ways to talk to them. He now want to play like he coming back, but that don’t work for us. (All the sisters agree in unison). Car. have a way of talking to him, and he don’t like that so he is come down very hard on her. He just……..confused. Ch: I understand where he is come from. But………He want to push his way on us and he expect it to be like that. He does not believe that children have stress. She has a lot of stress. (Car.). He like to make you feel sorry for him. He is not sympathetic to their cause (her siblings) which is get me mad. R: Car., how do you cope with it, when Daddy comes down on you? Car.: Music. I play it all the time. But I accustomed to it…. R: Do any of you feel as if there is anything that is unresolved about the death? Anything that is incomplete about the death? Adult grief (Wass, 2010) Resentment towards surviving parent Inability to cope of male surviving parent Unresolved grief Coping mechanism of teenager - Music
woman 5 little children and then take her away. I cyah understand that! And people in church like bacchanal, so I is just stay home. R: Has this affected your relationship with God? J.A: Kinda. I does pray, I does cry. I does pray, I does cry. And like the more I pray, the worse things get. I feel God too busy. It have World war going on in some countries. I just here with my ‘lil problem and I try not to make it into a big problem. Is He trying to show me something? I don’t know……… R: Any thoughts here, St.V.? St.V: Sometimes I get vex with God, ‘cause I miss my mother the most, and I just stop praying. My Muslim brother is tell me not to think so. N. Ki: What St.V. said, that is happen to me too. I miss him a lot (her father) and I question Him….and I question myself as to why it happen now, just so….. Car.: I does say that I do something wrong for this to happen. Like is my fault (very tearful) that my friend die. R: What about you, Cin? (Cin. shakes her head). Ch.R: I believe that everything happens for a reason. She out of her pain. She not in pain anymore. I think everything happens for a reason. Che.R: When I in my grieving moments, I question God. Why he take my mummy? And then you get the feeling that she is sometimes there. You can’t see her, in sight or in flesh but you get the feeling that she is still there. I feel her in Male expression of grief Gender socialization Loss of faith Music as a medium for grief release Rationalization; existential belief Loss of faith Loss of faith; Unresolved grief
school, at home, everywhere I go. I don’t feel as if she gone….. R: Do you believe that people who die, are with you? J.A: Well, my Mom was cremated and we never see the ashes so I feel like some day she will just show up! (Stephen’s body language signals to me that he may be ready to engage with the group) The response of the teenager before could have triggered this……. Questioning – existential beliefs Loss of trust Existential beliefs bonds to the dead as part of coping APPENDIX 9 – Table 3. Focus Groups and Participants STUDY ONE FGD based on AGE/School Participants Females Males HFC (14 – 18) Malabar (13 – 20) HCC (15 – 16) Arima ( 14 – 16) St. Augustine ( 13 – 20) N = 3 N = 7 N = 3 N = 3 N = 4 3 6 0 1 4 0 1 3 2 0
Subtotal STUDY TWO Individual Interviews TOTAL no. of adolescents interviewed N = 4 N = 24 14 3 17 6 1 (NYC) 7 STUDY THREE Sibling interview (7 – 12) Family Interviews TOTAL STUDY FOUR Expert Interviews N = 5 N = 2 Anthropologist (TT) Guidance Counsellors Thanatologist (NYC) 3 1 (TT) 2 2 1 (NYC) Male Female Male Appendix 10 – Table 4 - The Social Constructs of Family, School & Community – examining the ‘power codes’ FAMILY SCHOOL Community/CHURCH Penalization of Reactive behaviours. Power Code – ‘I will carry you to the Police if you don’t stop de crying’; ‘you want me to cuff you down! Why you looking so?’ Penalization of Reactive behaviours Power Code – ‘you will get suspended if you continue your behaviour!’ Stigma of loss through death Power Code – ‘dey looking at we as if something wrong with we’