Conducting my Literature Review in this early stage of my research project has become very important in the development of an array of African Centered Intergenerational concepts and methods programme implementations. This has been a very rewarding humbling experience for me. Why? I discovered that African Centered Intergenerational programs have been thought of before, at least to some degree. The social sciences have advanced by an interactive process among theory, research, and practice in which each of the elements is influenced by the others. In the intergenerational field, however, there has been no strong theoretical base to complete this knowledge-generating triangle. It is important to ensure that intergenerational programs are designed from a strong knowledge base {Kettner, Moroney, & Martin, 1990}http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Managing-Programs-Effectiv
I discovered in my Literature Review a Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University 2009, entitled CHANGING NARRATIVES, CHANGING DESTINY, MYTH RITUAL AND AFROCENTRIC IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION AT THE NATIONAL RITES OF PASSAGE INSTITUTE. The National Rites of Passage Institute evolved from the West End Neighborhood, a Cleveland community center founded in 1907 that provides childcare, senior care, foster care, and other social services for an economically challenged neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. Paul Hill, Jr. joined East End in 1981 and launched his first rites of passage program in 1984 for his own children, {Hill is the father of seven.} In 1987 he co-hosted the first annual Rites of Passage National Conference, and in 1989, Hill received a W. K. Kellogg Leadership Fellowship that allowed him to travel in Africa, South America, New Zealand and Australia to study rites of passage practices on indigenous cultures in those regions. These events culminated in the official establishment of NROPI in 1993.http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=rs_theses.
The National Rites of Passage Institute Website: http://www.ritesofpassage.org/welcome/
What I discovered in my Literature Review on The National Rites of Passage Institute Website is a paper prepared for the Heinz Endowments, July 2009 of Cultural Responsiveness, Racial Identity, and Academic Success: A Review of Literature{PDF} listings of programs that will enable me to research how they link racial identity, resilience and achievement that may be relevant program constructs that I can include in my Intergenerational research projects and I can learn what is working “on the ground”. Here is my example. In my Literature Review of programs that are cultural responsibilities to racial identity and academic success there are six schools with programs listed on pages 72-76. The Social Justice High School has projects that have included proportional reasoning to understand issues of race and class in the Katrina disaster. Other projects included racial profiling and the criminalization of youth of color, a project specifically about the Jena Six, a group of Black youth in Jena, La, who many civil rights activists believe received excessive and racially motivated charges in the beating of a white teen. After two years of similar projects, students have normalized the use of mathematics to read the world.http://sj.lvlhs.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=94841&type=d
Yes my Literature Review has been designed to help me get a quick start on my own to identify related African Centered Intergenerational programs research that is setting my current research project within a conceptual and theoretical context. Well look at it this way, there is almost no topic that is so new or unique that you and I can’t locate relevant and informative related research. I am likely to learn a lot in my Literature Review that will help me in making the tradeoffs I will need to face. After all, previous African Centered Intergenerational Programme Researchers also had to face tradeoff decisions.
