Undergraduate Honors Thesis

 

Communicative Social Justice Training for Resident Advisors: RA’s Experiences and Uses of Training Public Deposited

https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/cr56n152g
Abstract
  • Resident advisors seek to foster an environment where residents feel safe and included in their residence hall community. Training has become increasingly crucial as the resident advisor role becomes more complex and ambiguous. Not all training is effective and it is important to help resident advisors move from “knowing” what to do to successfully enacting their knowledge in daily interactions. This study examined how resident advisors enact training on social justice topics in conversations with residents on inappropriate behavior, particularly inappropriate behavior that could make others, such as under-represented students, feel offended or excluded. Twelve interviews with both new and mentor resident advisors at a large southwestern university were conducted in order to better understand how resident advisors make sense of their role, experience training, and how they use their training in difficult interactions with residents. Three main themes were identified in analysis: sense making about the RA position is influenced by a relational understanding of the role; training is necessary for the role but also very hard to put into practice; and resident advisors feel that enacting the training is much harder than expected. One particularly interesting finding was that RAs say conversations on inappropriate behavior rarely occur because their floor or residents are unique, positioning their experience as different than others. These findings highlight the challenge for resident advisors to enact their training in conversations when attempting to maintain relationships with their residents.
Creator
Date Awarded
  • 2016-01-01
Academic Affiliation
Advisor
Committee Member
Granting Institution
Subject
Last Modified
  • 2019-12-02
Resource Type
Rights Statement
Language

Relationships

In Collection:

Items