Social capital, institutional agency, minority or low-status youth empowerment, and AVID implementation

UnrestrictedThis study isolated the salience of institutional agency within the context of a specific intervention program called, Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID), an untracking program designed to help low achieving students elicit academic success.; Four primary research questions guided the study. First, to the degree those efforts to engage in social capital mobilization are made, how might the program coordinator's accessible social capital play a prominent role? Second, to what extent are AVID program coordinators able to mobilize their social capital to convey information, resources, and opportunities to minority and low-status youth in the context of program implementation? Third, what factors facilitate or constrain the accumulation of accessible social capital and agency-oriented mobilization of social capital (on behalf of program participants and/or program implementation)? Finally, to what extent does AVID training identify the underpinning theoretical concepts and processes of social capital theory; thus do AVID program coordinators understand their role relative to the help-seeking and network-seeking orientations of institutional agency?; This study incorporated both inductive and deductive methodologies within the qualitative research design to accomplish in-depth cross-case analysis of the range, quality, and nature of program coordinators' individual networks and sources of support. Furthermore, this methodology also determined their proclivity to excess their individual networks and sources of support to convey essential resources, information, and opportunities to minority or low-status youth; thus facilitating their academic and social mobility, and, hence, fostering their empowerment.; The study revealed insight and answers as it relates to the primary research questions, and articulated the findings into (3) thematic summaries and discussion. First, the study revealed that program coordinators have critical deficiencies in their personal networks relative to the status of their positional contacts. Second, it revealed that program coordinators are not engaged in active (institutional) agency as counterstratification mechanism. Finally, the study revealed that AVID training does not explicitly address agency as an intervention design relative to the resources model of social capital