Ms. Adventure Girls: A Critical Feminist Pedagogical Empowerment Program for
Pre-adolescent
Girls
and
Mentors.
IRB number:
Elsa Kraus and Shantee Scheel, and Faculty Deb Pattee
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
patteedk662011
Discussion
Background
Pre-adolescent Participants
The Ms. Adventure Girls Spring 2012 program included 14-19
active, female participants in sixth, seventh, and eighth
grade. Because the program is voluntary, the number of
participants for each meeting fluctuated. Out of nineteen
middle school girls, 15.7% were African-American, 10.5% were
Asian, and 73.7% were European-American.
University Mentors
There were 14 active, female university mentors. Thirteen
mentors regularly attended the weekly club meetings. Even
though attendance was voluntary, many mentors chose to
attend. There were four phases to the mentoring program:
1. All the mentors and researchers met three times to finalize
the spring curriculum.
2. Collaborative teaching of the lesson plans occurred during
the eight weeks.
3. Collaborative analysis the participants’ reflections occurred
at the end of the program.
4. A focus group was conducted at the end of the program.
Weekly Meeting Outline
Circle of Power and Respect: allowed girls to use their voice
to discuss the issues most central to them
Fitness Tip: led by a university mentor to promote social,
emotional, and physical wellness in the classroom setting
Topic of the Day: presented by a university mentor relating
to one of the four themes of the program
Reflections on Focused Question: reflections focused on the
theme of the day, written by the pre-adolescent participants,
to emphasize a transfer of training—applying learned material
to real life situations
Meeting with University Mentor: time was allocated outside
of club meeting for one-on-one connections between mentor
and mentee; mentor also transcribed another reflection
Research Design
Harter Self-Esteem Test Pre- and post tests : were given to
the pre-adolescent participants to examine six subscales of selfesteem: social, behavioral, athletic, physical, academic, and
global (Stewart et al., 2010).
Collaborative analysis: university mentors rated eight weeks’
worth of reflections on a five-point Likert scale rubric created
by the researchers to assess the transfer of training the
participants experienced each week. Mentors scored four to
six participants’ anonymous reflections by theme. Researchers
averaged the mentors’ scores given to each participant to
create inter-rater reliability, producing a transfer of training
score for each participant on the four themes.
Focus groups: To assess the impact of the feminist
pedagogical framework on the university mentors’ and the
program experience for the pre-adolescent participants, the
researchers conducted two focus groups at the end of the
program. Voice recordings of the focus groups were
transcribed by researchers and analyzed according to theme.
Transfer of Training for the Theme of
Leadership
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Number of Participants
Number of Participants
Transfer of Training for the Theme of
Wellness
50%
29%
3.5
3.4
3.4
1.5
1.35
1.2
2.97
2.95
2.65
2.4
3.4
3.3
3.2
3.1
1-Not at All
2-Not Very
3-Neutral
21%
4-Some-what
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
29%
1.73
3.9
3.85
3.35
3.3
21%
1-Not at All
2-Not Very
3-Neutral
4-Some-what
7%
4.15
4.1
4.1
5-Extremly
1.97
1.3
2-Not Very
3.5
3.45
3.39
3.25
4.32
4.15
4.1
4.0
3-Neutral
4-Some-what
5-Extremly
• “Leadership is being a leader under conflict. You can be a leader by being nice to others and
instructing others and leading by examples and in many other ways.”
• “To be a leader, you have to be a follower, and to be a follower, you have to know what’s
right and wrong.”
• “I have been a leader for when we went to the presentation of the Kony Invisible Children
thing. I got a group together to do ‘Cover the Night’, April 20th.”
Transfer of Training for the Theme of
Teaming
Transfer of Training for the Theme of SelfEsteem
2.95
2.85
2.79
2.65
2.2
15%
31%
Focus Group Quotes with the Pre-adolescent Participants
• “Adventures Girls has helped me in the area of wellness by before I eat something it makes
me look twice and think about what’s in it and what it could do, and it also gave me a lot of
activities I could do like fitness wise.”
• “I now read my food labels even more, so I can make healthy food choices.”
• “For wellness, I ride my bike and I think it’s fun, and didn’t even realize it was exercise.”
• “I learned that exercise can be fun, it’s not always hard work and now I go for more walks at
home than I used to.”
36%
3.8
3.77
3.52
Transfer of Training Scale
Transfer of Training Scale
Focus Group Quotes with the Pre-adolescent Participants
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
54%
1-Not at All
5-Extremly
Number of Participants
Methods
Discussion
Results: Transfer of Training Analysis
Number of Participants
A mutualistic approach of combining qualitative and
quantitative research methodologies works to promote
efforts of embracing women’s lives and their individual
stories by being reflexive, interactive, and non-hierarchical,
diverging from traditional methods of research (King, 1994;
Lather, 1991; Fonow & Cook, 1991). Our goal for this research
is to move towards changing the detrimental systematic
impacts experienced by all of the participants making praxis
a reality.
Children who are under-resourced, in a lowersocioeconomic status and experiencing challenges that are
an effect of living in poverty, comprise 22% of children
(younger than 18) living in the bottom quartile of the United
States ("Effects of poverty," 2012). The United States
population of children in poverty is growing, from 15.5 million
children in 2009, to 16.4 million children in 2010 ("Effects of
poverty," 2012). According to the American Psychological
Association, the effects of children living in poverty are
devastating—contributing to lower achievements in
education, particularly affecting African-American and
Latino/a children (Effects of poverty," 2012). Children in this
position are more likely to struggle with behavioral and
emotional problems, experience a higher level of unhealthy
living conditions, and have less access to healthy foods
("Effects of poverty," 2012; Jyoti, 2005; Kaiser, 2003; O’Dea
and Maloney, 2000).
The empowerment of youth through intervention,
prevention, and youth development programs (YDP’s) are
growing trends in the past decade to disrupt negative
tendencies in education, personal and social development
of students in under-resourced positions (Cullen et al., 1999;
Wechsler et al., 2000, Rhodes, 2002). YDP’s provide
opportunities and support to help youth gain the skills and
knowledge they need to meet the increasing challenges the
future holds (Roth, 1998). Many YDP’s specifically address
gendered issues in the areas of developmental, emotional,
and social behaviors through fitness education, media
literacy, and self-esteem programs (Warner et al., 2009;
DeBate , 2009).
The Ms. Adventure Girls program focuses on four themes,
teaming, wellness, self-esteem, and leadership, in hopes to
reduce the issues associated with youth being underresourced at Delong Middle School. Delong Middle School
has a high rate of free and reduced lunch and is
demographically the most diverse middle school population
in the Eau Claire School district with 25% students of color,
and 48% of the students are on free and reduced lunch
(Evers, 2012).
Goals
• The goal of the pre-adolescent participant component
was to show a transfer of training in the areas of wellness,
self-esteem, leadership, and teaming.
• The goal of the mentor component of this participatory
research was to equalize and elevate the mentors to
become effective and experienced in the feminist
pedagogical tenants of collaboration, interaction,
egalitarianism, and empowerment (Campbell, 2003;
Fonow & Cook, 1991).
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
36%
36%
1.85
2.8
2.8
2.7
2.7
2.7
3.9
3.7
3.6
3.1
3.05
1-Not at All
2-Not Very
3-Neutral
7%
21%
4.4
4.3
4.3
4-Some-what
5-Extremly
Transfer of Training Scale
Transfer of Training Scale
Focus Group Quotes with the Pre-adolescent Participants
• “Self-esteem is when you feel good about yourself and what you do. An example of this is
when I did solo ensemble and I used the goal setting skill to work towards my goal and when I
was done I was confident and felt I can do anything.”
• “Self-esteem helped me when I stuck up for myself at camp.”
• “Um, one way to have self-esteem is to think that you are beautiful in your own ways. An
example is that my sister, she would have fake friends, and would call her ugly and she
needed more things and she said to herself in her head that she was beautiful in her own ways
and, um, she didn’t listen to her friends and she ignored them.”
Focus Group Quotes with the Pre-adolescent Participants
• “For teaming, ‘Never Give Up’. Everything is easier when you work together.”
• “I learned how to make friends, because I did not know how to do that before, and I learned
how to work together with others.”
• We were all cooking and different jobs. It ended with us making a full meal.”
• “Teaming is working together and joining as a group and being not as one individual as
yourself, but working together.”
• “Voting for activities and we all agreed on things to do and on the scavenger hunt we all
worked together.”
University Mentor Focus Group Analysis by Theme
Personal Development - 8 out of 10 Mentors


“It [Ms. Adventure Girls] keeps me accountable and I know I mean
something to her…”
“[It] is really gratifying to…learn how to be a support system for them.”
Mentor-Mentee Relationship - 9 out of 10 Mentors
“It is that one-on-one I thing I think that makes it really a stronger bond
with them the people you’re working with.”
 “you may be the only one they can count on and so it’s always just a
struggle but it’s been a realization that no matter how hard it gets like I
need to still be there for her.”
Egalitarian - 9 out of 10 Mentors



Empowerment – 8 out of 10 Mentors
“[It] is really empowering for me to see that they trust me and they [the
mentees]want to share this information and it also really invests me that
much further into this program because I see that these are girls that
really need us.”
 “I plan on going to graduate school for clinical psychology and hopefully
working with the adolescent population, and I’ve learned through this
program that this is population that I feel really needs me, and I feel I can
make an impact with.”
 “ [Because my mentee] she does not get a lot of attention from her
parents, that really solidifies the idea that I want to go into family and
marriage therapy and be able to help girls like her family, function
better.”

“Being able to have that connection with middle schoolers, it’s interesting to
figure out where, to look at where they are, and reflect back where I came
from, to not compare, but o have a better understanding of things.”
“even though we have come from very different families, we have a lot more
in common than you would think, or than I would have thought, which is nice
too.”
Interactive - 9 out of 10 Mentors

“Getting someone to do self defense or getting someone to do cooking we
actually followed through with it which I was really impressed on almost every
activity if not every activity that we said we said we wanted to do at the
bringing and that was really nice.”
 “The camping trip that we do is one of my favorite parts of the whole
experience ‘cause you just its so real you get to know the girls in every level.”
Empowerment – 8 out of 10 Mentors
“It was really cool to know that I was leading it but I had all these other
people facilitate this conversation.”
 “I had issues … for my mentee, and it was nice I was able to like open up a
email through everyone and ask everyone’s input and it was nice to get
different viewpoints on how it could go about um getting the point across [to
the mentee].”
 “It was kind of nice too to be able to lean on the support of other mentors.”

Overall, the pre-adolescent scores from the collaborative
analysis were lower than expected. However, the scores are
trending to the higher end of the scale. Six possible variables
could have contributed to the results. 1) The process and
experience of the collaborative analysis was a new addition to
the program, so the researchers and mentors had little prior
experience. 2) During the transcription process at the one-on-one
meetings, mentors unintentionally chose what to transcribe,
creating a selection bias. Voice recordings may be necessary to
avoid this bias in the future. 3) The writing ability of the preadolescent participants may have limited the content of
perceived knowledge during the club meetings. In the future,
voice recordings could be made during all interactions between
the university mentors and the pre-adolescent participants,
including the club meeting. 4) Inconsistent participation in the
club meetings could have contributed to the lower reported
level of transfer of training. 5) University mentors did not have
enough training to teach focused lesson plans on the four
themes affecting the level of transfer of training displayed by the
pre-adolescent participants. Mentors varied in experience,
therefore, they were not equipped with the knowledge of
focused lesson planning. In the future, extensive orientation and
training should be mandatory for university mentors to increase
mentoring ability and teaching skills. 6) The rubric formatting
could be edited by combining items four and five to make the
grading more consist across mentors. This error could have
potentially lowered the reported level of transfer of training.
Analyzing the participants’ transfer of training by grade also did
not display a difference in the level of transfer of training.
The Harter Self-Esteem Test displayed non-significant results.
Two of the six self esteem subscales, physical and behavioral selfesteem, were approaching significance (t(10)=-2.065 p>0.066;
t(10)=2.092 p>0.063). Inconclusive results may be due to the small
sample size. To achieve statistically significant results on the Harter
Self-esteem Test, becoming more focused on the six self-esteem
subscales during the club meetings is necessary as well as an
increasing the sample size.
The focus group with the pre-adolescent participants
indicated favorable discussion and awareness on the themes
connecting to their lives outside of the club meetings. However,
the responses were not consistent with the transfer of training
analysis conducted by the university mentors. Both focus groups
concluded that the mentor-mentee bond was impactful to their
lives. Many pre-adolescent participants reported that the
mentoring component benefited their lives in many ways. An
example of this is a participant concluding that, “Ever since I
have been meeting with my buddy, she has been encouraging
me to get it done [math homework] and my grade has gone
from an ‘F’ to a ‘B’.” Overall ,the pre-adolescent participants
believed that the Ms. Adventure girls program taught them many
skills and one participant felt that, “It makes you a better person
and makes you realize things.” An general goal for the program is
to create a safe and inclusive space for all members. One
participant reported that, “It’s like almost a family.” Both focus
groups concluded that the mentor-mentee bond was significant
and impactful to their lives.
The university mentor focus group displayed that it is difficult to
diverge from the hierarchical structure. The freedom that feminist
pedagogy permits in its very nature is non-traditional, therefore,
overwhelming. Even though the mentors experienced
dissonance, they were able to collaborate and interact with one
another and the researchers, and engage in an egalitarian
community, feeling more empowered at the end of the program.
Future research on the feminist pedagogical structure should to
be implemented in YDP’s.
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Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Office of
Research and Sponsored Programs for funding the faculty /student
collaborative project. Special thanks also to all of the University
mentors who participated in the collaborative analysis and the
focus group. Our gratitude also goes to Deb Pattee, for supporting
and guiding this project throughout the year.