Advisor feedback

Here are the primary takeaways and suggestions made by the committee.

1. Narrow your questions down, especially the secondary questions and objectives of the study. Some of the objectives that you establish here can be addressed as possible objectives of future studies.

2. Describe the students in your sample and how you chose them. What factors contributed to their selection? Joe suggests that what you have here is not a randomized sample but rather a theoretical sample--a sample that allows you to begin thinking about specific practices and social relations.

3. There is usually a "limitation statement" that accompanies dissertations. What are the limits of this study--methods, sample, critical tools, etc. and how does that influence the analysis?

4. Sharpen the questions about the distinct spaces/settings in relation to the specific interests and practices that you explore.

5. There were questions about how the assimilation theory you engage can be used to organize the complexities of what you observe and analyze. Here, I think you need to think about how assimilation theories have been typically developed as a framework for understanding immigrant populations. Next, how do the experiences at Freeway compel us to modify those theories and how we understand how youth in particular move across different worlds that suggest not assimilation so much but learning how to navigate the cultural norms and expectations of specific spaces--school, after school, peers, home life, pop culture, etc.

6. In a later chapter you address engagement with popular culture. Henry, in particular, had some ideas about how you might develop the participation in popular culture in nuanced ways. What are the implications of your study participants engagement in pop culture and the participatory norms that often form?