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Homelessness impacts children in numerous ways. Being homeless at a young age can set a child up for failure for many years to come. Although living in Atlanta exposes us to how prevalent homelessness really is, this is actually an issue all around the globe. Syrian child refugees are finding themselves homeless the same way that children fleeing from hurricane Katrina who did not have the financial capital to return home (or did not have a home to return to) found themselves homeless in our own area. Homelessness impacts literally every single aspect of someone's life and radically transforms the traditional childhood we think of. In this project, I will explore how the overall health (mental, physical, emotional, etc.) of children who are exposed to homelessness impacted by their circumstances.

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When thinking of the issue of child homelessness, there are a myriad of disciplines that immediately come to mind. This issue is so complex that there is no one discipline that can be pointed to as the dominant discipline related to this issue. Moreover, there is no discipline whose solution could completely, or even significantly, eradicate the issue of child homelessness. This issue involves many disciplines including, but not limited to, economics, political science, criminal justice, psychology, education, history, sociology, law, religious studies, anthropology, and philosophy. While all of these disciplines definitely play a role in the issue of child homelessness, especially in relation to the overall development of homeless children, a few of these disciplines stand out among the rest in regards to significance of impact. I believe the most significant disciplines in relation to this issue are economics, political science and sociology. Economics is probably the most talked about discipline related to child homelessness because most children are homeless due to their families’ lack of financial capital. Those who do not have economic issues typically do not find themselves homeless. Closely related to the economic perspective of homelessness is political science. The American economy is set up in such a way that politics and the economy are very closely related. This can be proven by the sudden drop or spike in the stock market anytime there is any significant American news. Furthermore, many of our laws directly impact the economy. For example, housing laws impact what types of houses can be in what locations, which can also correlate to what types of jobs are close to these locations. In the past, there have been laws that actually prohibited certain races, genders or social classes from many economically advantageous opportunities, such as lucrative jobs, housing, etc. These laws are largely influenced by political science. As Americans, we have all witnessed one party blocking another party’s proposed budget at some point in our lives. What laws get passed, and their implications, ties directly back into the discipline of political science. Finally, I believe sociology is an extremely important discipline related to the issue of child homelessness because another major factor of families becoming homeless is the amount of social capital they have. Having a substantial amount of social capital means a family has a social network they can depend on to help them in times of need. For homeless children, this social network either does not exist or has been exhausted. Many people fall upon hard times economically, but it is their social capital (such as moving in with family, getting temporary financial assistance from their social network or getting a job from a social connection) that keeps them from becoming homeless. This sociological idea plays a large role in child homelessness. One thing I noticed during my site visit to a local homeless shelter is that many of the adults who were at the shelter did not have friends or family they stayed in touch with beyond the shelter. This was even more prevalent with the children at the shelter. I left my site visit considering the fact that if all of my friends were homeless, how would I pull myself out of homelessness. Some of these children seemed as though they were living completely normal lives within the walls of a homeless shelter. For many, this life is all they know and I wonder if, at such a young age, they even know how bad they truly have it. Social interactions play a huge role in child development and, since all of the people they come in contact with are in the same situation as them, they may not realize how bad their circumstances are. I do realize the limitations to this view of child homelessness, as these children living in the shelter probably have drastically different views than children currently living on the streets. At the time of completion of this assignment, I have not had a chance to interview the director of the site to get his insight, but I am looking forward to bringing this idea to him to gain his insight. I look forward to including that information in my final response.

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Rachael STEP 3 Feedback and Grades .docx

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2.1 The student states that the problem or research question is complex and explains what this means: Homelessness is an extremely complex issue that encompasses many different disciplines. 2.2 The student states or implies that there are important insights into the problem offered by two or more disciplines: Homelessness cannot simply be attributed to one or two disciplines or factors. For example, many people believe homelessness is an economic issue that could be simply solved by redistributing wealth. People with this line of thinking may argue that there are people with billions of dollars in the world while there are people living on the streets. People with this line of thinking assert that by redistributing this wealth to everyone, we could solve the issue of homelessness. However, if this were the only discipline that encompasses homelessness, how would this help people who are homeless because of mental health issues? What about people who have money management issues? Would we just continue giving them more money even though they do not know how to manage it and afford their bills? What about people who are homeless when they get out of jail? Reasons such as these are why homelessness is such a complex issue. We also must consider how interdisciplinary our world truly is when trying to solve these problems. Would our solution create another problem of some sort? For example, with the economic view of homelessness, would redistributing wealth cause our economy to become unstable and crash? Would companies be forced to redistribute their wealth, too? How do we keep CEOs motivated if they are making the same amount of money as the janitor? All of these things involve different disciplines that must be examined when trying to solve the issue of homelessness. Some of the disciplines that encompass the issue of homeless include (but are not limited to) economics, political science, psychology, sociology, biology, philosophy, religious studies, criminal justice and education. Each of these disciplines play an important role in both contributing to the issue, and, in turn, solving the issue. 2.3 The student states or implies that no single discipline has been able to address the problem comprehensively. & 2.4 The student states that the project addresses an important and as yet unresolved issue concerning nature or society: With the homeless rate rising to such great heights, as mentioned in Step 1, this is obviously a rapidly growing issue that has yet to be solved  by any single discipline
and requires our attention. Tackling this issue without an interdisciplinary approach would be counterproductive. As we saw in the "elephant story" example, if just an economist tried to solve the issue of child homelessness, the other issues that encompass this  issue (pertaining to the other disciplines) would still not be solved, and the overall problem would still be there. By not taking an interdisciplinary approach to solving this problem, there is no chance of having a solution that may actually be successful.

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Homelessness impacts children in numerous ways. Being homeless at a young age can set a child up for failure in many, if not all, aspects of life for many years to come. Most of us living in Atlanta are exposed to how prevalent homelessness really is, but I was shocked to find out that approximately 1.5 million children experience homelessness in America every year (Bassuk 1). This is the highest number of children that have experienced homelessness since the Great Depression (Bassuk 1). To make matters worse, this is not just an American issue, rather it is a global issue. Although it is extremely difficult to collect a worldwide census, or even similar data, UNICEF estimates about 28 million children globally were homeless in 2016. This is due to a number of different causes including, but not limited to, global conflict, economic and government structures, natural disasters and mental health issues. With the ever-increasing militarized global climate, child homelessness due to conflict is rapidly increasing. For example, Syrian child refugees are finding themselves homeless the same way that children fleeing from hurricane Katrina who did not have the financial capital to return home (or did not have a home to return to) found themselves homeless in our own area. Homelessness drastically impacts every single aspect of someone's life (which is even demonstrated by my selection of sources- one is an world aid organization that is interdisciplinary itself and one is a journal of orthopsychiatry) and radically transforms the traditional childhood. This makes it hard for a child to develop properly in various areas of development. Imagine how difficult it is to get through life for a child whose needs were not met in their trust vs. mistrust stage of Erikson’s Theory of Development. Similarly, imagine how different a homeless child’s ecosystem is in relation to Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory. In this project, I will explore how the child development, especially in relation to popular child developmental theories, of children who are exposed to homelessness is impacted by their circumstances.

Bassuk, E. L. (2010), Ending Child Homelessness in America. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 80: 496-504. doi:10.1111/j.1939-0025.2010.01052.x

Deutsche Welle. “UNICEF Reports 28 Million Children Homeless Globally Due to Conflict | DW | 07.09.2016.” DW.COM, 9 July 2016,www.dw.com/en/unicef-reports-28-million-children-homeless-globally-due-to-conflict/a-19530645.

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Child homelessness is an extremely complex issue that encompasses many different disciplines. Child homelessness cannot simply be attributed to one or two disciplines or factors. For example, many people believe homelessness (as a whole) is an economic issue that could be simply solved by redistributing wealth. People with this line of thinking may argue that there are people with billions of dollars in the world while there are people living on the streets. People with this line of thinking assert that by redistributing this wealth to everyone, we could solve the issue of homelessness. However, if this were the only discipline that encompasses homelessness, how would this help people who are homeless because of mental health issues? What about people who have money management issues? Would we just continue giving them more money even though they do not know how to manage it and afford their bills? What about people who are homeless when they get out of jail? Reasons such as these are why homelessness is such a complex issue. The issue becomes even more complex when we add the narrow our focus from homelessness to child homelessness. Since children are not responsible for their own homelessness, all of the issues that are associated with homelessness as a whole apply. However, we also have to take into account the family structures and dynamic that is at work in the issue of child homelessness. We also must consider how interdisciplinary our world truly is when trying to solve these problems. Would our solution create another problem of some sort? For example, with the economic view of homelessness, would redistributing wealth cause our economy to become unstable and crash? Would companies be forced to redistribute their wealth, too? How do we keep CEOs motivated if they are making the same amount of money as the janitor? All of these things involve different disciplines that must be examined when trying to solve the issue of homelessness. Some of the disciplines that encompass the issue of homeless include (but are not limited to) economics, political science, psychology, sociology, biology, philosophy, religious studies, criminal justice and education. Each of these disciplines play an important role in both contributing to the issue, and, in turn, solving the issue.  With the homeless rate rising to such great heights, as mentioned in Step 1, this is obviously a rapidly growing issue that has yet to be solved  by any single discipline

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When thinking of the issue of child homelessness, there are a myriad of disciplines that immediately come to mind. This issue is so complex that there is no one discipline that can be pointed to as the dominant discipline related to this issue. Moreover, there is no discipline whose solution could completely, or even significantly, eradicate the issue of child homelessness. This issue involves many disciplines including, but not limited to, economics, political science, criminal justice, psychology, education, history, sociology, law, religious studies, anthropology, and philosophy. While all of these disciplines definitely play a role in the issue of child homelessness, especially in relation to the overall development of homeless children, a few of these disciplines stand out among the rest in regards to significance of impact. I believe the most significant disciplines in relation to this issue are economics, political science and sociology. Economics is probably the most talked about discipline related to child homelessness because most children are homeless due to their families’ lack of financial capital. Those who do not have economic issues typically do not find themselves homeless. Closely related to the economic perspective of homelessness is political science. The American economy is set up in such a way that politics and the economy are very closely related. This can be proven by the sudden drop or spike in the stock market anytime there is any significant American news. According to University of Chicago Professor Pietro Veronesi, the American stock market "overreacts to bad news in good times and underreacts to good news in bad times" (Veronisi, 1). Furthermore, many of our laws directly impact the economy. For example, housing laws impact what types of houses can be in what locations, which can also correlate to what types of jobs are close to these locations. In the past, there have been laws that actually prohibited certain races, genders or social classes from many economically advantageous opportunities, such as lucrative jobs, housing, etc. These laws are largely influenced by political science. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the law that made it illegal to discriminate based on race, gender, etc. in the workplace or in hiring was not even enacted until 1964, which is only one to two generations ago. For children born into a cycle of generational poverty, there are still impacts of the time before this law in their current lives (Civil Rights Act, 1). As Americans, we have all witnessed one party blocking another party’s proposed budget at some point in our lives. What laws get passed, and their implications, ties directly back into the discipline of political science. Finally, I believe sociology is an extremely important discipline related to the issue of child homelessness because another major factor of families becoming homeless is the amount of social capital they have. Having a substantial amount of social capital means a family has a social network they can depend on to help them in times of need. For homeless children, this social network either does not exist or has been exhausted. Many people fall upon hard times economically, but it is their social capital (such as moving in with family, getting temporary financial assistance from their social network or getting a job from a social connection) that keeps them from becoming homeless. This sociological idea plays a large role in child homelessness. One thing I noticed during my site visit to a local homeless shelter is that many of the adults who were at the shelter did not have friends or family they stayed in touch with beyond the shelter. This was even more prevalent with the children at the shelter. I left my site visit considering the fact that if all of my friends were homeless, how would I pull myself out of homelessness. The site's director told me that a major piece of their program is to help their residents develop connections with leaders in the community so that they can surround themselves with positive influences. Some of these children seemed as though they were living completely normal lives within the walls of a homeless shelter. For many, this life is all they know and I wonder if, at such a young age, they even know how bad they truly have it. Social interactions play a huge role in child development and, since all of the people they come in contact with are in the same situation as them, they may not realize how bad their circumstances are. I do realize the limitations to this view of child homelessness, as the children living in the shelter probably have drastically different views than children currently living on the streets. I was especially intrigued when my site director told me that he believes a "holistic" (or interdisciplinary) approach to homelessness is the only way to successfully help individuals bring themselves out of homelessness. He emphasized the importance of the individual having a desire to be self-sufficient, which surprised me because I was unaware that there were people who actually did not mind being homeless. This pointed back to the psychological and sociological aspect of homelessness and child homelessness. This statement also reminded me of how solving the issue with just one disciplinary approach (such as economic boosts) would not actually solve our homeless problem.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/history/35th/thelaw/civil_rights_act.html

Veronesi, P. (1999). Stock Market Overreactions to Bad News in Good Times: A Rational Expectations Equilibrium Model. The Review of Financial Studies, 12(5), 975-1007. doi:10.1093/rfs/12.5.975

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I conducted a literature search about child homelessness and this search was very helpful in realizing the disciplines I identified were very important in relation to child homelessness. I was not surprised to find that there were a vast number of resources on this topic and that it took a large amount of time to “weed” through the sources that were not very focused. The sources I did find to be credible and useful frequently discussed the disciplines of economics, political science or sociology, which is what I asserted were the most important disciplines in relation to this issue. One discipline that came up just as frequently in these articles was education. I did not see education as a huge issue in relation to child homelessness at the time of writing my Step 3 response. However, in retrospect, this makes sense because education is such a crucial piece of childhood. For example, in Summer’s TedTalk she discusses the importance of children’s access to new materials in the classroom and the impact this has on the children psychologically. For homeless children, this could be the one thing that proves to them that they are worth something, but, if they have a tattered and torn book that is decades old, it is just another reason for them to think that they are not worthy of good things in life. We often think of education as just the transmission of knowledge between teacher and student, but Summer bringing up the idea of classroom resources was a unique perspective to the educational insight of child homelessness. Both Quint and Nathanson discuss their models for educating homeless children and both emphasize the importance of educating them beyond their current circumstances. While I have touched on this type of idea in other responses, I never realized how schools can also play a role in giving the children the resources they need to stay out of homelessness once they are able to get themselves out of homelessness.

Another really great resource I used for this were two of the PlayPosit videos on iCollege. The educational psychology PlayPosit video was helpful because Dr. Emerson discussed the various aspects of educational psychology and the different jobs and fields that educational psychology impacts. This made me realize the various areas that educational psychology touches in relation to children who are homeless. Another great PlayPosit I watched was Dr. Greenberg’s PlayPosit on family and community literacy. This PlayPosit was especially helpful to me because she discussed the different levels of literacy, which many children who are homeless definitely have trouble navigating, as well as resources that can be made available to both children and adults who have lower levels of literacy. I was surprised to hear how many people struggle with literacy in the workplace, and this could definitely be a reason why people with lower levels of literacy can end up homeless. This did tie back to my realization of the importance of education to this issue, because if the children of homeless parents with lower literacy levels do not receive proper education in relation to literacy, they, too will have low literacy levels and struggle finding and maintaining a job.

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Although I am not completely finished with my chart to be able to fully and thoroughly analyze it, there is a trend I have noticed thus far. So far, my previous findings are seeming to be holding true in regards to disciplines. Education is still proving to be an extremely important discipline in relation to this issue. There is definitely proving to be some conflict between political science insights and economic insights. I am interested in pursuing these further.  The educational psychology PlayPosit ties a few of my references together which was pretty interesting.

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Upon my initial enrollment in this class, I did not know really much about the interdisciplinary process, much less how to use an interdisciplinary approach to solving a problem. I know plenty of other people who have degrees in interdisciplinary studies, but I never really understood what these degrees meant. Throughout my work in this program, it seemed as though I was just taking random classes in different areas related to child growth and development without really connecting one class to another. This project has truly opened my eyes to what it means to take an interdisciplinary approach to learning and how essential taking an interdisciplinary approach is to solving such complex problems that impact real people on an everyday basis.

One of the most important things I learned through my work on this project is that every problem in the world encompasses multiple different subject areas. My research for this project focused on the issue of child homelessness. Coming into this class, I thought this issue could be solved by economic legislation that could ensure that no child was left in such extreme poverty that they did not have their basic needs met. After all, there are many other countries in the world much less developed than ours that do not have such a huge issue of child homelessness. I thought that our political system played a major role in the lack of solution for this problem. With politicians constantly quarreling and always having ulterior motives, I simply believed that they did not care enough about this problem to fix it. I thought that if we could just all work together to approve an economic plan that ensured no child would be homeless, all could be fixed. However, during my research process I realized how naive it was to think that there could be such a “simple” fix to such a complex problem. After all, what makes this problem so complex? It is the integration of so many disciplines into the creation of the problem. I discovered that the issue of child homelessness is not simply an economic or political science issue as I spent most of my younger years believing. I never even considered that psychology or sociology could be part of this issue, even as I was blaming politicians for not caring enough about homeless children. Through my research, I learned this issue encompasses a myriad of other disciplines including education, sociology, psychology, history, social justice, and many more. Even the most brilliant economist could not make an economic plan that could end child homelessness, because that plan would not address the other disciplines’ involvement in this issue. Being an expert in one discipline is great and definitely something to be proud of, however being an expert in one discipline can make you have a very narrow mindset in terms of viewing issues. I believe it is much more important to have a great understanding of a variety of disciplines to be successful at solving real-world problems. However, after completing this course, I realized that any problem in the world is an interdisciplinary problem and each of these problems must have a solution that comes from an interdisciplinary approach. By taking an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving not just in the classroom, but beyond the classroom, as well, we have a better chance at creating realistic solutions that can actually solve, or at least realistically attempt to solve, extremely complex problems.

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My analysis of my research was very insightful and thought-provoking. I was very impressed, and, honestly, happy to see so much of my research did focus on the importance of interdisciplinarity when looking at the issue of child homelessness. This made me realize that I am definitely on the right track with this project. The most important disciplinary insights were those from educational and psychological perspectives. I originally started this project thinking that economics was the most important discipline related to child homelessness. While economics may be closely related to the general issue of homelessness, my research and analysis of this research has shown that in the area of child homelessness specifically education and psychology are much more prevalent.

Education is a huge aspect of a child’s life. Children spend so much of their early years learning from any and every experience they have. From the moment a child is born, they begin learning from their environment and this continues on throughout life. When thinking of children who are homeless, it is easy to focus on the seemingly “bigger” issues like where they will get their next meal from or where they will safely sleep at night while completely disregarding their education. However, when we do that we are actually doing a disservice to homeless children. Without quality education, homeless children are destined to continue the cycle of homelessness and it is unlikely they will be able to get themselves out of homelessness.

Another major discipline related to child homelessness is psychology. Psychology has a major impact on both the child and the people in the child’s microsystem. The child’s parent or parents are probably going through psychological trauma due to their homelessness. The child itself is definitely experiencing psychological trauma from their basic needs not being consistently met in addition to all of the negative things they are likely to experience when on the streets. In some of my research, I found that if these psychological issues are left unresolved it also makes the child more likely to stay in their impoverished situation as an adult and could ultimately even lead to suicide. It is crucial that the psychological needs of homeless children are met to ensure they can succeed later in life.

While there is not much conflict in the disciplinarity perspectives found in my research, there are conflicting ideas on which disciplinary perspective is the most important. For example, the economists think that homelessness cannot be solved without first addressing the economics of homelessness. Whereas, psychologists argue that if the mental health issues of homeless people are not solved, no matter what happens to them economically they will find themselves back in the same negative circumstances that they are currently in. While both of these insights are correct, it is unclear which one is really more important to solving the issue than the other. This problem is a “fancy smoothie” where each discipline must be blended together perfectly to solve it, instead of just having all of the disciplines in a “fruit salad” together.

I was very appreciative to have had access to the PlayPosit videos during the analysis of my research. I was specifically reminded of the family and community literacy PlayPosit throughout my research, especially by the piece of that PlayPosit that discussed how literacy levels can directly impact being able to have a job. I had never considered that there are people who cannot understand text or signage in the workplace that could be detrimental to their ability to get or keep a job. I am sure there are many homeless people impacted by this. The educational psychology PlayPosit was especially helpful, as I found education and psychology to be such important disciplines related to child homelessness and this PlayPosit combined both of these disciplines into one discipline. It was great to hear from this PlayPosit all of the different resources that are available to people with educational psychology issues, but I am still concerned about how homeless children are expected to know about or have access to these resources. Some of the educational models found in my research that have been tested in larger city schools did answer this question, so I have hope that these models could solve this issue if they were integrated into schools in areas with high homelessness. One conflicting issue on this perspective is that many homeless children never make it to school, or are too young to go to school, so we still need a solution on getting these children the types of educational psychology services that were mentioned in the PlayPosit.

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Although I did not post an initial draft to be able to get feedback from Dr. Ari, I did look through his feedback on some of my classmate's posts. He provided very insightful feedback about this assignment to one of my classmates, giving her some thought-provoking questions on her view of disciplinary expertise. I tried to incorporate my own answers into my response as these gave me some great ideas. I also made my response much deeper by providing specific examples instead of just discussing my views. I felt that initially my response was very surface-level and using Dr. Ari's feedback helped me deepen my understanding and response.  At this point in the class, I really understand how complex every problem in the world is and why taking an interdisciplinary approach is so important in presenting realistic solutions to so many issues we encounter. I am appreciative that this class showed me the complexity of our world and how I can be an effective agent of change by not getting too caught up in being an expert in a certain discipline, but, rather, how to incorporate the knowledge of experts in each discipline into my problem solving.

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Dr. Ari’s feedback was very helpful in crafting my final response, which I believe to be one of my better pieces of work this semester. As he suggested, I incorporated insights found from two of the PlayPosits I watched this semester and related them to my issue. I wrote about the similarities these had to my research findings, while also pointing out a conflict that I found with the educational psychology insight. I also included conflicts between the disciplines that I noticed during my research analysis as well as similarities that I noticed. At this point, I am starting to really understand the importance of interdisciplinarity in regards to the issue of child homelessness. I was happy to find that the importance of interdisciplinarity was discussed in many of the articles I found during my research process. These research articles confirmed almost everything we have learned in class, and much of what I have found throughout my research process. Many of these articles emphasized the importance of taking solutions on a case-by-case basis and involving the specific child that is targeted in the decision making process. These articles reminded me of the elephant story we read in class and brought me back to the importance of those.