This is the second post in a series that involves surveying members of Girl Scout Facebook groups about their opinons of the current program. You can read about the Daisy program here.
Who Replied?
With any survey, knowing who responded is important. My gut feeling, based on replies to other surveys I've done and responses to posts on those Facebook groups was that people who responded tended to be more experienced than most leaders, and probably had a bigger committment to the program than most leaders.
When I started this post, 81 people had responded to the survey. Of them, 21% were in their first year leading Brownies and 38.3% in their second year. 17.3% had led Brownies for five years or more. 56.3% had been Girl Scout leaders for 5+ years. This data confirmed my gut feeling, and may mean that a survey of a random sample of Brownie leaders would show different conclusions, particularly with respect to the percent of people basically following VTK/GGGS.
Journeys
How many do Journeys and How Do They Do Them?
Almost 83% of those who responded said that their troops had done one of the original Journeys. However, only 16% said they pretty much followed the book/VTK, though there were a few other responses that referenced using part of the book. 38.7% pretty much created their own plan. Slightly more than 8% attended a Journey in a Day or similar program.
About 48% said they had done a "Think Like A..." Journey. While the original Journeys had the TAP baked into the plans, these Journeys ask the girls to use the method of thinking developed during the Journey to conceive of, plan and do a Take Action Project. I asked how troops that had done one of these Journeys picked their TAP. in about 12% of cases, leaders said that the girls had an idea that they ran with. In almost 48% of the cases, the leader gave the girls several choices and the girls voted between them. Almost 17% of the leaders picked the project. With these Journeys, about 21% pretty much followed the VTK plans, 26% attended a program put on by someone else, and about 53% developed their own plans.
Why Do Troops Do Journeys?
I asked leaders to rate reasons they did any Journey. The reasons I offered were: We wanted to explore the topic, GSUSA/my council said we should, our troop loves Journeys, an event was offered, and I wanted to get the girls ready to earn Bronze as Juniors. I asked leaders to rate each factor as "very much a reason" "a consideration" or "not a factor".
Regarding wanting to explore the topic, of 69 responses 22 said the topic was very much a reason, 40 said it was a consideration and 7 said it wasn't a factor.
With respect to being told they should, of 67 responses, only 2 said it was very much a reason, and only 10 said it was a consideration. It wasn't a factor for 55 people.
Of 66 responses, 7 gave loving Jouneys as a factor, and 42 said it wasn't a factor.
Wanting to attend an event was a major consideration for 21 of 69, and a consideration for 7.
Preparing the girls to earn Bronze as Juniors was a major consideration for 37 (50%) of respondants, and a consideration for 21 of them. It was not a factor for 16.
What Journeys Do People Do?
74 people responded to this question, and they could pick one or more. The most popular Brownie Journey was WOW (62.2% said they had done it). Brownie Quest was second, with 54.1% of people saying they had done it. 47.3% had done the Outdoor Journey and 39.2% had done World of Girls. The least popular Journey was Think Like a Programmer, which had only been done by 18.9%. Think Like a Citizen Scientist had been doe by 29.7 % and Think Like an Engineer by 31.1%. I wish now I had included a question about which Journeys people had done in the last two year. Given the experience of responding leaders, I wonder if new Brownie leaders are more or less likely to pick a non-book Journey as opposed to the original ones. Any thoughts on that?
What Do People Think of the Journeys?
I asked people to rate each Journey they had done as "loved it", "it was ok" or "did not like it. Here are the responses:
World of Girls: 8 loved it, 19 said it was ok and 7 didn't like it.
WOW: 18 loved it, 25 said it was ok, and 4 didn't like it
Brownie Quest: 5 loved it, 29 said it was ok, and 8 didn't like it
Outdoor Journey 36 loved it, 1 said it was ok, and 1 didn't like it
Think Like an Engineer 15 loved it, 8 said it was ok and 2 didn't like it
Think Like a Programmer 6 loved it, 8 said it was ok and 1 didn't like it
Think Like a Citizen Scientist 9 loved it, 12 said it was ok, and 2 didn't like it.
I looked at each Journey and gave "loved it" 2 points and "ok" 1 point, and then divided the number of points by the number of people who did it. The Outdoor Journey was the favorite with a score of 1.92. The most disappointing was Quest with a score of 0.92. Think Like an Engineer scored 1.52, Think Like a Programmer, 1.33 and Think Like a Citizen Scientist, 1.3. WOW got 1.29 and World of Girls, 1.02.
I also asked if the badges were too hard, too easy or just right. 67.5% said they were about right; only 3.9% said they were too easy.
Comments About Journeys
I had one question where I asked for anything else people wanted to say. Below is a representative sample of the responses:
They seem difficult to figure out the requirements. There is a huge difference between the official guides and the programs that can be found. I find all journeys both confusing and not engaging for the girls. I basically figure out the concept and then create my own plan. More work than it's worth.
I think the girls like them and they can add structure to the meeting plan. But the GSUSA badge sets are a little arbitrary and the plans are both too specific and not flexible enough. Oddly.
TAP is hard for girls to understand at this level, and even harder to figure out on their own. COVID adds another level of challenge.
Back when I had Brownies there were only the 3 original ones. The WOW was too complicated and too much school work. The girls did like the Brownie Quest though.
I did Wow over 4 meetings. It was painful. Girls dont remember one meeting to the next if we only meet twice a month.
The Books are boring. The VTK don't take into account different meeting lengths and different numbers of girls - and working virtually! Some girls love being creative, others need more structure - not much flexibility in some of the badges. Some of the activities require specific items (e.g. Goldie box) or are outdated (Computer Expert) or are not accurate in their messages (Coding).
We paid for Journey in a Days because the books are terrible; the girls are not looking for more book learning. The learning expectations should be more clear, and they should actually be a journey. The whole point is to build the girls’ skills for the Bronze, Silver, Gold, but we don’t use them that way. They should re-design the Journeys based on what the actual objectives are.
The Brownie Journeys have interesting ideas but the books are beyond awful, the activities are terrible, and the entire program needs to be rewritten-- just like the rest of the journeys.
Volunteer Tool Kit was useless. I did find an excellent source for outlined program from another council. ALL of the journeys appear to be planned with the high performer, girl with lots of parental support and time, and top of the class reader. Most of my girls had a hard time understanding the basic concepts they were supposed to grasp as a base for the entire journey - 'clues' in stories, for instance. The girls found the TAPs limiting. 'Why can't we just do service projects that help people the way we want to help them?" The Brownie Journeys are the best of all levels. Even here, though, the girls frequently complained that is was too much 'school homework'.
They're kind of a combination of too hard and too easy. The girls find the stories really boring / unrelatable, but some of the activities are beyond them. Some of them it also seems really hard to make the message shine behind the window dressing, or to get a good flow going.
For example, right now we're working on world of girls, which, in my opinion, is meant to be hear some other girls stories, now write your own story and I've always encouraged individual tap that involve personal growth (how your story ends), but it doesn't do a good job of introducing the brownie friends (for those that didn't do brownie quest) and the ficticous girls of the stories are hard to relate to. Is it really that hard for girl scouts to get stories of real life girls? Is the message meant to be that were not so different from girls across the globe?
It also feels like girl scouts took the criticism of the initial journeys and made the think like a journeys a bit too open (ie leaving it up to the leader to decide what activities to do)
It also seems a bit lazy in some of the writing (like the programmer, for example) when the activities are exactly the same as the Juniors.
The activities in the WOW journey are fabulous, but 10 meetings spent on journeys is insane!
The TLA engineer challenges are always in our bucket of tricks and get pulled out randomly throughout the year.
Brownie quest has NEVER been of interest to my girls, in 5 years of having brownies!
The journey book is great for a juliette but useless for a troop.
TLA citizen scientist doesn’t go with the citizen scientist website, and the VTK info is boring and takes too long
Only Journey girls liked was Outdoor Journey. Not a fan of others.
Badges
How Are Bdges Selected?
First, I asked how the troops' badges are selected. in 8.6% of cases, the leader picks them. in 39.5% of troops, the leader considers the girls opinions and then makes the final choices. in 32.1% of troops, the girls vote on the badges to do. In abou t7% of troops different badges are chosen in differnt ways.
Which Badges Do People Pick
Badges which had been done by over 50 (out of 81) troops were: First Aid (59), Girl Scout Way (72), Hiker (54), Home Scientist (55), Making Friends (52), Meet My Customers (53), Painting (59), Pets (50), Senses (59), and Snacks (59) .
Those which at least 15 troops had not done but planned to are: First Aid (15), STEM Career Exploration (19), Snow or Climbing Adventure (22), Budding Entrepreneur (17), Bugs (20), Trail Adventure (22), Cabin Camper (15), Celebrating Community (18), EcoFriend (17), Fair Play (24), Give Back (15), Hiker (15), Letterboxer (17), Leapbot (16), Racecar(16), Money Manager (17), Outdoor Adventure (20), Outdoor Art (19), Painting (15), Pets (16), Potter (17), and Snacks (15)
For all GSUSA has been pushing STEM, the only STEM badges that seem to have caught people's eyes are STEM Career Exploration, Leapbot, Racecar and the old Home Scientist and Senses badges. However, as with the Journeys, I'd like to know if these answers change if we limit answers to current Brownies.
How Do People Do the Badges?
People were asked to say whether they pretty much followed VTK/GGGS, came up with their own plans or attended a program. Looking at the most popular badges:
First Aid: 17 followed VTK/GGGS, 39 came up with thier own, 2 attended a program
GS Way: 28 followed VTK/GGGS,, 39 came up with their own, 2 attended a program
Hiker: 20 followed VTK/GGGs, 31 came up with their own, 3 attended a program
Home Scientist: 16 followed VTK/GGGs, 31 made their own, 7 attended a program
Making Friends: 20 followed VTK/GGGS, 26 made thier own plan, 4 attended a program
Meet My Customers: 24 followed VTK/GGGS, 27 made thier own plan, 1 attended a program
Painting: 33 followed VTK/GGGS, 33 made their own plan, 5 attended a program
Pets 10 followed VTK/GGGS, 34 made thier own plan, 6 attened a program
Senses: 12 followed VTK/GGGS, 44 made their own plan and 3 attended a program
Snacks: 22 followed VTK/GGGS, 34 made thier own plan and 4 attended a program.
The only badges for which more people basically followed the GGGS/VTK plans than created their own was Letterboxer (14 vs 12), Fling Flyer (10 vs 5), Leapbot (5 vs 2), and Racecar (7 vs 5),
The badges most often done as part of a program were Bugs (10), Coding Basics (6), Dancer (10), Home Scientist (7), Pets (6), Potter (9), Programming Robots and Designing Robots (7), Showcasing Robots (6), and Space Sciene Adventurer (9).
What Do People Think of the Badges
In general, 28.4% of respondants thought Brownie badges are appropriate and well done. 69.1% said some were good and some were bad, and 2.5% selected "who wrote these things anyway?". Looking at individual badges and rating them as "great" "meh" or "flop", the popular badges were rated as follows:
First Aid: 48 great; 12 meh
GS Way: 53 great; 19 meh
Hiker: 49 great, 3 meh, 1 flop
Home Scientist: 51 great, 3 meh
Making Friends: 33 great, 17 meh
Meet My Customers: 21 great, 26 meh, 2 flop
Painting: 50 great, 5 meh
Pets : 44 great, 5 meh
Senses: 49 great, 9 meh
Snacks: 54 great, 8 meh
Next I looked at badges that had a significant number of "flop" votes.
Coding Basics: 10 great, 8 meh, 4 flop
Cybersecurity Basics: 5 great, 8 meh, 6 flop
Cybersecurity Safeguards: 5 great, 5 meh, 5 flop
Cybersecurity Investigator: 5 great, 6 meh, 5 flop
Given that all these dealt with computers and could be things that leaders have limited knowledge of, I checked to see if they were creating their own plans, or following the directions--after all castigating GSUSA for bad badge plans makes no sense if you don't follow them. I found that these badges were about evenly done via the published plans, via leader plans and via programs.
What Other Badges Should We Have?
When the current program was developed, the number of badges was purposefully limited. The idea was that girls would spend most of the time working on a Journey; badges, the outdoors, field trips and cookies were "side trips" which could hopefully be integrated into the Journey. Since the program started there has been a steady call for more badges. In the last few years, GSUSA has responded with quite a few new badges at each level, generally focusing on STEM or outdoors. One question I asked was what other topics badge should cover. Popluar responses were:
- Sewing
- Outdoor skills like knots or knife safety
- More Art
- Music
- More Cooking
- Gardening
- History
- Life skills
- Less STEM
- Make badges more skills-based
- More crafts
Additional Comments on Badges
As with Journeys, I asked for any comments people had that they don't think were reflected in the other questions. The following responses are representative:
Old try-its were better!!!!
Brownie badges are too expensive.
I think there is a lot of room for improvement in the program and opportunities with the vtk. I am forever seeing leaders post "my girls want to do xxxx which badge can this be tied to?" It'd be nice if I could search the vtk for "hike" for example and get a bunch of suggestions from other leaders of ways to tie a hike to various badges (and ways to outline how a hike for hiker, trail adventure, eco friend, etc are different).
Why are they wrapped individually in plastic? How is that following the gs law?
Out of touch with many of the girls.
So much stem right now, fine. But it doesn’t work for all my girls
STEM badges are not well done for little kids. Most of the topics just aren’t that interesting to them. They are way to much like school. Robots and coding could be cooler, but definitely would need to involve actual robots and video games which are beyond my expertise to teach to a group. (Just FYI - I did build a robot with my daughter and can do basic coding for various applications, but I have no idea how to relate that to 8 year olds. I do quite a bit of STEM in my job, but nothing that would interest my girls).
I feel there are too many take action projects. Should be service at this age. Take action as they get older.
I love the idea. I wish the badges were a little clearer in the intent of each step with some options to consider as possibles then leaving more room for a leader to explore different options to fulfill the requirements. There should be less steps involving "talking to someone" as whilst that may work for smaller towns, it's impossible to speak to a Mayor or County Officer in a big city. The badges should be more realistic - no town hall meeting is going to be an appropriate place for Brownies to go and hang out and learn anything! Watching videos or using online resources e.g. youtube, brainpop, should always be considered alternates.
They are to heavy in STEM and coding. All that is too much like what the girls do in school. They love the outdoor, cooking and games badges. I would live to see some of the skills not taught on school like sewing and woodworking and such.
I WISH there was more arts and crafts and outdoor emphasis at this age. Sitting and talking is NOT their thing, but moving and doing and being exposed to new adventures and ideas at this age is SO imperative
GSUSA needs to ask leaders what works and what doesn't work. If most troops are skipping certain badges, filter them out and make ones that are suggested. Girl scouts used to be about skills, now it is stem and crafts.
All of the programs need to be revamped at the national level. The badges in old programs (look at the 80s Brownie handbook) are much better written and much more interesting.
I leverage the 5 steps and then materials I find online but not VTK. Also prefer badges we can complete in a meeting as homework rarely gets done and if girls don't attend each meeting it is more difficult.
My Comments:
You can see the entire response set here. As a long time Brownie leader, I found the responses to be about what I expected. The badges that my girls have enjoyed have been the badges most people have done and rated well. I'd love to see GSUSA's sales figures on various badges--which ones are popular year in and year out and which , shall we say, have a niche market?
I'm planning further surveys about how people go about earning badges and Journeys since such a large number of people said they don't follow the GSUSA plans. I'm curious why they chose that response. How different from the given activites were the ones chosen?
Our current badge program is activity-based. Susie just needs to do the activity chosen by the leader; she does not need to be able to demonstrate at the end, that she knows/is able to do anything. While I think that is approprate on the Brownie level, for older girls I'd really like to see more specific bits of knowlege and/or skills listed. For one thing, it gives the leader direction and focus, especially in areas with which she is not familiar. While my Louisiana troop isn't going cross-country skiing, if we did run across the opportunity, I'd have no idea of the Youtube video I watched about it was any good because I have absolutely no knowlege about it. For all I know they could be showing the equivalent of sitting around the campfire with long loose hair.
Do you have any more comments about the Brownie program?
No comments:
Post a Comment