Saturday, January 13, 2024

Survey Results: Badges


Thanks to everyone who responded to my survey.  This post will cover questions about the badge program.  A previous posts listed people's comments about badges. 

What Awards Did Troops Earn?

GSUSA divides today's program into four "pillars"--STEM, Outdoors, Life Skills and Business/Entrepreneurship.  Life Skills is a catch-all for anything that does not fit the other categories.  I asked what troops at various levels earned last year.  

Daisies

Forms response chart. Question title: If you had Daisies last year, what did they earn?. Number of responses: .
Two people said their troop earned one petal, fourteen earned 3-5 petals and 47 earned more than five petals.  This tells me that at least 63 people responded who had Daisies last year.  

Regarding STEM badges, 9 troops earned one, 29 troops earned two, 11 troops earned three to five and 1 troop earned more than five. Business/Entrepreneurship badges were earned by 56 troops.  26 troops earned one, 20 troops earned two, and 10 troops earned more.   

In the Life Skills category, 13 troops earned one badge, 19 earned two, 17 earned three to five and 4 earned more than five.  

Many people think of the outdoors when they think of Girl Scouts.  8 Daisy troops earned one outdoor badge last year, 32 earned two, 18 earned three to five and two earned more than five.

Brownies

Forms response chart. Question title: If you had Brownies last year, what did they earn?. Number of responses: .

I had at least 76 responses about what Brownie troops earned.  12 said their troop earned one STEM badge, 34 earned two, 21 earned 3-5 and 1 earned more than five.  8 troops earned one Life Skills badge, 35 earned two,  26 earned three to five and 5 earned more than five.  

6 troops earned one outdoor badge; 26 earned two, 39 earned 3-5 and 2 earned more than five.  Of troops that earned business/entrepreneurship badges, 29 earned one, 29 earned two, and eleven earned 3-5.  As far as other awards for the front of the uniform, 14 troops did one, 23 troops did two, 20 troops did three to five and two troops did more than five.   

Juniors

Forms response chart. Question title: If you had Juniors last year, what did they earn?. Number of responses: .
At least 82 people responded about Junior troops.  18 troops earned 1 STEM badge, 40 earned two, 18 earned three to five and 1 earned more than five.  13 troops did 1 life skills badge, 39 did two, 23 did three to five and 3 did more than five.  

Only 10 troops only did one outdoor badge; 36 did two, 32 did three to five and three did more than five.  32 troops did one entrepreneurship badge, 27 did two, seven did three to five and one did more than five.  

18 troops earned one other award for the front of the uniform, 17 earned two, 19 did three to five and 3 earned more than five.  

Of the 43 people who responded that they had girls who earned Bronze, 8 had one girl earn it, 2 had two girls, 14 had 3-5 and 19 had more than five girls earn Bronze.  

Cadettes

Forms response chart. Question title: If you had Cadettes last year, what did they earn?. Number of responses: .
At least 80 Cadette leaders responded (as noted in a prior post, the group that responded to this survey was more experienced than most Girl Scout leaders).  27 of the troops earned one STEM badge, 28 earned two, and 9 earned three to five.  23 troops earned 1 life skills badge, 31 earned two, 24 earned three to five and 1 earned more than five.  

21 troops earned one Outdoor badge, 32 earned two, 20 earned three to five and 1 earned more than five. 

Seniors

Forms response chart. Question title: If you had Seniors  last year, what did they earn?. Number of responses: .
At least 29 Senior leaders responded.  9 earned one STEM badge, 8 earned two and 2 earned 3-5.  9 earned one life skills badge, 11 earned 2 and 8 earned 3-5.  

4 troops earned one outdoor badge, 9 earned two and 9 earned 3-5.  8 troops earned 1 entrepreneurship badge, 7 earned two and 1 earned three to five.  4 troops earned one other award, 8 earned two and six earned 3-5.  

Six people had girls who had earned the Gold Award. One of them had two girls who earned it. 

Ambassadors

Forms response chart. Question title: If you had Ambassadors  last year, what did they earn?. Number of responses: .
At least 17 Ambassador leaders gave input.  5 had troops that earned 1 STEM badge.  3 earned two. 7 had girls who earned one Life Skills badge, 6 earned two and 3 earned 3-5.  7 troops earned 1 outdoor badge, 4 earned two and three earned 3-5.  5 troops earned 1 entrepreneurship badge, 4 earned two and 2 earned 3-5.  

Seven people said they had girls who earned the Gold Award.  Of those, two had two girls who earned it and one and 3-5 girls.  

Are Troops Using GSUSA Programming

As noted above, this survey did not attract anywhere near a representative sample of Girl Scout leaders so that needs to be considered in reviewing the results.  However, I asked how much troop time is spent doing activities from GSUSA-developed plans.  Working on a badge but not using any of the GSUSA developed activities means that 0% of the time on that badge was using GSUSA programming.  
Here are the responses:
Forms response chart. Question title: How much of your troop's time is spent on activities from GSUSA-developed plans?  In other words, if you earned the ___Badge but did not read the VTK plans or the badge brochure, or materials purporting to summarize them, then 0% of the time on that badge counts. If you read it and spent 20% of the time working on that badge doing one of their activities and the rest doing things you planned, then 20% of that badge counts for this. If you spent a meeting doing a council fun patch, that doesn't count.  I know this isn't going to be exact, but I'm trying to get a feel for whether people are doing the activities suggested by GSUSA in the programming materials, or not. . Number of responses: 206 responses.

My guess is that a more representative group of leaders would use more of GSUSA's materials, but that's a guess on my part.  

While "can we get a badge for that?" is a frequent question, there is no rule that Girl Scouts have to earn any badges or awards. I asked how much time troops spend on activities not designed to lead to any GSUSA awards.  
Forms response chart. Question title: How much of your troop's time is spent doing things that do not lead to any GSUSA award?  . Number of responses: .

What Do Troops Do?

Currently the Girl Scout program is divided into four pillars, and I asked how much time, not including cookie sales, people spent on each pillar:
Forms response chart. Question title: The current Girl Scout program is divided into four pillars:  STEM, Life Skills, Outdoors  and Entrepreneurship.  Not including time spend on the cookie sale, how has your troop spent its time in the last two (or one if this is your first year) years?  . Number of responses: .

What Do Leaders Want?Forms response chart. Question title: What do you think of the quantity of available GSUSA or council  programming or materials on each pillar? . Number of responses: .

Forms response chart. Question title: GSUSA badges do not have requirements, they have steps. As long as girls do the activity, they have checked the box.  There is no requirement to demonstrate any particular skill or learning outcome.  What do you think about this?. Number of responses: 210 responses.

GSUSA has developed word-for-word scripts to help leaders present badges.  The folks who responded to this survey are not likely to review them, much less use them. 
Forms response chart. Question title: VTK includes scripts with extensive talking points for each badge.  For example the talking points for the Brownie Snacks badge stress healthy eating.  The new Art and Design badges involve doing a couple of craft projects and a lot of discussion of principles. With the coding or programming badges, the leader talking points are what turn craft projects into coding activities.  How likely are you to review the talking points before doing a badge . Number of responses: 213 responses.
Forms response chart. Question title: How likely are you to use those talking points?. Number of responses: 210 responses.Forms response chart. Question title: How do you plan most of your badges?. Number of responses: 209 responses.

What Do Leaders Think of Our Badges?

I asked: "Many of GSUSAs badges seem to be more aimed at teaching principles and ways of thinking rather than specific skills.  For example, the robotics badges teach about robots and programming but don't involve robots.  Coding badges do not use computers. Art and Design badges don't teach how to do the art, but how to think about it.  What do you think about this?"  Here are the responses: 
Forms response chart. Question title: Many of GSUSAs badges seem to be more aimed at teaching principles and ways of thinking rather than specific skills.  For example, the robotics badges teach about robots and programming but don't involve robots.  Coding badges do not use computers. Art and Design badges don't teach how to do the art, but how to think about it.  What do you think about this?. Number of responses: 212 responses.
Finally, I asked about the new "Maker" badges (sneak peek--I'll be sending out a survey about them later in the year)
Forms response chart. Question title: This year GSUSA dropped several craft-specific badges and added new "maker" badges for which any number of crafts could be used but which focus  on design principles, engineering and general art concepts rather than on how to do a craft.  What do you think of this? . Number of responses: 207 responses.

Posted by at
Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)