PVEST
So this is pretty academic but I’m going to use my super power to explain this.
PVEST is the Phenomenological Variant of the Ecological Systems Theory. This theory was advanced mainly by Margaret Beale Spencer and I had the honor of taking the last class that she taught at the University of Chicago. The non-variant version (EST) is from Urie Bronfenbrenner.
EST says that people develop from five environmental systems: micro-, meso-, exo-, macro-, and chronosystem. So when you say the reason you’re like this is because high school was terrible and you lived in a terrible neighborhood, Urie would say, “bet.”
PVEST says that these systems are filtered through your experiences, namely the ways you cope with stress. PVEST says that maybe the next person grew up in the same neighborhood but it wasn’t terrible to them. Maybe they didn’t have the same stressors as you and therefore didn’t need to learn the same coping skills.
These theories come out of developmental psychology. PVEST also draws from racial formation theory, a body of scholarship I’ve spent years studying and applying. Spencer and her colleagues tested the model with Black male high school students, examining not just how they coped with stress, but how they believed teachers perceived them. That matters. Racial formation theory tells us that race is real, but its meaning is constructed. So if a student believes an authority figure assigns particular meaning to his race or gender, that belief becomes part of his developmental process.
While Spencer’s original work focused on Black male students, the framework applies to all of us. Everyone develops within environments. Everyone interprets how they are seen. Everyone builds coping strategies in response.
That’s a lot of theory. So here’s what it means in practice. You are who you are based on your environment AND how you cope with the stressors in your environment including how you believe people are perceiving your race and gender.
Sometimes when I share theory, someone will say, “that’s it?” Well, yeah, sort of. Applied social scientists think of stuff for people to go apply to things…like we did with Navega.
I used a lot of theories when I developed the approach and algorithms for Truth Bridge and Navega. PVEST includes racial formation theory, as I mentioned, but it also parallels stereotype threat and imposter syndrome, and we use those too. I think of it like this: the things you are presenting as part of your admissions really tell me more about your environment and coping skills. But I can change or emphasize those, right? If you learned positive coping skills in a small environment with adults who knew your name, then a small campus in a smaller city is probably better for you. If you’ve spent your time navigating stereotype threat, time for a break and we’re looking at HBCUs.
The tough part here is that I don’t assume. Many non-profits (and a lot of people) that we encounter see people of color and assume a particular environment and set of coping skills. I don’t assume that all Black students had to cope with racism in the same way. I know there are things that we can ask since we know these are likely to have occurred such as access to college-level courses, but I don’t assume the impact is the same.
I don’t assume the impact is the same. If I did, I’d be committing the same error the theory is trying to correct.
Race has meaning. Environment has influence. Stress shapes coping. But none of those things erase individual interpretation. Two Black students can experience racism and emerge with different coping strategies. Two wealthy students can grow up resourced and still feel unmoored.
The theory doesn’t tell me who you are. It tells me where to look.
That’s the difference between categorizing students and actually seeing them. And that’s what makes our strategy different.
