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"Youth Agencies"
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YPAR and Critical Epistemologies: Rethinking Education Research
Knowledges from academic and professional research-based institutions have long been valued over the organic intellectualism of those who are most affected by educational and social inequities. In contrast, participatory action research (PAR)projects are collective investigatio that rely on indigenous knowledge, combined with the desire to take individual and/or collective action. PAR with youth (YPAR) engages in rigorous research inquines and represe a radical effort in education research to value the inquiry-based knowledge production of the youth who directly experience the educational contexts that scholars endeavor to understand. In this chapter, we outline thefoundations of YPAR and examine the distinct epistemobgical, methodological, and pedagogical contributions of an interdisciplinary corpus of YPAR studie and scholarship. We outline the origins and disciplines of YPAR and make a case for its role in education research, discuss its contnbutions to thefield and the tensions and possibilities YPAR across disciplines, and close by proposing a YPAR cntical-epistemological framewo that centers youth and their communities, abngside practitioners, schokrs, and researchers, a knowledge producers and change agents for socialjustice.
Journal Article
Relocating the Deficit: Reimagining Black Youth in Neoliberal Times
After-school community-based spaces are often recognized in political and educational discourse as institutions that \"save\" and \"rescue\" Black youth. Such rhetoric perpetuates an ethos of pathology that diminishes the agency of youth and their communities. Through ethnographic research with 20 youth workers at a college completion and youth development after-school program in the urban Northeast, findings indicate that tensions arise as youth workers strive to reimagine Black youth in humanizing ways despite pressures to frame them as broken and in need of fixing to compete for funding with charter schools. Data also reveal deep tensions in youth workers' experiences as they critique neoliberal reforms that shape their work; yet, at the same time, they are forced to hold students to markers of success defined by neoliberal ideals. These tensions result in youth workers downplaying the social, cultural, and emotional dimensions of their work.
Journal Article
Promoting Youth Agency Through Dimensions of Gay–Straight Alliance Involvement and Conditions that Maximize Associations
Gay–Straight Alliances (GSAs) may promote wellbeing for sexual minority youth (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning youth) and heterosexual youth. We considered this potential benefit of GSAs in the current study by examining whether three GSA functions—support/socializing, information/resource provision, and advocacy—contributed to sense of agency among GSA members while controlling for two major covariates, family support and the broader school LGBT climate. The sample included 295 youth in 33 Massachusetts GSAs (69 % LGBQ, 68 % cisgender female, 68 % white;
M
age
= 16.06 years). Based on multilevel models, as hypothesized, youth who received more support/socializing, information/resources, and did more advocacy in their GSA reported greater agency. Support/socializing and advocacy distinctly contributed to agency even while accounting for the contribution of family support and positive LGBT school climate. Further, advocacy was associated with agency for sexual minority youth but not heterosexual youth. Greater organizational structure enhanced the association between support/socializing and agency; it also enhanced the association between advocacy and agency for sexual minority youth. These findings begin to provide empirical support for specific functions of GSAs that could promote wellbeing and suggest conditions under which their effects may be enhanced.
Journal Article
For Girls to Feel Safe
This article explores the efforts of two girls to use STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) knowledge and practice to empower themselves and their peers amid threats of sexual violence against them. Drawing on the feminist construct of intersectionality and social practice theory, we examine how these girls called on intersecting knowledge, practices, people, and scales of activity (different scopes of action) to reclaim space, voice, and peace in the face of violence and fear, scaffolded by adults who became their partners for change.
Journal Article
\So Much of My Very Soul\: How Youth Organizers' Identity Projects Pave Agentive Pathways for Civic Engagement
Neoliberal market logic positions youth as either commodities produced and marketed by private institutions or consumers for whose business those institutions are competing, a paradigm that narrows pathways for youth participation in civic and political institutions by restricting youth agency to participation in markets. However, youth organizing groups recast what we imagine as the public domain, how public institutions are governed, and who takes part in this governance. In this life histories study of youth organizers, the participants' organizer identities occupied intellectual, emotional, social, and temporal space in their life worlds, mediating their agentive participation in an increasingly neoliberalized world. This article considers the implications of how youth involvement in social movements shapes identity and agency in a neoliberal sociopolitical context.
Journal Article
Family Closeness and Mentor Formation among Black Youth
The current study examined how primary caregivers’ close relationships with adult relatives may have influenced their adolescent children’s formation of familial mentoring relationships. Using survey data from 216 Black American youth (59% girls), quantitative findings indicated that when primary caregivers had more
really
close relationships with adult relatives, their children also reported more
really
close relationships with adult relatives. In turn, having more
really
close relationships with adult kin was associated with youth having a familial mentor. Interviews were conducted with a subsample of 24 youth, along with their primary caregiver, and an additional adult family member (72 interviews in total). Qualitative analyses were conducted to better understand how primary caregivers may facilitate relationships between their children and adult relatives. Qualitative findings indicated that primary caregivers both directly and indirectly facilitated these relationships by modeling relational closeness and permitting interactions among their children and adult relatives. Importantly, qualitative findings also highlighted the role of youth agency in creating and maintaining close intergenerational bonds. Overall, findings suggest that primary caregivers may play an influential role in shaping the nature of their children’s relationships with adult relatives. Moreover, findings suggest that youth who lack close ties with adult relatives may benefit from intentional efforts by their primary caregivers to facilitate these relationships.
Highlights
Primary caregivers’ closeness with adult relatives may indirectly influence Black adolescents’ familial mentor formation.
Size and strength of primary caregivers’ and adolescents’ close ties with adult relatives may promote familial mentor presence.
Primary caregivers directly and indirectly facilitate close bonds among their children and adult relatives.
Youth agency also may facilitate close intergenerational family relationships.
Journal Article
Holding It Together? Professional Perspectives on the Role of Relationships when Relocating Young People due to Extra-familial Harm
When young people come to harm in extra-familial contexts, professionals may move them a distance from their home community to protect them, and in doing so disrupt relationships in which they have encountered harm. However, relocations can also fracture young people’s protective relationships with family, peers, and professionals; relationships that have been positioned as targets for intervention in cases of extra-familial harm. The extent to which these relationships are considered during relocations is under-explored. Utilising semi-structured interviews with 16 social work professionals in England and Wales, we assessed their accounts of using relationships prior to, during, and following relocations in cases of extra-familial harm. Three themes emerged: using relationships during relocations to provide consistency, to collaborate, and to create safety. Professional accounts prioritised young people’s relationships with practitioners, over relationships with families, peers, and their wider communities, when using/seeking opportunities to offer consistency and to collaborate on safety plans. They also depicted a struggle to engage with the complex web of family, peer, and community relationships associated to young people’s protection in both their home communities and those they had been moved to; relationships that were critical for creating safety. Implications for practice and future research are discussed, highlighting the potential merits of offering integrated research and practice frameworks that hold together young people’s relationships with families, peers, communities, and professionals, in response to extra-familial harm.
Journal Article
The Impact of Enhancing Students' Social and Emotional Learning: A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Universal Interventions
This article presents findings from a meta-analysis of 213 school-based, universal social and emotional learning (SEL) programs involving 270,034 kindergarten through high school students. Compared to controls, SEL participants demonstrated significantly improved social and emotional skills, attitudes, behavior, and academic performance that reflected an 11-percentile-point gain in achievement. School teaching staff successfully conducted SEL programs. The use of 4 recommended practices for developing skills and the presence of implementation problems moderated program outcomes. The findings add to the growing empirical evidence regarding the positive impact of SEL programs. Policy makers, educators, and the public can contribute to healthy development of children by supporting the incorporation of evidence-based SEL programming into standard educational practice.
Journal Article
CSRP's Impact on Low-Income Preschoolers' Preacademic Skills: Self-Regulation as a Mediating Mechanism
Based on theoretically driven models, the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) targeted low-income children's school readiness through the mediating mechanism of self-regulation. The CSRP is a multicomponent, cluster-randomized efficacy trial implemented in 35 Head Start-funded classrooms (N = 602 children). The analyses confirm that the CSRP improved low-income children's self-regulation skills (as indexed by attention/impulse control and executive function) from fall to spring of the Head Start year. Analyses also suggest significant benefits of CSRP for children's preacademic skills, as measured by vocabulary, letter-naming, and math skills. Partial support was found for improvement in children's self-regulation as a hypothesized mediator for children's gains in academic readiness. Implications for programs and policies that support young children's behavioral health and academic success are discussed.
Journal Article