Lived Experiences Of Young People Research Articles

A multidisciplinary paediatric diabetes health care team: perspectives on adolescent care

AbstractThis paper focuses on a qualitative study of the experiences of a multidisciplinary health care team caring for adolescents with type 1 diabetes in a hospital in the North West of England.It builds upon previous research which has explored the lived experiences of young people and their parents/guardians with the aim of better understanding blood glucose control in this age group.Findings emphasise lack of human resources, the importance of effective team working, and the need for meaningful education which acknowledges adolescents' unique and complex social worlds.Given these findings we are now developing a computer‐based ‘Adolescent Diabetes Needs Assessment Tool’ (ADNAT study), with a view to individualising self‐directed education and support. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons.

Using Performative Art to Communicate Research: Dancing Experiences of Psychosis

Senior scientist Katherine Boydell examines the collaborative process between researchers and artists in conveying the lived experiences of young people with first episode psychosis.

Using Performative Art to Communicate Research: Dancing Experiences of Psychosis

Senior scientist Katherine Boydell examines the collaborative process between researchers and artists in conveying the lived experiences of young people with first episode psychosis.

Managing stigma in adolescent HIV: silence, secrets and sanctioned spaces

HIV is conceived as a disease that combines stigma elements of perceived contagion and socially undesirable behaviours. Drawing on in-depth interviews with professional adolescent service providers from Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA, this paper explores HIV stigma and stigma management in the lives of HIV-positive young people. Findings elucidate how additional layers of stigma relating to ‘adolescent rights’ and ‘embodied innocence’ are added to HIV stigma as it is more usually conceived. This study suggests that managing this stigma entails managing silence in the context of the social worlds of the young person, the family and the service provider. Silence emerged as a key theme in the participant narratives and was embedded in the descriptions of young people's lived experiences. Crucially, silence is a product of oppression and inequity but is also a tool for resistance. Silence defends secrets and exists in the spaces, both physical and social, that are created for them in order to manage the stigma in young people's lives. Silences associated with HIV therefore need to be exposed if we are to better understand what HIV truly means to seropositive young people and how ‘silences’ may minimise or exacerbate their experience of HIV stigma inside and outside the context of programmes.

It's not just a method! The epistemic and political work of young people's lifeworlds at the school–prison nexus

In 2008, a New York City‐based youth research collective formed to document the different types of interaction young people have within the securitized space of some of New York City public high schools. This article describes the inquiry methods of this research group, and by examining selected image‐based and written data that youth researchers created of their securitized school grounds, this mixed‐method and participatory action research‐inspired study interrogates to what degree criminal‐justice‐oriented school safety practices affect young people's perceived, conceived and lived experiences with space in schools. The data collection and analysis were guided by the work of Henri Lefebvre (1991) and Edward Soja (1996) whose theoretical framework focuses on the social processes of space production to situate young people's daily lived experiences at school as lifeworlds amidst intensified penalizing school safety and security procedures. This article emphasizes youth‐directed image‐based research of space as both a methodology and epistemology to deeply examine some of the long‐term effects that the school–prison nexus has on young people's educational attainment.

Constructions of Social Exclusion Among Young People From Interface Areas of Northern Ireland

The concept of social exclusion has attracted considerable interest and debate over the past 20 years. It is a multifaceted concept, which has been delineated in a variety of ways by different theorists. This article explores the main defining features of social exclusion, and proceeds to investigate the extent to which these are manifested in practice, in relation to the lived experiences of young people from deprived interface areas of Belfast. These young people are at the cutting edge of the divisions that have blighted Northern Ireland society. This qualitative study used interviews, firstly to ascertain the views of the young people themselves, and, secondly, to gauge the perceptions of community group leaders, training providers and employers who deal closely with them. Marked differences were found between the young people and the adult groups in relation to the social construction of exclusion and its impact on the young people.

Gifted and Growing up in a Low Income fFamily: Mindsets, Resilience, and Interventions

Exploring the lived experiences of young people who are gifted and who come from financially challenging backgrounds may provide insights that lead to effective interventions which enable the potential of this group of individuals to be fully realised. This paper describes the author’s personal experience as a child identified as gifted at school and growing up in a low-income family. It illustrates the impact of a specific and damaging mindset on achievement, attitudes, and actions. Aspects of risk and resilience are explored briefly. Finally, three significant implications for educators and other professionals are identified.

Youth of Color and the City

Youth of Color and the City Matt Delmont (bio) Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908–1969. By Andrew Diamond. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 416 pages. $60.00 (cloth). $24.95 (paper). The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II. By Luis Alvarez. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 336 pages. $34.95 (cloth). $21.95 (paper). Missing: Youth, Citizenship, and Empire after 9/11. By Sunaina Marr Maira. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. 352 pages. $23.95 (paper). Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age. By Philip Kasinitz, John Mollenkopf, Mary Waters, and Jennifer Holdaway. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. 432 pages. $45.00 (cloth). The books under review here highlight the innovative work being done on the histories and contemporary experiences of young people of color. Rather than focusing on youth strictly as a consumption-based subculture, these texts draw together sites such as schools, homes, workplaces, and public spaces, with subjects such as gangs, political engagement, immigration, assimilation, and commercial and grassroots media and popular culture. While these texts are methodologically diverse—drawing on archival research, oral history, media analysis, ethnography, surveys, and quantitative analysis—they are connected by their interest in the everyday lived experiences of young people of color in urban settings. Andrew Diamond’s Mean Streets and Luis Alvarez’s The Power of the Zoot call for urban historians to pay attention to youth by showing how young people shaped and navigated twentieth-century Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Sunaina Maira’s Missing and Philip Kasinitz, John Mollenkopf, Mary Waters, and Jennifer Holdaway’s Inheriting the City chart the successes and obstacles for young people of color in terms of their cultural, political, and economic belonging in present-day New England and New York. Compelling in their own right, the topics examined in these books will become increasingly [End Page 955] relevant for American studies scholars, since demographers project that young people of color will become the majority of their age cohort by 2023.1 The two historians, Diamond and Alvarez, approach youth culture from a comparative ethnic studies perspective. In Mean Streets, Diamond demonstrates how white, black, and Latino youth gangs and peer groups helped to shape the racial geography of Chicago between the 1910s and 1960s. Diamond focuses his study of these youth subcultures on grassroots political action and the formation of racial and ethnic identities. This focus is important because it enables Diamond to show not only how young people came to see themselves as Irish, Polish, Italian, African American, Mexican, or Puerto Rican, but also how they played “leading roles in articulating community identities” and in “defending neighborhood boundaries” (4). Diamond also makes a clear connection between youth subcultures and politics, arguing that “these fighting-gang subcultures served as conduits into the political sphere . . . because they served to magnify racial injustices in the field of everyday life, as well as to articulate and reify ethnic and racial bonds that constituted powerful bases for grassroots mobilization” (8). Diamond emphasizes how young people, by playing essential roles in community formation and collective action, also became integral parts of the political culture of working-class Chicago. One of the strengths of Diamond’s study is that he provides evidence, across a period of more than fifty years, of how youth gangs played highly visible roles both in everyday racial tensions and in large-scale race riots. Diamond begins by looking at the white ethnic (primarily Irish American) athletic clubs who created a culture of gang violence in the 1910s. Hundreds of male social and athletic clubs populated Chicago’s neighborhoods. Most of these clubs functioned as street gangs who exercised their physical and symbolic power through fights over neighborhood turf. This culture of intra-and interethnic gang violence was already well established by the mid-1910s, but as the migration of southern African Americans increased, the athletic clubs’ violence became more antiblack in its orientation. From 1917 to 1919 white gangs bombed twenty-four black homes and vandalized dozens of others. This violence peaked in the Chicago race riot of 1919. The...

BIRDS OF FREEDOM

The article explores how the dominant discourses of identity politics in the Sri Lankan conflict have silenced people in northern Sri Lanka and closed spaces for political participation. In order to understand the discursive processes and their material outcomes, the article addresses in particular the role of young people in northern Sri Lanka and explores their relationship to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The author examines the LTTE's discourse on gender, young people, nationalism, and governance through the lens of two books written separately by Anthon Balasingham and by Adele Balasingham. Birds of Freedom, the LTTE's women's wing, is shown to be an example of how the warring parties have monopolized liberation discourse through the uncompromised nationalism of a militant movement. The article discusses how this dominant discourse informs young people's lived experiences, material realities, and life opportunities for participation as social actors in their communities in the Jaffna peninsula. A particular feature of people's everyday lives in northern Sri Lanka is described as a complex citizenship characterized by the presence of several governing and uncompromising actors to whom people must relate. The latter part of the article analyzes the way young people in the north of Sri Lanka relate to this context of complex citizenship, with particular reference to the LTTE.

Multi-Ethnic Adolescents' Attitudes toward Smoking: A Focus Group Analysis

To explore young, multi-ethnic adolescents' attitudes and influences related to cigarette smoking for the purpose of developing and producing a youth-led, tobacco prevention drama. Focus groups and demographic surveys. Island of Oahu, Hawaii. Fifty-four multi-ethnic youth, ranging in age from 10 to 14 years, participated. The study was promoted in schools with a large representation of Hawaiian, Filipino, and Pacific Islander students. Each of five focus groups was audio-recorded, and an observer recorded extensive notes throughout the sessions. Content analysis consisted of coding focus group notes for recurrent themes and using the audio recording as confirmation. Just more than one quarter (n = 15) of the youth had tried smoking, and two-thirds (n = 35) currently lived with someone who smoked. Participants expressed the feeling of being surrounded by smoking influences at home, in their communities, and at school. Youth were negatively affected by family members' tobacco use, and they desired skills that could enable them to help family members stop using tobacco. Family influences may play an important role in youth attitudes toward tobacco use, especially given the cultural significance of extended family and of filial piety that are reflected in many traditional, Asian and Pacific Islander families. Interventions targeting youth in Asian and Pacific Islander communities should incorporate key cultural references to the extended family and to a respect for elders to establish relevance in the life experiences of young people in these population groups.

Citizenship education and the Ajegbo report: re-imagining a cosmopolitan nation

Following the 2005 London bombings, there is widespread public debate about diversity, integration, and multiculturalism in Britain, including the role of education in promoting national identity and citizenship. In response to official concerns about terrorism, a review panel was invited to consider how ethnic, religious and cultural diversity might be addressed in the school curriculum for England, specifically through the teaching of modern British social and cultural history and citizenship. The resultant Ajegbo report proposes a new strand on 'identity and diversity: living together in the UK', be added to the citizenship education framework. While the report gives impetus to teaching about diversity, it does not strengthen the curriculum framework proposed in the Crick report. It fails to adopt a critical perspective on race or multiculturalism or adequately engage with young people's lived experiences of citizenship within a globalised world. I analyse how the review panel conceptualises identity, democracy and diversity. I then consider its assumptions about racism, human rights, and citizenship education, concluding with reflections on how citizenship education might be developed in the task of re-imagining the nation and meeting the needs of emergent cosmopolitan citizens.

Negotiating Ethno-Cultural Identity: The Experience of Greek and Jewish Youth in Halifax

This paper focuses on the lived experiences of young people growing up Greek Canadian and Jewish Canadian in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It is based on data collected in a pilot study conducted with second-generation Greek and second-, third-, and fourth-generation Jewish youth in Halifax in 2004-05. Most of the existing research on the second generation and beyond lumps together the experiences of different ethnocultural groups. Perhaps even more importantly, the existing research tends to focus almost exclusively on the second- (or third- or fourth-) generation's experiences in major urban centres. In this paper we forge new paths by exploring the experiences of ethnic youth in a smaller Canadian urban centre within a region with low concentrations of immigrant populations and ethnic groups. We thus argue for the importance and effects of the specific place of settlement on ethno-cultural identity. Family and community expectations, relations, and practices, and negotiating family and community norms within the context of the institutional norms and practices in the areas of education, employment, gender, and family relations within the broader frame of Canadian society are highlighted. A comparative analysis between the two groups is adopted throughout.

Biographies of exclusion: poor work and poor transitions

The usefulness of the concept of transition has been hotly contested in Anglophone youth studies over the past decade. A variety of criticisms have been ranged against it, including that it: presumes the continuing predominance of linear, obvious, mainstream pathways to adulthood; excludes wider youth questions in focusing narrowly on educational and employment encounters; prioritises normative and policy‐focused assumptions and de‐prioritises the actual lived experiences of young people; and is no longer a tenable concept, given the extension of youth phase and the blurring of it and ‘adulthood’ as distinct life‐phases. Drawing upon qualitative, longitudinal studies with ‘socially excluded’ young adults, this paper contends with these arguments. The research participants were 186 ‘hard to reach’ young women and men who were growing up in some of England's poorest neighbourhoods, some of whom were followed into their mid to late twenties. The studies confirmed many of the specific criticisms lodged against the idea of transition. Interviewees' lives post‐school were marked by unpredictability, flux and insecurity. Engagement with post‐16 education and training courses was common, despite wide‐spread disaffection from school pre‐16. Typically, these later learning encounters were short‐lived, negatively assessed and un‐related to labour market fortunes. Economic marginality and recurrent unemployment were uniform experiences. ‘Hyper‐conventional’, class cultural orientations to employment drove post‐school transitions, even when these motivations resulted only in low paid, low skill, insecure ‘poor work’. In conclusion, we re‐affirm the value of a broad and long view of youth transitions, situated in a panorama of socio‐economic change. We argue that this sort of conceptualisation of transition is crucial to understanding the twists and turns of individual biographies and the coming together of these in socially structured patterns of inclusion, exclusion and inequality.

Young people, masculinities, religion and race: new social geographies

Ideas about race and racism have been a centrepiece of social geography for as much as 50 years, yet it was not until the 1990s that markers of difference rooted in religion, masculinities and generation achieved the same critical attention. Moreover, while all of these literatures are now well established in the discipline, relatively few studies – within or beyond human geography – have sought to bring them together. Focusing on recent research about race, religion, young people and masculinities, from within human geography as well as from neighbouring disciplines, I suggest various ways in which human geographers might seek to include the experiences, identities and practices of young racialized and religious men in their future research. In engaging with the lived experiences of young people whose voices are usually silenced, often unheard and frequently distorted, this article seeks to explore some of the ways in which masculinities and the experiences of young people may be mediated by the geographies of racism and religion. Initially offering a brief summary of some of the recent trends in the geography of race and racism, religion, youth and masculinities, I then suggest ways in which an agenda for research with young racialized and religious men might be taken forward.

Acknowledging the gap between sex education and the lived experiences of young people: a discussion of Paula Rego's The Pillowman (2004) and other cautionary tales

In this paper I consider the ways that the instrumental and cautionary profile of sex and relationship education is used to regulate the sexuality of young people in the United Kingdom. This regulation is partly a counter to the commodification of sex in the mass media but also a means to reinforce the social and cultural norms that are performed within the binary structure of gender identities as exemplified by the nuclear family. I offer an alternative strategy where works of art become the locus for a discussion of young people's concerns about sexuality. With reference to the recent work of Paula Rego, I examine the imaginary and symbolic space afforded works of art to demonstrate how interpretation can provide insights into the workings of desire, and the way such interpretative acts might enable young people to discuss eroticism. I argue that because this ambiguous space provides a certain distance, sexual norms can be questioned without either the prurient/censorial attitudes of the tabloid press or the clinical/moralising agendas of pedagogic discourse. In other words, within the discursive/hermeneutic space engendered by works of art, young people are able to bypass those instrumental discourses that are unhelpful in the formation of sexual well‐being.

Living with sickle cell disease: the perspective of young people.

The study aimed to explore the lived experience of young people with sickle cell disease as they transferred to adult services. A cross-sectional study using semistructured questionnaires is described. Eleven young people (12-16 years) attending a sickle cell and thalassaemia centre as they approached transition from paediatric to adult services were successfully recruited to the study. Sickle cell disease was reported to interfere with various aspects of their 'normal' lives. Fatigue and pain were common symptoms. Reported adherence to prophylaxis was variable. It was concluded that young people with sickle cell disease require support drawing on a range of expertise and that the medical model of service delivery may not meet all their needs.

Parent’s perceptions of interactions with health professionals in the pathway to gaining a diagnosis of tuberous sclerosis (TS) and beyond

This paper presents selected findings from a qualitative study on the lived experience of young people with tuberous sclerosis (TS) and their families. In-depth interviews with 109 participants from 40 families were undertaken. This paper presents the findings in relation to parents’ interactions with health professionals before, during and after a diagnosis of TS was given. The majority of parents recalled examples of both positive and negative experiences with health professionals. Negative experiences included having to ‘fight’ for the recognition of symptoms and the reluctance of doctors to move on beyond a diagnosis of epilepsy. Attributes valued by parents pre-diagnosis included health professionals showing understanding at diagnosis, flexibility, support, accessibility, time and attention, honesty, reliability, sensitivity and post-diagnosis a willingness to find out and share information and to consult colleagues and other professionals. The interviews indicated that these were not always demonstrated by professionals.

Making the Difference to Sociology of Education: Reflections on family-school and gender relations

In the context of the 1970s, the focus of critical theorists was on education and cultural and social reproduction. Emphasis had shifted from a family-education link to a school-economy link, placing the family as a subsidiary institution in the framing of social inequality. Published in the early 1980s, Making the Difference (Connell et al ., 1982) was a timely and much needed intervention in bringing back into focus the realities of the lived experience of young people, and providing sophisticated theorizing around class and gender relations within and between the family and the school. Social class and gender relations, Connell et al . argued, could be found within the dynamics of family, school, and industrial life simultaneously. Twenty years later, we are reaping the benefits of their analysis in terms of understanding the hegemonizing influences of the school--the many subtle and indirect ways that schools produce (rather than reproduce) class and gendered identities, at the same time recognising the increasing dissonance of gender values within class formations.

The relationship between organisational context and novice workers’ learning

This article reports on findings from a longitudinal study, carried out during 1998–9, of the learning and training experiences of 11 Australian teenagers in their first year of fulltime work. Interviews with the young people over the course of the year were supplemented by interviews with parents, employers, and college teachers where appropriate. The working and training environments, and the learning experiences of the young people are described. The relationship between performance and learning is discussed. The article provides an insight into the lived experiences of young people attempting to learn about work within an organisational context.