Social Justice Youth Development Research Articles

Navigating secondary school: A perspective from trans and non‐binary activists

AbstractGender expansive youth, including trans and non‐binary (TNB) individuals, encounter unique challenges in educational contexts, often marked by hostility, exclusion, and discrimination. This research, adopting the social justice youth development (SJYD) framework, aims to investigate the challenges experienced in Italian secondary schools, amplifying the voices of TNB activists. A total of 15 activists (average age 23.8), comprising 5 trans men, 2 trans women and 8 non‐binary individuals, were recruited. Most identified as White Italian, with one of Italian‐African descent and one multiracial. Interviews collected participants' perceptions of barriers and areas for improvement in school contexts. Reflexive thematic analysis confirmed schools as challenging contexts for TNB identities, highlighting critical flaws in the educational system, such as macro‐ and micro‐aggressions, insufficient knowledge among teachers and staff to support gender expansive students, and a tendency to systematically exclude LGBTQIA+ culture‐related content from curricula. Participants reported engaging in individual and collective activism, striving to adapt and transform educational environments into inclusive spaces for gender identity exploration. Activism stemmed from a sense of responsibility to enhance the well‐being and recognition of the TNB community. Practical implications for school community practices and policies, informed by the SJYD framework in dialogue with participants' experiences, are proposed. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

How Social Justice Shapes Youth Development: Centering Youth Voice across Shifts in Out-of-School Time

Abstract Out-of-school time (OST) has great significance as a youth development space that can support students’ exploration of social justice. Such opportunities for exploration are especially important in times of social distress and upheaval, such as those experienced during the school shutdowns and racial unrest associated with the global pandemic. Framed in a context of inequities for educationally marginalized youth, this qualitative case study provides a glimpse into the OST experiences of students before and after the onset of COVID-19. Authors explore navigating justice-related topics with youth in both an in-person and virtual format of the OST program. In addition to interviewing youth participants, the authors use a critical reflexivity approach to examine experiences facilitating OST spaces that serve youth of color. Findings point to the importance of youth-driven programming that centers youth voice and reimagines engagement for youth in OST programs. The discussion highlights implications for education and social work professionals in the service of social justice youth development outcomes.

Who has to act?A qualitative exploration of emerging adults'critical consciousness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic and violence against people of Color during 2020 brought troubling racial inequities to the forefront of American discourse. In line with the Critical Consciousness (CC) and Social Justice Youth Development (SJYD) frameworks, emerging adults may have developed their capacity for critical reflection, motivation, and action against systemic inequities. We drew from interviews with 27 emerging adults (ages 18-23) across the US, and used thematic analysis to explore differences in their reflections, motivations to act, and actions based on their racial/ethnic identification. We found nuanced variability in their critical reflections based on self, social, or global awareness and experiences of marginalization. White and Asian emerging adults used vague language or expressed feeling their reflections were insufficient. Black and Latinx emerging adults emphasized the importance of education and raising awareness. Although all emerging adults took action based on a sense of duty, few engaged in critical action; decisions to take in-person action varied based on whether they viewed racism or COVID-19 as a greater threat. Findings demonstrate that emerging adults'experiences of racialization may have related to their CC development. We share implications for community psychologists conducting antiracist research addressing White fragility and dismantling racial hierarchy.

Urban ecojustice education: Transformative learning outcomes with high school service learners

This case study investigated the outcomes of an environmental service learning program that incorporated pedagogical components taught within the transformative learning and environmental justice frameworks at an urban ecoliteracy and environmental justice center in Albany, New York. Authors conducted participant observation and gathered data from surveys, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and journaling with high school, college student, and community stakeholders in an Ecojustice Summer Youth Employment Program. In the short-term, service learners adopted enhanced pro-environmental behaviors, an heightened awareness of community environmental issues, and an increased interest in civic engagement, with multiple participants returning for consecutive service periods. Transformative learning outcomes were documented in relation to affirming/changes in longer-term academic, life, and career paths. This research contributes to the field of experiential environmental education that advocates for a better understanding of the outcomes of pedagogies that emphasize social justice youth development, issues of power and justice, and the enhancement of social action and critical consciousness.

Back in on the Outside: Racialized Exclusion at Chicago's School/Prison Nexus and the Promise of Student Voice

Most students released from detention never return to school. This study uses youth participatory action research and Social Justice Youth Development Theory to explore the experiences of those who do. Findings demonstrate that formerly incarcerated students want to return to school but face institutionalized resistance that amounts to racialized exclusion, violence, and state-sanctioned neglect at Chicago's school/prison nexus. We offer recommendations on how to “reverse” the school-to-prison pipeline by shifting educational and youth policies from surveillance and control to care, harm reduction, and greater youth and community oversight; shifts already arising out of student and educator activism, including through YPAR.

The trans youth justice project: a political education and leadership development program

Research has demonstrated that systemic transphobia and cissexism harms transgender youth in terms of social, educational, and health outcomes. All too often, research and policy emphasizes vulnerability among trans youth in a way that denies their capabilities as agents of change or active participants in their liberation. This article analyzes the development of Trans Youth Justice Project, a political education and youth leadership development program for trans youth ages 15–22. Based in principles of gender minority stress and social justice youth development, the 6-week remote program aims to increase the capacity and resilience of trans youth, develop youth leaders, and contribute to addressing social, educational, and health inequalities. We conducted a formative program evaluation of 2 cycles of the program with a total of 25 youth. Pre- and post-test surveys indicated increased feelings of belongingness to a trans community. Follow-up interviews highlighted the impact the program had on skills for social justice, self-efficacy, and community connection. We offer suggestions for implementing the open-source program more broadly.

Increasing Latinx Youth Engagement Across Different Types of After-School Organizations

This article explores how Latinx youth engagement practices vary across different types of out-of-school organizations that successfully sustain Latinx youth participation. Data are drawn from a qualitative study of 13 California organizations that each emphasize one of 3 missions: social justice youth development, “one-stop” wrap-around services, or academic enrichment. While all organizations are found to adhere to a core set of Latinx youth development guiding principles, there are nuanced differences in how they are operationalized in practice across varied organization types, reflecting variation in terms of discourse, scale, and scope. These findings highlight the need for youth development practitioners and collaborating researchers to understand the context of youth-serving organizations when identifying and implementing promising practices and extension programs.

Cultivating True Leaders: A Social Justice Curriculum for Youth Development Programs

In recent years, there have been increasing calls to intentionally center diversity, equity, and inclusion within positive youth development programs. True Leaders: Culture, Power and Justice is a 4-H curriculum designed to engage young people in understanding and applying social justice concepts with the ultimate aim of nurturing their sense of self-efficacy as they work to find solutions to pressing social issues. The True Leaders curriculum is shaped by the Five Cs of positive youth development—confidence, competence, connection, caring, and character—and a social justice youth development framework. Each lesson is grounded in the critical experiential learning model, which seeks to move participants through a process of hands-on learning about social justice concepts, critical reflection, and, ultimately, collective action. The True Leaders curriculum is intended for use with middle and high school-aged youth.

Increasing the Capacity of Youth-Serving Professionals: Evaluation of the Online Social Justice Approach to Youth Engagement Course

There has been increased commitment to youth engagement in public health. However, those seeking to engage youth often lack the knowledge and skills to sustain meaningful youth engagement, constraining the potential positive impacts. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of training programs for practitioners who seek to increase their capacity to engage youth authentically. Given the need to train adults who work with youth, we developed and evaluated an online course to support public health and social service professionals in a social justice approach to youth engagement. During this 7-week course, grounded in social justice youth development theory, participants analyzed how power, privilege, and oppression operated in their own lives and engaged in conversations about disrupting systems of power that oppress young people. Fifty-eight participants completed the course as part of four cohorts, and 41 participants completed a survey (71% response rate) at all four time points (pre, post, 3-month, and 6-month follow-up). Paired t tests showed that participants experienced significant changes ( p < .0001) in their confidence to implement practices and curricula associated with social justice youth development, critique and provide evidence-informed recommendations to their organizational setting, and describe and disrupt adultism—the systematic subordination of youth by adults. Effects were sustained 6 months post course. Qualitative responses to survey items further supported the positive benefit of the course on their professional youth work. This course provides a promising model for training public health and social service professionals on how to authentically work with youth through a social justice lens.

Leading With Youth of Color: Organizing for Educational Change

In the United States, young people of color are under attack. The school-to-prison pipeline, poverty, and racism are some of the systems of oppression that young people of color navigate. The challenging conditions that youth of color face have historically been met by their powerful resistance. Young people of color have fought for educational equity for decades. In the community in which this research study was situated, social justice youth development (SJYD) workers supported youth as they resisted unjust educational policies. I set out to answer the research question: In urban communities, how do youth workers engage adolescent youth in social justice activism? I found that adult youth workers at People for Change, a SJYD organization, maintained a consistent and multi-layered approach to supporting youth as they engaged in social justice activism. This paper highlights the ways in which adult youth workers (a) networked adult and youth supporters, (b) engaged in action, and (c) co-constructed knowledge with young people of color.

‘And school won’t teach me that!’ Urban youth activism programs as transformative sites for critical adolescent learning

ABSTRACT To challenge deficit discourses and victim narratives of youth marginalized due to their race, gender, class, age, and/or sexuality, child and youth service providers can build on young people’s agency by implementing creative, radical, and social-justice-oriented services. Youth activism programs offer such opportunities by supporting young people in understanding and working toward dismantling the marginalization they face. These programs can also offer supplemental learning opportunities usually missing from schools, stimulate positive identity development, foster youth civic agency, and motivate young people to agitate for social change. However, while many studies have described what youth do in activism sites, what youth learn from activist engagement is less evident in the literature. In this study, we analyzed focus group data from adolescents participating in six adult-supported youth activism community programs, in an urban United States context (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), to investigate what youth learned as they developed critical consciousness, or the skills required to analyze and then act on oppressive social phenomena. Rooted in a Social Justice Youth Development framework, findings suggest that through their participation, young activists developed increased self-, social-, and global-awareness, while also learning additional important skills (e.g. technical skills, interpersonal skills, and the benefits of creating a network).

Leisure Behind Bars: The Realities of COVID-19 for Youth Connected to the Justice System

The introduction of the coronavirus in any community is detrimental, however for correctional institutions the effects can be especially devastating. In an effort to reduce the impact of the virus, many locales have begun releasing youth back home. However, for young people experiencing the highest degree of constraint, the ability to choose how to spend their leisure has become even more restrained in light of COVID-19 due to increased restrictions and decreased resources. This essay exposes the reality of leisure during the corona pandemic for youth with justice system involvement through firsthand interviews with and by youth involved with Arts for Incarcerated Youth in Los Angeles. These personal narratives are contextualized with a comprehensive policy evaluation of leisure and recreation programming for juvenile justice facilities and theoretical implications according to Social Justice Youth Development (Ginwright & Cammarota, 2002; León et al., 2019).

Urban Youth Scholars: Cultivating Critical Global Leadership Development through Youth-Led Justice-Oriented Research.

Educational researchers and practitioners have cited the need for new directions in youth leadership studies as it relates to globalization. Globalization is considered one of the most important economic, cultural, and social trends of the last century, yet there is much debate about the educational curricula that best support the development of global leadership in youth. Most existing global-focused programs (i.e. IB/AP) engender grave inequities in access and opportunities, particularly for urban youth, and do not often allow youth to critically interrogate the myriad injustices that plague the world. There is, however, a burgeoning body of scholarship centered on critical youth studies as a transformative process for youth development. This phenomenological case study shares the findings from the Urban Youth Scholars program, an after-school program focused on cultivating the global leadership development of five youth in the program. This study utilized a Social Justice Youth Development framework to explore the development of the youth’s self, social/community, and global awareness through critical consciousness building and critical social analysis. Findings depict youth perceptions of global leadership development and include implications for scholars and practitioners for centering youth-led justice-oriented research as a tool for global leadership development.

The Role of Youth Voice in This Special Issue

Youth voice has become a very popular term in youth development research and practice. However, there is a lack of critical dialogue surrounding the role of youth in the peer-review research process. This article explores the intersections of youth voice, marginalization in the peer-review research process, and the importance of utilizing a social justice youth development framework when reading the youth essays selected for this special issue.

Rights of Passage Programs: A Culturally Relevant Youth Development Program for Black Youth

One cannot have a conversation about social justice without first understanding injustice and its impact. In the case of youth development, it has been repeatedly noted that Black youth living in the United States face additional race-related challenges that can impede their social, educational, and mental health (Erikson, 1994). Oftentimes, institutions such as public schools, recreation agencies, and the justice system contribute to these challenges: first, by implementing policies that further distance Black youth from the outcomes achieved by white youth. Second, by failing to provide culturally relevant practices that meet the specific needs of Black youth.Recognizing these disparities, grassroots movements in Black communities adopted Rites of Passage (ROP) programs as a means of preparing Black youth for adulthood in the United States of America. The primary goal of ROP programs is to neutralize the negative patterns induced by the social forces that continue to marginalize African Americans (Warfield-Coppock, 1992). Theoretical support for the ROP model can be found in the social justice youth development framework which emphasizes the importance of helping youth recognizing the traumatic histories associated with factors such as racism, helping youth heal through engagement in culturally appropriate programs and services, and assisting them in developing a critical consciousness for moving forward (Ginwright, 2010). Using an Afrocentric lens, this ROP model has been found to provide protective factors for African American youth while promoting their positive development (Pinckney, Outley, Blake, & Kelly, 2011). Furthermore, in recent years, faith-based organizations, parks and recreation districts, and schools have begun implementing ROP programs for Black youth. Still, this is an understudied concept generally and has gone virtually unnoticed in leisure studies (Pinckney et al., 2011). Reflecting on data collected during a national scan of ROP programs, the authors 1) provide an overview of the current state of Black youth living in the United States, 2) highlight the potential of ROP programs to contribute to positive youth development, 3) introduce seven characteristics of ROP programs that contribute to improved outcomes for Black youth, and 4) provide managerial and research implications that can assist in expanding our understanding of ROP programs. Altogether the findings from this scan provide a path for assisting Black youth in overcoming systemic barriers to their development. Subscribe to JPRA

Be(com)ing Critical Scholars: The Emergence of Urban Youth Scholar Identities Through Research and Critical Civic Praxis

This phenomenological case study examined the emergence of critical scholar identities among five urban youth who participated in a 2-year critical research fellows program. The program was grounded on the theoretical framework of Social Justice Youth Development, which included the development of self, social/community, and global awareness leading to critical consciousness and social action. Findings depict the personal and programmatic components of nurturing urban youth’s critical scholar identities and contribute to the growing body of literature in critical youth studies and scholar identity development with marginalized urban youth.

Beyond Expectations: From Foster Children to Foster Parents

Little research exists on long-term outcomes for adults who have been in foster care as children, with even less research on former foster children who become foster parents themselves. Foster care and maltreatment exert significant independent and interdependent impacts on youth outcomes. While traditional research often focuses on predicting and mitigating negative outcomes, new studies indicate success using a positive youth development approach that is strengths-based targeting positive outcomes, such as strong empathy skills. These outcomes align with the demonstrated skills that lead to successful foster parenting. The current review examines the possible transition from foster child to foster parent through the lenses of parenting styles, attachment, and family systems theories, as well as positive youth development and social justice youth development theories. The authors propose utilizing theory and proven interventions to address foster youths’ attachment and emotional development needs, recognize positive outcomes for youth in foster care, and employ evidence-based training programs in place for at-risk parent groups to help break the cycle that leads to displacement. The need for more research to assist foster children, parents, case workers, and systems to promote healthy youth development is discussed.

“Project awareness:” Fostering social justice youth development to counter youth experiences of housing instability, trauma and injustice

Housing instability poses a challenge for the positive developmental trajectories of youth. Nevertheless, youth possess the knowledge, fortitude and resiliency to meet the needs and challenges of navigating housing instability. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) methods coupled with Social Justice Youth Development (SJYD) were utilized with 6 youth experiencing housing instability accessing educational, life skill, and developmental services from a drop-in center. Participants were active members of youth-centered research workshops. Findings reveal the need for increased funding that secures community-based, positive youth development services; an open, fluid workshop structure to offer consistency, yet flexibility for highly mobile youth; and safe spaces in which youth can explore and analyze the socio-political contexts shaping their experiences to inform their approaches in navigating various social systems and structures.

Meaningful Youth Engagement Through Media Usage

Guided by the literature on youth engagement and media studies globally, this conceptual article examines the key engagement-related notions involving youth and media usage. A central argument of the article is that meaningful youth engagement can be considered a key concept in describing youth's use of hybrid media that reflects the diversity of youth populations and their media usage. Specifically, such media-involved youth engagement can be seen as an important meaning-making activity within youth's lives that can potentially build social and cultural capital, including through social relationships and youth-led political activism. Aligned theoretically with positive youth development (PYD) and social justice youth development (SJYD) frameworks, this article suggests that youth's hybrid media usage can be seen as a meaningful youth-engagement activity that can provide opportunities to promote skills/competences leading to positive development, and to address human rights and other social justice issues in an empowered, meaningful way.

Insights on Inspirational Education for “High-Risk” Youth Informed by Participatory Action Research (PAR) on Youth Engagement: Short Communication

This short communication provides our insights into how or in what ways educators can more effectively support aspiration of at-risk/high-risk youth toward meaningful education. These are informed by the key learnings from our ongoing youth engagement research. Those insights emphasize the importance of meaningful engagement of youth through building a positive relationship with youth from a strengths-based perspective to mobilize youth’s talents into our collaborative engagement efforts in order to effectively support “high-risk” youth and aspire their educational pathways. Conceptually, our work aligns with the paradigms of positive youth development (PYD) and social justice youth development (SJYD). Practically, our research project represents an “anti-oppressive practice” in itself because the project engages youth as important contributors to a social/system change, especially, the role of our youth leaders in our team as a conduit for mobilizing youth views and actions on social justice issues (e.g., oppression, marginalization, social exclusion/inclusion, human rights, empowerment).