Youth Voice Research Articles

Working with and engaging in recreation and sport research with youth who live on the margins

ABSTRACT Working collaboratively with youth who live on the margins in recreation and sport research provides unique opportunities and challenges for both participants and researchers. This paper aims to highlight methodological challenges from a recent collaborative sport and recreation research project with youth in a Western Canadian city. Guided by key principles of youth-led participatory action research (YPAR), we discuss challenges with (a) power-sharing and mutual respect, (b) development of meaningful connections, and (c) facilitating space for youth voice. Our intent is not to offer simple, all-encompassing solutions to such challenges, but to outline the processes of how our team negotiated such challenges. The insights gained through our work may provide practical tools for researchers and community members interested in working with and engaging in research with youth at risk to address social injustices.

A group-based mental health intervention for young people living with HIV in Tanzania: results of a pilot individually randomized group treatment trial

BackgroundIncreasing numbers of young people living with HIV (YPLWH) have unaddressed mental health challenges. Such challenges are associated with poor antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence and high mortality. Few evidence-based mental health interventions exist to improve HIV outcomes among YPLWH.MethodsThis pilot group treatment trial individually randomized YPLWH from two clinical sites in Tanzania, evaluated acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary effectiveness of a mental health intervention, Sauti ya Vijana (SYV; The Voice of Youth), was compared to the local standard-of-care (SOC) for improving ART adherence and virologic suppression. Enrolled YPLWH were 12–24 years of age and responded to mental health and stigma questionnaires, self-reported adherence, objective adherence measures (ART concentration in hair), and HIV RNA at baseline and 6-months (post-intervention). Feasibility and acceptability were evaluated, and potential effectiveness was assessed by comparing outcomes between arms using mixed effects modeling.ResultsBetween June 2016 and July 2017, 128 YPLWH enrolled; 105 were randomized and 93 (55 in SYV) followed-up at 6-months and were thereby included in this analysis. Mean age was 18.1 years; 51% were female; and 84% were HIV-infected perinatally. Attendance to intervention sessions was 86%; 6-month follow-up was 88%, and fidelity to the protocol approached 100%. Exploratory analyses of effectiveness demonstrated self-reported adherence improved by 7.3 percentage points (95% CI: 2.2, 12.3); and the pooled standard deviation for all ART concentration values increased by 0.17 units (95% CI: − 0.52, 0.85) in the SYV arm compared to SOC. Virologic suppression rates (HIV RNA < 400 copies/mL) at baseline were 65% in both arms but increased to 75% in the SYV arm while staying the same in the SOC arm (RR 1.13; 95% CI: 0.94, 1.36).ConclusionsYPLWH often have poor HIV outcomes, making interventions to improve outcomes in this population critical. This pilot trial of the Tanzania-based SYV intervention demonstrated trends towards improvement in ART adherence and virologic outcomes among YPLWH, supporting efforts to scale the intervention into a fully-powered effectiveness trial.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02888288. Registered August 9, 2016. Retrospectively registered as first participant enrolled June 16, 2016.

Centering Youth Voices in Evaluation through Photovoice: Examining the Food Literacy Project

Centering Youth Voices in Evaluation through Photovoice: Examining the Food Literacy Project

Absent Voices: Women and Youth in Communal Land Governance. Reflections on Methods and Process from Exploratory Research in West and East Africa

An increasing number of African States are recognizing customary land tenure. Yet, there is a lack of research on how community rights are recognized in legal and policy frameworks, how they are implemented in practice, and how to include marginalized groups. In 2018–2019, we engaged in collaborative exploratory research on governing natural resources for food sovereignty with social movement networks, human rights lawyers and academics in West and East Africa. In this article, we reflect on the process and methods applied to identify research gaps and partners (i.e., two field visits and regional participatory workshops in Mali and Uganda), with a view to share lessons learned. In current debates on the recognition and protection of collective rights to land and resources, we found there is a need for more clarity and documentation, with customary land being privatized and norms rapidly changing. Further, the voices of women and youth are lacking in communal land governance. This process led to collaborative research with peasant and pastoralist organizations in Kenya, Tanzania, Mali and Guinea, with the aim to achieve greater self-determination and participation of women and youth in communal land governance, through capacity building, participatory research, horizontal dialogues and action for social change.

A roadmap for intergenerational leadership in planetary health

A roadmap for intergenerational leadership in planetary health

Kinship navigator program development: Listening to family, youth, and advocate voice

ABSTRACT Kinship caregivers are relatives or close friends who assume caregiving responsibilities due to a variety of unexpected (and sometimes traumatic) circumstances. While many kinship care arrangements happen outside the child welfare system, kinship care also forms an increasing percentage of all child welfare placements and is distinct from traditional non-relative foster parenting. Kinship placements can promote family and cultural continuity and better outcomes for children. However, they also present unique dynamics and stressors, and could significantly benefit from a specific array of social supports and economic resources. This study describes how a partnership-based research project by the state child welfare agency and university partners informed the development of a model for Oregon's Kinship Navigator Program. Researchers gathered statewide input from a diverse array of caregivers, youth in care, and kinship caregiver advocates. Focus groups and key informant interviews were conducted to identify the gaps and needs of Oregon's kinship caregivers. Eleven emergent themes were identified. Recommendations are provided for integrating themes into kinship navigator programs.

The Music Learner Voice: A Systematic Literature Review and Framework

Since approximately 30 years, we are witnessing a re-emergent interest in learner voice from researchers, teachers, policymakers, and students themselves. This widespread movement foreshadows the potential for a shift of paradigm from a unilateral top-down directivity to an inclusive and dialogical decision-making process in school systems. Youth voice is crucial to reimagine education from a global, multi-stakeholder perspective, which can foster student engagement and promote meaningful learning experience. While the interest on the learner voice has burgeoned recently in the field of music education, the body of literature in this field is still relatively small, and its impact in the classroom and policies is limited. That said, a few research studies have been led to study specifically the learner voice in both in- and out-of-school contexts. However, so far, no systematic attempt to integrate these findings into a broader framework, depicting the diversity and the commonalities of the young learner voice in music education, has been made. To bridge this gap, we realize a systematic literature review of the research studies that are capturing the essence of young music learner voice, a corpus mostly comprised of narrative and storytelling studies. A thematic analysis is carried out to explore how young music learners describe their own musical experiences and meaning-making in informal and formal musical contexts. The results emerging from this systematic literature review are organized into a framework representing young learners’ perspectives on what they like and dislike about their musical experience. Practical implications resulting from this analysis are proposed for innovative pedagogical approaches and policies in music education, where the learner voice is inclusively engaged into a dialogical decision-making process. Finally, avenues for promoting a more significant inclusion of learner voice in music education and research are also explored.

The Cost of Youth Voices: Comparing the Feasibility of Youth GO Against Focus Groups

Despite the value and impact of meaningfully engaging youth within evaluation and research, many barriers to their engagement within community-based projects exist. In light of these barriers, Youth Generate and Organize (Youth GO) is a participatory approach for integrating youth in research and evaluation that responds to the practical limitations and constraints within community contexts. In this study, we examine the feasibility and saliency of Youth GO, by comparing this approach against traditional focus groups, an established and engaging qualitative method. To compare these two approaches, we implemented a field-based double-blind active comparison trial whereby facilitators and youth were assigned to participate in one of two conditions—Youth GO or a focus group. We examined both conditions on implementation fidelity, implementation cost, and self-reported perceptions from adult facilitators and youth perspectives. Results indicate that when compared to focus groups, Youth GO represents an equally effective—albeit more cost and time efficient—participatory qualitative method for researchers and practitioners that desire to collaborate with youth. Insights from the current study aim to foster the advancement of methods that engage youth in research and evaluation yet respond to the needs and resources present within community settings.

Critical affective civic literacy: A framework for attending to political emotion in the social studies classroom

Heightened political polarization challenges civic educators seeking to prepare youth as citizens who can navigate affective boundaries. Current approaches to civic education do not yet account for the emotional basis of citizenship. This paper presents an argument for critical affective literacy in civic education classrooms. Drawing from concepts and theories in critical emotion studies, affective citizenship, and agonistic political theory, critical affective civic literacy challenges the rationalistic bent of civic education, and offers instructional strategies for educating the political emotions of students. The voices of late-arrival migrant youth enacting affective citizenship are featured in order to help illuminate the contributions of critical affective literacy to social studies research and practice.

The Voices of “At Risk” Young People About Services They Received: A Systematic Literature Review

ABSTRACT In Australia young people who are at risk of offending have attracted much media and policy attention. In recent times, policy reform has seen increased funding for social services delivery to support young people at risk of entering, or are currently in, the juvenile justice system. However, there is limited literature that explores how young people experience services delivered to them. This article reports on a systematic literature review exploring the voices of children and youth on social service delivery for young people who have offended or are at risk of offending. The review aimed to identify English language publications in the fifteen-year period from 2004 to 2018, critique their methodological quality, and analyse and describe the findings of identified studies. Through a search of electronic social sciences databases twelve (n = 12) eligible publications were identified, including six qualitative studies, one quantitative study and five reports. The review highlighted a scarcity of research on this topic but provided evidence about how young people who are at risk of offending experienced social services, and their recommendations for effective service delivery. IMPLICATIONS Practitioners need to create supportive, caring, and respectful environments that facilitate young people’s agency and self-determination. Young people need information and clarification but may not always ask for it. Experiences of racism need to be acknowledged and racist attitudes actively addressed.

Empowering Youth to Build BRIDGES: Youth Leadership in Suicide Prevention

Suicide is a prevalent health issue for youth and understanding youth experiences is critical for the development of effective prevention strategies. Although youth perceptions regarding suicide are relatively well studied, there is a paucity of youth voices in the planning, design, facilitation, and implementation of suicide prevention research. This study examines youth perceptions of suicide prevention through a community-academic partnership with the Youth Council for Suicide Prevention (YCSP). Working together as co-researchers, the YCSP conducted a modified Group Level Assessment with over 200 youth to understand youth perspectives on suicide prevention. The findings were used by the council to inform outreach and prevention activities that directly affect YCSP members and their peers.

Becoming eventful: making the ‘more-than’ of a youth activist conference matter

ABSTRACT This paper theorises the speculative process of how an arts-based online youth activist resource, AGENDA (www.agendaonline.co.uk) is becoming eventful and re-mattering youth voice on gender and sexual violence. Utilising the concept of the ‘cwrdd’ – a Welsh word for gatherings made, found and stumbled upon – we explore how our AGENDA cwrdds attune to, nurture and platform a range of micro-political moments across performances and workshops that entangle human and non-human participants. Inspired by Erin Manning’s concept of the ‘more-than’, we illustrate how the cwrdds carry the past-present-future potentials of what has mattered and is mattering to young people.

Reimagining Attawapiskat: Indigenous youth voices, community engagement and mixed-media storytelling

Widely circulating textual and visual discourses that represent communities shape public perception and awareness. This article discusses a research collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and artists to reflect on co-creating the Reimagining Attawapiskat project with youth artists. Attawapiskat is an Indigenous community that became the focus of widespread media attention following several State of Emergency declarations due to factors ranging from inhabitable housing conditions to escalating suicide attempts. Informed by Indigenous storytelling research methods and arts-based community-engaged research, the mixed-media storytelling approach advanced here aims to challenge and interrupt mainstream media narratives that frame Attawapiskat as a troubled community constantly in crisis. This collaboration contends with the shadows of Canada’s settler-colonial context through community stories that counter hegemonic portrayals. Reimagining Attawapiskat sheds light on the nuances of community health in Attawapiskat through a collection of youth voices and place-based digital stories that centre Cree life, well-being and culture.

Making success tangible: reengaging female opportunity youth in Baltimore, MD.

Opportunity Youth represents over four million young people who are not in school and are unemployed. In Maryland, Baltimore City has the highest rate of youth disconnection. In spite of this, there are limited culturally relevant program models specific to the experiences of urban, African American youth. None focus on the unique needs of young women who are disconnected from school and work. In partnership with two local youth organizations, a 6-week program was co-developed and implemented to address the social and emotional needs of female opportunity youth in Baltimore. The program promoted self-efficacy, fostered a supportive network of trusted adults and increased awareness of resources. Lessons learned included the importance of program flexibility, the value of youth voice in program development, and the need to reframe how success is measured. This case study highlights a novel approach to bolstering the development of female opportunity youth.

Provocateur Piece: “I know you don’t live in Detroit, right?” An Attempt at Racial Literacy in English Education

This essay begins with my memory of a provocation from a former student about my presence in Detroit as a white English teacher—a provocation invoking the intersections of race and space. The incident inspired the creation of an English education methods syllabus centered in racial literacy frameworks, analyses of space, and prioritizing youth voice for English teacher educators and preservice teachers. It is my hope that this essay offers space for English educators to respond meaningfully to student analyses of power and oppression through English curricula.

Safe Spaces Embedded in Dangerous Contexts: How Chicago Youth Navigate Daily Life and Demonstrate Resilience in High-Crime Neighborhoods.

Much is known about how experiences of community violence negatively affect youth, but far less research has explored how youth remain resilient while living in dangerous neighborhoods. This study addresses this need by analyzing in-depth, geo-narrative interviews conducted with 15 youth (60% Black, 27% Latinx, 53% female, 14 to 17years old) residing in low-income, high-crime Chicago neighborhoods to explore youths' perceptions of safety and strategies for navigating neighborhood space. After carrying geographical positioning system (GPS) trackers for an eight-day period, youths' travel patterns were mapped, and these maps were used as part of an interview with youth that explored daily routines, with special consideration paid to where and when youth felt safe. Drawing on activity settings theory and exploring youth voice, we find that experiences of community violence are commonplace, but youth describe how they have safe spaces that are embedded within these dangerous contexts. Perceptions of safety and danger were related to environmental, social, and temporal cues. Youth reported four overarching safety strategies, including avoidance, hypervigilance, self-defense, and emotional management, but these strategies considerably varied by gender. We discuss implications for practice and future directions of research. HIGHLIGHTS: This study explored Chicago youths' safety strategies and resilience in high-crime neighborhoods. Safe and dangerous spaces are embedded or overlapping settings. All youth practiced safety strategies but they considerably varied by gender. Perceptions are intersubjectively created due to the codes, rules, and norms of community life. Violence is common and extreme in everyday life of this sample of Chicago adolescents.

Youth voice on climate change: using factor analysis to understand the intersection of science, politics, and emotion

A complex issue at the intersection of science, emotion, and politics, climate change is on the minds of young people across the globe, as evidenced through worldwide climate strikes. This manuscript presents an analysis of letters written by 350 young people across the US during the 2016 Presidential election season. These letters, submitted through a digital platform called “Letters to the Next President,” demanded public attention to climate change. Using mixed-methods, we identified in these letters three distinct discourses, or ways of discussing climate change: a solution-oriented discourse, a climate politics discourse, and a discourse of doom. These discourses give insight into the types of knowledge and emotions that intersect for youth about climate change, while also demonstrating the politicization of climate change for some youth in the US. We offer research and pedagogical implications, noting the need for educators to consider the politicized contexts that shape climate change learning.

“Our Stories Are Powerful”: The Use of Youth Storytelling in Policy Advocacy to Combat the School-to-Prison Pipeline

The use of narratives and storytelling has become an increasingly common strategy in grassroots organizing and advocacy efforts to influence policy change. Drawing on qualitative interviews and observations, Jeffrey Moyer, Mark Warren, and Andrew King present a case study of the successful campaign by Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) to pass SB100, a progressive Illinois law aimed at ending the school-to-prison pipeline. The authors show that personal storytelling, when combined with other approaches, constitutes an effective strategy for youth organizing groups in low-income communities of color to achieve racial equity and educational justice policy goals. In this case, youth leaders involved in VOYCE told legislators their personal stories of the harm done to them and their friends by zero-tolerance school discipline and spoke to the racial inequities they faced. In doing so, they countered previously held narratives of youth of color as troublemakers and violence-prone and created a moral urgency for legislators to act. Youth leaders used storytelling and data to build a larger alliance of supporters, which contributed to the passage of a bill that limited harsh discipline, promoted restorative justice alternatives, and took steps to close racial gaps in suspensions and expulsions.

Youth Voices in Education Research

Youth Voices in Education Research

From Talking about to Talking with: Integrating Native Youth Voices into Teacher Education via a Repositioning Pedagogy

In this article, Robert Petrone and Nicholas Rink propose a repositioning pedagogy framework for teacher education. They maintain that a repositioning pedagogy disrupts power dynamics by bringing secondary-aged youth into teacher education courses as compensated consultants and experts to teach future teachers about learning, classroom management, teaching, and other issues pertinent to schooling and the development of pedagogical practices. A repositioning pedagogy responds to the absence of youth voices in teacher education by centering youth and their perspectives in preservice teacher education. In laying out this framework, Petrone and Rink report the findings of a qualitative study in which Native youth attending an alternative high school on a reservation were hired to teach future English teachers about ways to build relationships and curricula to engender success for Native youth in schools. This research explains both the experiences of the youth consultants, which proved to be “transformative,” as well as the structures of a repositioning pedagogy that facilitated this outcome. The article also addresses several areas for further research and consideration to ensure reciprocity and safeguard against undue harm to youth consultants, particularly those for whom schools have historically been unsafe places.