Higher education-community projects to support food security and food justice can improve health outcomes and increase community cohesion, but university funding may lead to power inequities that perpetuate marginalizing narratives. For this project, a regional state university, a local high school, and a nonprofit focused on building school…

In this article, the authors argue that curriculum needs to change, bringing school knowledge into greater proximity to community 'problems that matter' (PTMs) and gathering students, community members, teachers and academics with relevant knowledge to work on the problem. Illustrating this orientation through a collaborative project in a local…

Youth engagement is the meaningful and sustained involvement of young people in efforts to create positive social change. This approach requires youth-serving organizations to rebalance traditional power dynamics between adults and young people, allowing youths to take on decision-making responsibilities. Collective impact initiatives such as…

The maker movement has evoked interest for its role in breaking down barriers to STEM learning. However, few empirical studies document how youth are supported over time, in STEM-rich making projects or their outcomes. This longitudinal critical ethnographic study traces the development of 41 youth maker projects in two community-centered making…

Notions of place-making assume that individuals and groups of people have legitimate 'rights to the city.' This paper unsettles these notions to incorporate the politically and legally tenuous relationships African-American and Immigrant youth have to their cities. We describe a community-based digital STEAM curriculum called Mobile City Science…

I examine the development of my political clarity and its relation to the exercise of humanistic violence as a K-12 teacher in the United States. Reflecting upon my experiences as a classroom and community educator, I conclude that the mission of forging a new humanity is currently not possible from within the U.S. classroom. Presenting a series…

This article highlights a research project that involved formerly incarcerated adults who were school noncompleters. The project engaged the participants in a series of activities to explore their experiences and gain insights into approaches to dropout prevention they believed would help students at risk to complete high school. This article…

We describe two interventions designed to encourage community action with youth in a school and a community service setting. The school intervention took place with a Year 10 class, while the community-based intervention took place with a group of same-sex attracted youth. Using a participatory action research framework, youth in both settings…