This study explored the dynamics of motivational development across late elementary and early middle school. Using longitudinal data from a cross-section of fifth to seventh-grade students, analyses examined whether parents' and teachers' warm involvement shows unique and/or mediated effects on students' academic engagement and whether engagement…

Pundits, politicians, and academics have long worried about potentially low rates of civic participation among STEM-oriented students. Does studying STEM actually decrease the odds that young people will be actively involved in democracy? To answer this question, we created a dataset of over 23 million students in the United States, matched to…

Background: Schools are important contexts for preventing sexual violence (SV) among adolescents. Evaluating whether programming is effective requires surveying youth about SV experiences. However, school communities often have concerns about asking students, particularly those in middle school, about these experiences. This study sought to…

Research to date has pointed out that during periods of curriculum reform, public debate gets politicised resulting in an over-emphasis on top-down approaches to curriculum making. As a group of curriculum inquiry researchers, we are concerned that teachers, students, school leaders and community organisations are often side-lined as integral…

This study examined the impact Restorative Justice (RJ) practices had on black boys and the teachers who teach them school experience. The setting of this study was an urban inner city middle school, located in the Northeast region of the United States. This study examined the experiences of these two distinct groups, and ultimately how their…

This paper uses the framework of transition as "becoming" to explore what young people learned from participating in a post-secondary transition program that was co-designed by young people. The 9-week youth participatory action research (YPAR) involved six staff collaborators (SCs) and seven youth collaborators (YCs). Data comprised…

Civic engagement represents a key aspect of a democratic society and is itself a multidimensional construct. Research has shown that the promotion of civic engagement is an important component of civic and citizenship education intended in a broad sense, pertaining to formal, non-formal and informal learning situations. Within a national scenario…

Youth voter turnout remains stubbornly low and unresponsive to civic education. Rigorous evaluations of the effects of adopting civics tests for high school graduation by some states on youth voter turnout remain limited. We estimate the impact of a recent, state-mandated civics test policy--the Civics Education Initiative (CEI)--on youth voter…

Democratic school climate, critical reflection, and student participation at school have been linked to the development of civic and political attitudes. The study aims to identify the contribution of these characteristics to the development of civic and political attitudes and their impact on students' participation (civic, political, activist,…

Engaging in mental health advocacy as a high schooler has granted the author the unique opportunity to observe some of the most inspiring manifestations of hope that humanity has to offer. Simultaneously, it has opened their my eyes to the systemic underrepresentation and misrepresentation of youth. The author has been mentored by their school…

In the 2020-2021 pro-democracy protests in Thailand, an unprecedented number of high school students participated on all levels: from organizing rallies to small symbolic actions. To better understand this phenomenon, we engaged 691 Thai students from diverse backgrounds to write a letter to a recipient on the other side of the political divide.…

This qualitative study focuses on understanding the motivational factors driving Latino students to pursue higher education and the obstacles hindering their enrollment. We conducted eleven focus group sessions, involving five distinct groups: students, parents, teachers, and counselors from public high schools, as well as two adult learner…

Across sports, there has been a dramatic shift toward earlier and more frequent specialization, leading to a decrease in multi-sport athletes at the high school level. A student-athlete may be able to participate in three high school sports, however it likely precludes them from devoting enough time to a primary, future college sport. The…

Although the relevance of emotions for motivating climate change action is acknowledged in research, it lacks recommendation how to include emotions in Climate Change Education (CCE). This study draws on selected theories of emotions (the control-value theory according to Schutz and Pekrun (2007) and the wheel of emotions according to Plutchik…

This study aimed at identifying and describing patterns of sports participation during high school among a general population of students and examining individual, social, and environmental predictors of pattern membership. A sample of 287 high school students (61% girls) from Quebec (Canada) annually reported all the organized sports in which…