In its diverse forms, authentic writing carries the potential to connect literacy practice to an author's 'real world'. While contemporary approaches to authentic writing instruction--advocating writer-centred, intertextual and culturally relevant productions--are most often explored in formal learning contexts like classrooms, this paper seeks to…

Adolescents face many difficulties when transitioning to high school, particularly when it comes to their social circles and maintaining friendships. As these challenges can have long-term consequences, providing support to youth during this period is essential. The YWCA Youth Education Programs (YEP) in Vancouver, BC offer group-based,…

This article advances a gender-conscious conception of relational education emanating from the Taking Boys Seriously longitudinal participatory action research initiative in Northern Ireland. The study is grounded in the voices and experiences of boys from disadvantaged communities who have been disengaged, disinterested, or excluded from school.…

Experiences of and exposures to violence impact older adolescents and young adults in a myriad of ways. While typically conceptualized as interpersonal, other forms of violence, namely structural and symbolic, can be harmful to development for this population. This study utilized qualitative methodologies, including ethnographic field notes and…

With the rise of COVID-19 and growing awareness of racial injustice, the last few years have been exceptionally tumultuous for our systems of education and their stakeholders. But scholars critical of traditional paradigms of schooling and accountability have argued that these crises kindle opportunities for profound change. Gloria…

While research acknowledged the challenges faced by students during the COVID-19 pandemic, a critical gap existed in understanding the specific experiences of low-income Latinx youth. This study explored how these students navigated the transition to remote learning through a culturally responsive critical literacy program that incorporated their…

This paper aims to provide strategies for youth-serving organizations to maximize opportunities for youth to develop leadership skills within the out-of-school time program context. The sample includes 5 youth-serving agencies who participated in the Youth Driven Spaces initiative led by a Midwest program. Data for this project included…

Youth Liberation Army (YLA) is a youth-led grassroots organization advocating for school abolition and addressing issues most concerning young people in schools and communities. YLA utilizes adult ally trainings to invite educators to work toward liberatory education. The transformative organizing practices of YLA are examined through a youth…

Contributions: This study examined the effectiveness of making activities in fostering the competency development of school-age children engaged in a making program. The findings suggest that community-based makerspaces can provide autonomous and informal learning experiences, facilitating their competence development. When integrated with formal…

This article explores the formal localization of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Ghana, focusing on the remixing of human rights courses for youth and young adults. While working with an NGO that focuses on providing educational resources to low bandwidth areas, partner teachers in Ghana remixed openly-licensed human rights content provided by…

This ethnography explores incarcerated students' experiences and dynamics of identity formation inside a youth prison school. Across two years, 100 students and 50 adults were engaged. The structure, discourse, and adult-student interactions revealed a fixation on framing students as threats with a racialized undertone while also exposing the…

Experiential learning is invaluable when promoting interdisciplinary approaches to teaching complex issues. This article reports on a five-week collaboration between undergraduate students in social work and landscape architecture courses, project impetus being a common-reading text. Students (n=54) constructed three-dimensional models of…

Purpose: This research paper presents an innovative evaluation methodology which was developed as part of a doctoral research study in a voluntary sector youth organisation in England. Design/methodology/approach: The transformative methodology synthesises aspects of appreciative inquiry, participatory evaluation and transformative learning and…

This article provides a reanalysis of a multisited case study of youth arts, media, and critical literacy to theorize the role of networked and physical "publics" within which youth engage with issues they care about, making claims about their lived experiences. An understanding of the nature and role of publics is crucial to productive…

Current philosophy and practice urge, even require for funding, that programs be empirically based and grounded in empirically proven emerging, promising, or best practices. In most of the human services, including youth programs, services, and practices, this requirement is a goal as well as an ideal. Empirical research and evaluation can be used…