"It Takes an Ecosystem" explores the idea and potential of the Allied Youth Fields--an aspirational term that suggests increased connection across the multiple systems in which adults engage with young people. Recent research and initiatives make a strong case for what developmentalists have argued for decades: A young person's learning…

Ongoing research and evaluation that produce actionable, widely disseminated evidence are central to the continuous improvement of U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) programs. In addition, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014 (WIOA) requires DOL to conduct periodic, independent evaluations to inform the effective operation of WIOA…

The Baltimore Mural Project (BMP) seeks to connect religious studies education to the growing literature on threshold concepts in order to address bottleneck areas in student learning. The project is designed for undergraduate service courses comprised of mostly non-majors: for example, world religions. Students in these courses often struggle to…

The goal of this article is to describe a university-community partnership sponsored by a university office of civic engagement. University-community partnerships are common, but many collaborations are fraught with challenges because of power inequities or differing goals and ways of operating. Aware of the potential pitfalls, the…

A strengths assessment of the College of Education at Kansas State University in the United States showed that a majority of faculty had strong interests in social justice issues in education. The need for providing continuing post-graduate education in social justice education with theory-to-practice relevancy is critical in formal and informal…

Given the human costs of psychological trauma, social workers should be well versed in trauma-informed care (TIC). This framework helps guide the efforts of systems, organizations, and practitioners toward reducing trauma or mitigating its effects. The field has created TIC principles, although they have yet to be fully realized as practical…

Given the design of Portland State University's (PSU) undergraduate curriculum culminating in a capstone experience, the dramatic growth in online courses and online enrollments required a re-thinking of the capstone model to ensure all students could participate in this effective learning model and have a powerful learning experience. In recent…

This article speaks to the special issue's goal of disrupting the deserving/undeserving immigrant narrative: 1) the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provides temporary deportation relief and work authorization for young adults who meet an educational requirement and other criteria, and 2) current and proposed…

The Youth Villages Transitional Living program is intended to help youth who were formerly in foster care or juvenile justice custody, or who are otherwise unprepared for adult life, to make the transition to independent living. Youth Villages, which serves emotionally and behaviorally troubled young people, operates a number of programs in…

Purpose: Through an organizational case study approach, this paper seeks to describe the ongoing diversity initiative of a graduate school of social work (SSW). Organizational change is usually built around the activities of change agents or teams, who seek to bring about changes in human resources, systems, programs, and services.…

The state of Connecticut detained 1,444 children and youth and committed approximately 270 to the Department of Children and Families for out of home placement in the 2007-2008 calendar year. A significant number of children and youth have special education needs that are often unidentified by home school districts. State and federal law mandate…

This article constructs learning to teach for social justice as a complex but assessable outcome of teacher preparation. It provides a conceptual framework and describes a set of assessment tools and studies that use quantitative and qualitative methods for the collection and analysis of data. We conceptualize learning to teach for social justice…

As the title of this book suggests, how one understands, perceives and experiences democracy may have a significant effect on how he/she actually engages in, and with, democracy. Within the educational context, this is a key concern, and forms the basis of the research presented in this volume within a critical, comparative analysis. The Global…

The report on the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996), the Kelowna Accord announced in 2005 (five-billion dollars) followed by its demise in 2006, and the settlement in 2006 for Aboriginal survivors of residential schools (1.9 billion dollars), are but some of the recent high-profile indicators of the challenges to Canada in dealing with…