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This brief is the first of a series of applied research briefs that focus on specific challenges and opportunities public media faces in its approaches to youth content and engagement. Drawing from priorities surfaced through focus group interviews with youth across the country, these briefs highlight recent research and public discussions about priorities for youth-centered design. The Next Gen Public Media initiative has observed growing interest across the public media ecosystem in developing tween- and teen-focused initiatives to develop new content, modes of engagement, and community-based programs. However, the investment of time and resources to meaningfully partner with youth can be significant, and organizations without prior experience may find it difficult to know where to start. Fortunately, the public media community is not alone in facing these challenges, and there is much to be learned from recent research and tool kits in adjacent fields. Drawing on best practices for youth participation from a wide range of academic resources, nonprofit organizations, and youth-focused government initiatives, this research brief points to evidence-based models to structure youth-adult collaborations.

In July 2020, Dr. Brigid Barron and her team at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center convened a virtual workshop to mobilize a community of investigators to explore innovative methods for studying family and community learning during the pandemic. Participants included research teams from Stanford University, University of Washington, and the University of Michigan. This report summarizes the strategies and insights generated at this workshop so that they may be shared among a wider network of researchers, practitioners, funders, and policymakers concerned with achieving more equitable educational outcomes during and beyond the pandemic lockdowns. Specifically, the report aims to: (1) Provide examples of how researchers are repurposing and reinventing qualitative methods for remote contexts with the aim of expanding and improving these methods for future studies; (2) Highlight how families and communities are innovating and adjusting to the pandemic and how these adjustments are shaping learning and wellbeing in unexpected ways; (3) Convey on-the-ground perspectives from caregivers and learners about the challenges of remote learning and inspire solutions to solve them; and (4) Mobilize collaborative efforts for future research and design. [With contributions from: Angela Calabrese Barton, Francisco Para Camacho, Elizabeth A. Davis, Akeiylah DeWitt, Alexis Hiniker, Susie Garcia, Day Greenberg, Leslie Rupert Herrenkohl, Denise Jones, Veronica Joyce Lin, Julie Kientz, Cindy K. Lam, Zohar Levy, Rebecca Michelson, Sean A. Munson, Judy Nguyen, Rose K. Pozos, Devon Riter, Peter Siciliano, Tammy Tasker, Chandler Turner, and Jason Yip.]