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This study examined the normative messages that inform youth postsecondary decision making in a predominantly rural state in the northeastern U.S., focusing on the institutionalization and circulation of identity master narratives. Using a multi-level, ecological approach to sampling, the study interviewed 33 key informants in positions of influence in educational, workforce, and quality of life domains. Narrative analysis yielded evidence of a predominant master narrative – College for All – that participants described as a prescriptive expectation that youth and families orient their postsecondary planning toward four-year, residential baccalaureate degree programs. Both general and domain-specific aspects of this master narrative are elaborated, as well as findings indicating that the College for All ideology appears to both obscure and stigmatize the development and institutionalization of alternative postsecondary pathways. Implications for rural communities, rural mobility, and future research on narratives informing postsecondary options for youth are discussed.

Rural youths often feel compelled to leave their home communities to seek new opportunities, especially at the secondary-postsecondary educational transition. These decisions are driven in part by perceived developmental imperatives to leave rural regions given messages that success is best achieved elsewhere. The present study used the framework of identity master narratives to explore recreation's role in facilitating youth postsecondary planning in the rural northeastern state of New Hampshire. The study extends and deepens prior research seeking to understand some of the structural-psychological factors connecting recreation involvement in adolescence, postsecondary decision making, and broader developmental patterns among the 15-19 and 2024 age cohorts. Findings suggest that recreational involvement is associated with postsecondary plans, and that a strong educational and vocational identity can also provide clarity for the future. Recreation and youth professionals inevitably engage with developmental processes and can support postsecondary planning by exposing youths to broad possible futures.

Employees in the outdoor recreation sector account for 3.2% of the U.S. workforce, contributing to over $1.1T in national economic output. As awareness of the sector's economic strength has grown, interest in promoting outdoor recreation careers has expanded. Research on outdoor recreation careers has not kept pace with workforce development initiatives, however, and existing data and research reports provide only aggregate figures that neither reflect the new employment landscape nor track how careers are navigated by the people who occupy them. This article reports on an interview study of 15 established outdoor recreation professionals in executive or management positions to gain insights into career trajectories in outdoor recreation. Their narrative responses were assessed using the Psychology of Working Theory, a career counseling framework organized around the concept of decent work. Findings are presented along with points for outdoor recreation career advocates to consider in future research and workforce development initiatives.

Natural resources provide a high quality of life for residents and are often one of a community's greatest advantages for workforce attraction, youth retention, recreation, climate resilience, tourism, and broader economic development. A better understanding of how nature and local economies function together is critical to fostering synergies between interconnected community needs, such as economic development and climate resilience. This paper first draws on literature to define the nature economy, which is similar to the outdoor economy but with a more holistic and interdisciplinary focus on the roles of nature in the economic, social, and ecological resilience of communities. Then, we applied the nature economy lens across three different initiatives in New Hampshire to identify transferable lessons at the intersections between the outdoor economy, community development, and environmental conservation. Finally, we discuss two common themes: the co-benefits of outdoor recreation as a community and development strategy and the challenges and opportunities of partnerships. Engaged scholars and practitioners, such as planners and community development/recreation directors in rural communities, should benefit from this approach.

This article describes methods and findings from a study focused on youth living in rural communities in northern New Hampshire who struggle with accessing STEM learning opportunities because of economic underinvestment and geographical isolation. These challenges also negatively impact researchers hoping to learn how rural youth benefit from informal STEM learning experiences because they contribute to low project participation and retention rates. As in other amenity-rich rural areas, the communities in this study are promoting outdoor recreation as a vehicle for economic development. We wanted to understand if outdoor recreation activities tied to economic growth initiatives--activities which youth have ready access to--show promise as a context for informal STEM learning. This article describes the unique research methodologies used in the study, including a mobile application designed around the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. It also highlights the UDL strategies used to employ youth as co-researchers. While multiple factors contributed to the 96% retention rate in this project, the use of the UDL-based mobile app was significant, novel, and holds promise as a future strategy for increasing rural youths' engagement in STEM career and identity development activities.

In this paper we discuss how the products of student work during long-term, interdisciplinary curricular units at King Middle School, a grades 6-8 public school in Portland, Maine, through their aesthetic qualities, transformed people’s understanding of what children were capable of. We argue that, to effectively understand student work of this type, ‘cognitive’ and ‘practical’ criteria for evaluation – i.e., as a supposed indicator of what students need to know and be able to do – fail to convey the actual, substantive value of the work, rendering it relatively static and meaningless like much conventional schoolwork. Instead, we argue that aesthetic criteria can help to adequately understand and assess community-based, project work. Moreover, focusing only on student learning throughout the production process occludes the importance of collaboration, communication, and dialogue with an audience: in this case, community experts whose goals and interests must be accommodated as students do their work. The aim of the article is twofold: 1) to present a coherent picture of student project work that adequately captures its complexity both in the process of its production, and in its use-value upon completion; and 2) to argue for the importance of aesthetic criteria in planning and assessing student projects.

Grounded theory has long been regarded as a valuable way to conduct social and educational research. However, recent constructivist and postmodern insights are challenging long-standing assumptions, most notably by suggesting that grounded theory can be flexibly integrated with existing theories. This move hinges on repositioning grounded theory from a methodology with positivist underpinnings to an approach that can be used within different theoretical frameworks. In this article the author reviews this recent transformation of grounded theory, engages in the project of repositioning it as an approach by using cultural historical activity theory as a test case, and outlines several practical methods implied by the joint use of grounded theory as an approach and activity theory as a methodology. One implication is the adoption of a dialectic, as opposed to a constructivist or objectivist, stance toward grounded theory inquiry, a stance that helps move past the problem of emergence versus forcing.