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Background Youth participatory action research (YPAR) is an equity-focused approach intended to generate local knowledge and democratise the production of research evidence. Aims/objectives We explore the promise and challenges of YPAR to inform education policy decision making. We focus on California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF)’s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) initiative, which requires districts to engage with diverse stakeholders to make decisions. We provide a case example of California’s Stockton Unified School District. Stockton currently uses the Peer Leaders Uniting Students’s YPAR curriculum to inform their LCAP work. Key conclusions YPAR offers opportunities for new insights, and can be implemented successfully at scale. While Stockton was doing YPAR before LCFF and LCAP existed, they enabled Stockton to expand its YPAR programming, with the goal of using YPAR evidence to provide useful information for educational decision making, policies, and programmes. For example, one YPAR project focused on student tardiness and, using data from multiple sources, proposed lengthening the passing period so that it was physically possible to walk to class in the time permitted. Here, YPAR supports those people most affected by education policy – the students – to have the power to inform decisions that affect them. YPAR can broaden the set of evidence and perspectives that decision makers review to inform policy decisions. We encourage researchers and practitioners to study and create policy structures that support using YPAR to inform policy. We also encourage policy makers to develop more policies that can facilitate the use of YPAR, in education and beyond.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to rush into distance learning, prioritizing academics and limiting consideration of students' socioemotional needs. Given that distance learning is likely to be a recurring experience, school counselors should understand this unique context to better advocate for student needs. Through this illustrative case study, we sought to understand the distance learning experience of students, specifically examining barriers experienced and desired support, in an urban school district in the Western United States. We conducted classroom observations, interviews, and town hall observation with students who were part of an action civics program in the district. Following thematic data analysis, we found that student participants described themes of challenges (with subthemes of online learning and outside of school), needs (with subthemes of community and student voice), and communication. Based on these findings, we argue for school counselors to use student voice to inform advocacy efforts in addressing student needs during distance learning.

Background: Research about learning in youth activism has generated important findings about how young people learn to critique inequality and exercise collective agency. This emerging line of research, however, has been limited by its geographic focus in North America, a tendency to assume single bounded groups as sites of learning, and limited engagement with theories of power and social change. Methods: We draw on data from a three-year ethnography of a South African youth-led organizing group, Equal Education (EE), which successfully pressured the national government to adopt an education bill that it had previously resisted. Our inquiry is guided by a broad question: how did EE members learn to build power in this contentious sociopolitical context? Findings: Facilitation and apprenticeship by more experienced near peers in EE supported young people's understanding of inequality and their participation in nonviolent political activism. When stepping into a contentious public sphere, young people learned how to build political relationships with trade unions and community elders in order to claim power and influence political change. Contribution: This study adds to literature on learning in youth activism by showing how young people learn how to navigate contentious politics and exercise political power through multigenerational alliances.

Case studies of single classrooms and schools have shown promising evidence of learning outcomes associated with action civics and student voice. These findings justify efforts to expand and sustain such opportunities, to ensure greater access for students, and to create a positive feedback loop between youth activism and equity-centered systems change. Although the literature on educational innovation and scaling offers some guidance, this literature has not grappled sufficiently with issues of power that come to the fore when the innovation, such as student activism, challenges dominant systems and practices. We draw on theories of antiracist education and community organizing to propose a theory of change for scaling and sustaining justice-centered civic learning. We situate this argument in examples from a research-practice partnership that has sought to scale a district-sponsored program that works with teachers and students to raise awareness about injustices and to catalyze student engagement in action research and policy change.

This paper presents a social practice theory of learning and becoming across contexts and time. Our perspective is rooted in the Danish tradition of critical psychology (Dreier, 1997; Mørck & Huniche, 2006; Nissen, 2005), and we use social practice theory to interpret the pathway of one adolescent whom we followed as part of a longitudinal study of interest-related learning. A social practice theory calls out the ways people pursue diverse concerns, become aware of new possibilities for action as they move across settings of practice, and learn as they adjust contributions to the flow of ongoing activity and to fit demands and structures of local institutions. It also highlights the ways that existing institutional structures of practice frame the choices people make about how and where to participate in activities. This perspective on learning is potentially transformative, in that it provides a way to promote equity by surfacing issues associated with linkages among settings of practice, networks of actors who support persons' movement across settings, and diversities in structures of practices that shape opportunities to learn and become.

Background: Youth participatory action research (YPAR) is an equity-focused approach intended to generate local knowledge and democratise the production of research evidence. Aims/objectives: We explore the promise and challenges of YPAR to inform education policy decision making. We focus on California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF)'s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) initiative, which requires districts to engage with diverse stakeholders to make decisions. We provide a case example of California's Stockton Unified School District. Stockton currently uses the Peer Leaders Uniting Students's YPAR curriculum to inform their LCAP work. Key conclusions: YPAR offers opportunities for new insights, and can be implemented successfully at scale. While Stockton was doing YPAR before LCFF and LCAP existed, they enabled Stockton to expand its YPAR programming, with the goal of using YPAR evidence to provide useful information for educational decision making, policies, and programmes. For example, one YPAR project focused on student tardiness and, using data from multiple sources, proposed lengthening the passing period so that it was physically possible to walk to class in the time permitted. Here, YPAR supports those people most affected by education policy -- the students -- to have the power to inform decisions that affect them. YPAR can broaden the set of evidence and perspectives that decision makers review to inform policy decisions. We encourage researchers and practitioners to study and create policy structures that support using YPAR to inform policy. We also encourage policy makers to develop more policies that can facilitate the use of YPAR, in education and beyond.

Although experiential approaches to democracy education are gaining increased support from educators and scholars, few educational resources exist to support youth in constructing and delivering high-quality, evidence-based policy arguments to authentic audiences. Such presentations are often the first time that young people step into the public sphere and speak to public officials; they represent rich opportunities for youth political development and activism. In this paper, we introduce an assessment tool, called the Measure of Youth Policy Arguments (MYPA), which is intended to be a resource for community and school educators. Drawing on data from two years of field-testing and iterative co-design in the context of research-practice partnerships (RPPs), we chronicle the development of the tool and provide evidence about its educational uses in classrooms and community programs. In the discussion section, we explain key decisions in the development of MYPA and how those shaped its appropriateness for certain uses and lack of appropriateness for others.

Critical pedagogies often prioritize critical thinking and social awareness at the expense of preparing urban youth for social action. Though sociopolitical efficacy is argued to bridge critical reflection and social action, this relationship is undetermined. We argue that critical reflection and sociopolitical efficacy are independent predictors of sociopolitical action. We surveyed 158 high-school students and found that critical reflection and sociopolitical efficacy were positively related to sociopolitical action. Additionally, participation in transformative student voice (TSV) and classroom leadership opportunities positively influenced sociopolitical efficacy. We argue that educators and community organizers should promote leadership development and TSV activities to encourage youth sociopolitical efficacy and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined graduate student attitudes towards letter and pass/fail grading systems in the Law School and the School of Education in a selective university in the United States. Fifty-four students completed a questionnaire on goal orientations (ability comparison vs. mastery), amount of effort and stress in each of the two grading environments. Students reported higher orientation towards ability comparison and higher levels of effort and stress in letter-graded classes. Gender, school, and mastery orientation differences were not significant. (Contains 4 tables.)

Participatory design-based research continues to expand and challenge the "researcher" and "researched" paradigm by incorporating teachers, administrators, community members, and youth throughout the research process. Yet, greater clarity is needed about the racial and political dimensions of these collaborative research projects. In this article, we focus on how race and power mediate relationships between researchers and communities in ways that significantly shape the process of research. Using the notion of politicized trust as a conceptual lens, we reflect on two distinct participatory design projects to explore how political and racial solidarity was established, contested, and negotiated throughout the course of the design process. Ultimately, this article argues that making visible how race and power mediate relationships in design research is critical for engaging in ethical and sociopolitically conscious relationships with community partners and developing theoretical and practical knowledge about the repertoires of practice, tasks, and sociocultural competencies demanded of university researchers.

This is a challenging moment for supporters of public education: the status quo is untenable but the options offered by "reformers" appear equally dangerous. In this context we need arguments for the democratic purposes of education that offer an alternative to existing inequities on one hand and technocratic or privatized solutions on the other. New formations of parents, teachers, and young people call for schools that raise young people who feel connected to their communities, can critically interpret their social and political worlds, and possess the academic skills and agency to empower their communities (Warren in "Transforming public education: the need for an education justice movement." "N Engl J Public Policy" 26(1), Article 11. http://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol26/iss1/11 , 2015). This special issue, which originated in a series of interdisciplinary seminars, proposes sociopolitical development (SPD) as a core feature of democratic education and human development. Making SPD central to education requires a compelling mix of theory, rigorous evidence, and practical strategy. In this article we provide a scholarly context for SPD in education and introduce the contents of the special issue.

This chapter shows how student positioning by adults shapes opportunities for students to learn collective systemic agency including practices such as organizing others, developing a systemic analysis, and taking action in complex institutions, such as schools. We argue that these learning opportunities are expanded when education professionals look beyond curricular experiences and attend to how students are positioned through discourse in the broader context of the school.

This chapter details the ways youth community organizing strategies can inform leadership educators' approaches to engaging marginalized youth in leadership development for social change.

This response identifies several strengths of the article, "Pushing the Boundaries: What Youth Organizers at Boston's Hyde Square Task Force Have to Teach Us about Civic Engagement" and draws connections to recent developments in sibling fields, including social and emotional learning and internet activism. These developments offer ideas for next steps in youth organizing research.

Applied researchers, whether working with the framework of design-based research or intervention science, face a similar implementation challenge: practitioners who enact their programs typically do so in varied, context-specific ways. Although this variability is often seen as a problem for those who privilege fidelity and standardization, we argue for the advantages of researcher-practitioner collaborations that encourage local adaptation and ingenuity. We develop this argument for adaptive interventions by discussing two design-based research projects, Critical Civic Inquiry (CCI) and Science Literacy through Science Journalism (SciJourn), which create opportunities for youth to develop civics and science literacy respectively. CCI and SciJourn aim to build curricula that will travel to new schools and districts, but not through standardization. This is a delicate combination: the program must be flexible enough to enable productive adaptation, without being so protean that practitioner's implementations lack substantive commonalities. We present two cases that show how project designers have sought to distinguish between invariant principles that define the intervention and heterogeneous practices that vary across sites. The cases also show how the model has improved when teachers can adapt it to their institutional context and when teachers and researchers establish social norms that encourage dialogic interactions.

In this article, the authors discuss how they redesigned an educational psychology course for preservice teachers using insights from the burgeoning, interdisciplinary field of the Learning Sciences. Research on the situated nature of learning and the value of out-of-school contexts for supporting children s development informed their decisions to require preservice teachers to work with children in community-based settings, frame their interactions with children as "service" rather than as explicit preparation for teaching, and conduct research on the social, cultural, and cognitive nature of these experiences. Two case studies illuminate preservice teachers' learning trajectories in relation to course practices. Analyses suggest that the course created opportunities for preservice teachers to develop views of learning as inherently cultural and not limited to the acquisition of academic content. Emerging findings point to the potential of using Learning Sciences research as a touchstone for reorganizing educational psychology courses for preservice teachers. (Contains 1 note.)

Background/Context: School closure is becoming an increasingly common policy response to underperforming urban schools. Districts typically justify closure decisions by pointing to schools' low performance on measures required by No Child Left Behind. Closures disproportionately fall on schools with high percentages of poor and working-class students of color. Few studies have examined how students interpret or respond to school closures. Purpose: Our purpose was to document narratives articulated by students about the closure of their high school. Doing so is important because students, particularly students of color from low-income families, are often left out of policy decisions that affect their lives. Population/Participants: Research participants were recruited from the population of youth who had attended the closed school and who remained in the district during the subsequent year. Twenty-three percent of students at the school were African American, 75% were Latino, and 2% were White. Over 90% of students were eligible for free and reduced lunch. A total of 106 students responded to surveys and peer interviews, and 12 youth who had dropped out of school participated in focus groups. Research Design: This was a youth participatory action research (YPAR) study, designed collaboratively by former Jefferson students, university researchers, and adult community members. Data sources included open-ended surveys, peer interviews, focus groups, and field notes describing public events and YPAR meetings. Findings: Our data show that most respondents did not agree with the decision to close their school. Student disagreement surfaced two counternarratives. First, students critiqued the way the decision was made--they felt excluded from the decision-making process that led to closure. Second, they critiqued the rationale for the decision, which suggested that students needed to be rescued from a failing school. Students articulated features of Jefferson that they valued, such as trusting relationships with adults, connection to place, and sense of belonging, which they felt were discounted by the decision. Conclusions/Recommendations: Evidence from this study lends support to developmental and political justifications for robust youth participation in equity-based school reform. By developmental justification, we mean evidence that young people were ready to participate under conditions of support, which counters discourses about youth as immature or unprepared. By political justification, we mean evidence that youth articulated interests that were discounted in the decision-making process and that challenged normative assumptions about school quality. In our conclusion, we point to examples of expanded roles that students could play in decision-making processes.

Students from underrepresented groups who seek to become the first in their family to attend college confront economically and racially stratified education systems. This article reports findings from an evaluation of First Graduate, an organization that offers college advising, mentoring, tutoring, and case management to first-generation students starting in seventh grade. We highlight three systems that youth say they encountered on their pathway to college: open enrollment, course taking, and college admissions. We describe how youth navigated these systems and the roles that adults played in support. Our conclusion discusses implications for how after-school programs can support first-generation students.

Youth organizing combines elements of community organizing, with its emphasis on ordinary people working collectively to advance shared interests, and positive youth development, with its emphasis on asset-based approaches to working with young people. It is expanding from an innovative, but marginal approach to youth and community development into a more widely recognized model for practice among nonprofit organizations and foundations. Along the way, it has garnered attention from researchers interested in civic engagement, social movements, and resiliency. A growing body of published work evidences the increasing interest of researchers, who have applied an assortment of theoretical perspectives to their observations of youth organizing processes. Through an appraisal of the current state of this still-emerging area of practice and research, including case examples, the authors identify common elements of the practice of youth organizing--relationship development, popular education, social action, and participatory research and evaluation--and conclude with a discussion of promising future directions for research and practice. (Contains 1 figure and 3 notes.)

Youth programs that are organized around intellectually challenging, socially relevant projects create opportunities for deep cognitive engagement. One type of authentic project that deserves attention from applied developmental scientists is youth participatory action research (YPAR), in which participants study a problem relevant to young people's lives and take action based on what they find. This combination of activism and inquiry can pose a cognitive challenge for participants, who must coordinate their emotional investment in a specific outcome with openness to unexpected or disconfirming evidence. We call this process managing bias. In this article we draw on qualitative data to show opportunities for youth to practice managing bias as part of an after-school YPAR project. In our conclusion we discuss implications of learning to manage bias for youth development processes and settings. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

Although closure is an increasingly common response to the problems of chronically underperforming urban schools, few studies have examined the effect of closure on displaced students. The authors used multiple methods to study the academic performance and experiences of Latino and African American high school students in the year following the closure of their school. Quantitative analyses show declines in the transition cohort's academic performance after transferring to new schools. Qualitative findings help explain this pattern by describing students' interpretations of the closure and their experiences transitioning to new schools. Overall, the case study suggests that closure added stressors to students who were already contending with challenges associated with urban poverty. (Contains 3 tables and 3 figures.)

Youth participatory action research (YPAR) brings young people together with adult researchers to identify, study, and act on relevant social problems. In this chapter, the author draws on examples from a recent YPAR project, called Tracing Transitions, whose aim was to study the impact of school closure on students. After defining YPAR in terms of its principles and intellectual roots, the author analyzes two productive tensions that emerged in Tracing Transitions. First, he calls attention to tensions in "youth voice" initiatives between attending to power differences between adults and youth and reifying essentialist assumptions about youth. Second, he writes about tensions between local and general implications of research and the importance of articulating an expanded notion of generalization in YPAR research. Reflection on these dilemmas helps to illustrate YPAR's contribution to a human sciences approach to studying and improving learning. (Contains 1 note.)

This study examines civic identity exploration among African-American and Asian-American urban youth who participated in a grassroots organizing campaign to improve their local high schools. Drawing on 9 months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with participants, the study found that the campaign provided a venue for participants to wrestle with contrasting perspectives about the relationship between the individual and the broader public. The first perspective, which I call "atomism," described local social relations as individualistic and self-interested. The second perspective, which I call "collective agency," emphasized that people should work together toward common goals and that the more people who were involved, the more powerful the effort would be. Implications of youth organizing for civic identity formation are discussed.

Background/Context: Studies carried out over the last two decades have established structured after-school programs as significant contexts for adolescent development. Recent large-scale evaluations of after-school initiatives have yielded mixed results, finding some impact on adolescents' attitudes toward school but limited impact on their academic performance. One clear conclusion of these studies, however, is that it matters how often and for how long young people spend time in after-school settings. Purpose/Research Question: This study describes the features of after-school settings that are most appealing and engaging to youth growing up in low-income communities. Setting: Analyses focus on a network of five after-school centers that serve predominantly racial and cultural minority youth living in low-income urban neighborhoods. Participants: Participants in the study include 120 youth who varied in their frequency of participation in the after-school centers. Of these participants, 20 were in elementary school, 76 were in middle school, and 24 were in high school. Forty-two percent identified themselves as Asian American, 22% as African American, 13% as Latino/Latina, 7% as European American, and 5% as Filipino, and 10% were categorized as "other' or "unknown." Research Design: This study is a qualitative investigation geared toward understanding young people's subjective experiences and meaning making. Data are drawn principally from focus groups and individual interviews with participants over a 2-year period and supplemented with field work conducted by a team of trained youth ethnographers. Findings: Our analysis of these data points to three features of the youth centers that youth identified as valuable: supportive relationships with adults and peers; safety; and opportunities to learn. Results highlight the meaning and significance youth ascribed to each feature, while also underlining the important function that centers with these features play in adolescent development. Conclusions/Recommendations: After-school settings have the potential to serve as a unique developmental niche by meeting needs that are not consistently met in other contexts. Youths' descriptions of supports and opportunities also underscore the interrelationships among the positive features they perceived. Researchers, practitioners, and policy makers are encouraged to recognize after-school programs as core contexts of development that should be assessed according to the full spectrum of adolescents' developmental needs.

Multiracial youth activism groups, based in working class and poor neighborhoods, seek to improve social conditions by organizing grassroots campaigns. Campaigns such as these, which require sophisticated planning, organizing, and advocacy skills, are noteworthy not just for their political impact, but also because of the insights they provide about learning environments outside of school. In this study I adopted Rogoff's (2003) theory of guided participation as a lens through which to analyze adult approaches to working with youth and how these approaches relate to opportunities for youth to participate in social action. Drawing on 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork in 3 multiracial activism groups, I found that adults managed tensions between youth empowerment principles and the task demands of campaigns in 3 distinct ways: facilitation, apprenticeship, and joint work. This analysis is relevant to educators who wish to support youth participation in mature social practices and researchers interested in elective learning environments. (Contains 6 footnotes, 1 figure and 7 tables.)

Youth activism represents a promising synthesis of two broad goals in moral education: the development of moral judgments about the social and political world and the ability to implement one's principles in action. Among working-class and poor youth, such commitments often take place in a context where inequities in resources, opportunities, and safety are salient, and thus discussions about justice, rights, and welfare are central features of moral and political identity development. The relationship between reflection and action is an enduring question for those interested in promoting moral development among young people. Educators have struggled to find effective methods for educating youth to think carefully about moral problems and also show moral commitment in their everyday lives. Some have argued for cognitive approaches, which emphasize reasoning, judgment, and reflection, while others have argued for character-based approaches, which emphasize virtues such as honesty, loyalty, and integrity. This article highlights the potential of youth activism to influence participants' moral and ethical development. What are the moral concerns that urban youth raise when given the opportunity? How do these concerns get translated into action? The author summarizes findings from moral development research and their relevance to youth engagement in social action and then draws on original and secondary sources to draw attention to the moral dimensions of social action campaigns organized by youth. This is not an empirical study, but instead an effort to bring attention to the moral perspectives raised by politically engaged youth. (Contains 26 notes.)