Guided Participation in Three Youth Activism Organizations: Facilitation, Apprenticeship, and Joint Work

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.)