Toward a Model of Positive Youth Development Specific to Minority Girls: Perspectives on Development, Resilience, and Empowerment

• In Event: Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring Achievement and Motivating Factors for Young Girls of Color

Abstract

This presentation calls upon qualitative, participatory research with black and Latina adolescent girls and strives to move towards a theoretical model of minority adolescent girls’ development, socialization, and educational experiences which can be used to enrich academic and practical endeavors which seek to support minority girls. We integrate ecological, phenomenological, and critical race feminist perspectives on development and socialization and emphasize that girls’ emerging identities are heterogeneous, always rooted in context and situationally specific, and fractured by race, class, gender, and sexuality. With these understandings, we move towards a positive youth development (PYD) model for minority girls by innovating adaptations to PYD models, which specifically fit the experiences of and contexts in which minority girls develop.

Authors

• Katie Clonan-Roy, University of Pennsylvania

• Charlotte E Jacobs, University of Pennsylvania