From Adolescent Development to Critical Youth Studies: An Epistemological Repositioning of “Youth” in Teacher Education

• In Event: Repositioning Youth of Color in Teacher Education

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to lay out a conceptual argument for an epistemological shift in teacher education regarding how the people currently labeled adolescents and secondary students are conceptualized. Specifically, this argument calls for a shift from “Adolescent Development” to “Critical Youth Studies.” A central assumption of this paper is that how secondary-aged people are conceptualized has material effects for how they are talked about/with, advocated with/on behalf of, and ultimately taught. In other words, conceptions of secondary-aged people have powerful effects on pedagogical practices designed and implemented on their behalf.

Theoretically, this presentation is grounded in Critical Youth Studies (CYS), which, as an interdisciplinary framework, interrogates normative ideas of adolescence/ts grounded in biological and psychological developmental paradigms (Ali & McCarty, 2020; Lesko & Talburt, 2012; Ibrahim & Steinburg, 2014). More specifically, CYS argues that what has become known as the natural life stage of adolescence is a social and historically situated construct, or, as Vadeboncoeur (2005) suggests, a “fiction”—“a function of political, economic, educational and governmental discourses,” or “a story made universal, and as such, a time and space that adults impose on and negotiate with young people” (p. 6). From this perspective, CYS takes as one of its central aims the location and disruption of the ways naturalized discourses of adolescence/ts circulate in order to make more available multiple understandings of and material practices involving young people.

Drawing on empirical case studies, this presentation will first establish how notions of adolescence and adolescent development rooted in biological and psychological paradigms function as normative and dominant in teacher education. Particular attention will be given to how these ideas of youth ground linkages between teachers’ conceptions of secondary students, pedagogy, and teacher identity (e.g., Falter, 2016; Patel, 2012; Sarigianides, 2019; Sulzer, 2014; Sulzer & Thein, 2016).

Next, the argument overviews Critical Youth Studies with particular attention to how it critiques normative ideas of youth that dominate educational reasoning, policies, and practices. The argument concludes by offering a conceptual and pragmatic approach to what an epistemological shift to CYS could mean and look like for teacher education, including an explanation of a “repositioning pedagogy” (Author, 2017, 2020). This portion offers guiding principles and practical possibilities for implementation in individual courses and programs. Importantly, this paper provides orienting concepts and theoretical ideas that will be taken up by the remainder of the panel.

The significance of arguing for such a shift is to help bring about more comprehensive conceptualizations of youth within teacher education, help teacher educators better understand the “discursive filters” (Finders, 1998/1999) they bring to bear on youth, and, ultimately, engender more equitable and humane schooling practices. This shift promises to have positive effects especially for youth of color, poor and working-class youth, LGBTQ+ youth, and immigrant youth, many of whom are “doubly disadvantaged” by the already diminishing category of adolescence, which historically emerged from and continues to reify racism, classism, homophobia, and xenophobia (Author, 2021; Chinn, 2008; Lesko, 2012; Owen, 2020).

Author

• Robert Petrone, University of Missouri