How Black Males with Gang Affiliations Experience Trust in Out-of-School Learning Environments

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session Three
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT034 (Friday)

Abstract

This project longitudinally explores experiences of trust among participants in an out-of-school violence prevention program, called RNV, that serves gang-affiliated young people in an underserved Black neighborhood on Chicago’s south side. Drawing on hundreds of hours of observations and three waves of interviews with 20 RNV participants over 18 months in the program, I aim to understand: 1) how the program design created a caring space where participants rapidly trusted RNV staff and what this meant for participants’ futures, 2) how complicated relationships with legal institutions and policing compare to the powerfully trusting relationships built with RNV staff and 3) the relationship between participants’ experiences of trust and their educational aspirations and outcomes.

Author

• Kevin M. Barry, Northwestern University