Examining Youth Epistemologies in the Design of a Youth-Led, Antiracist Teaching and Learning Community

• In Event: Engaging Critical Voices of Youth Across Multiple Settings

Abstract

Building on theories of youth speculative civic literacies and social design experimentation, this longitudinal qualitative research study investigates the collaborative meaning-making processes of ten youth of color who volunteered to co-develop an annual youth conference rooted in Hip Hop culture and activism. As a participant-observer in this study, the author employs a qualitative critical inquiry to discuss the dialogic processes through which these students designed a teaching and learning curriculum centered on young people’s identities, epistemologies, and radical imaginings. This youth-developed approach to community-based learning has significant implications for researchers and practitioners interested in how youth enact learning as critical praxis in order to cultivate equitable educational systems that reflect the needs and realities of minoritized youth communities.

Author

• Lauren Leigh Kelly, Rutgers University Graduate School of Education