Exploring youth activism through a comprehensive systematic literature review

• In Event: Global Citizenship Education, Solidarity, and Youth Activism in Turbulent Times: Complementary Perspectives

Proposal

Research focusing on students’ participation and engagement with global citizenship issues reveals a gap in understanding the factors underlying these phenomena (Ross, 2021). Some studies demonstrated that while participation in ‘traditional’ politics is declining, engagement in other forms of activism on issues more relevant to their interests is increasing (Shin et al., 2023; Sloam, 2014). Other scholars showed that interest and participation vary across racial, ethnic and religious groups, and cultural contexts (Liu et al., 2023, Shin et al., 2023). School-age student activism is even more underrepresented in research for a number of reasons. First, this group is considered as difficult to reach for a field study due to the legal defense of minors. Secondly, in many countries it is assumed that school-age students do not have much to say (Karsgaard & Davidson, 2023). Therefore, the synthesized literature reveals that there is no systematic understanding of students' agency in relation to Global Citizenship Education.
The present study aims to identify the factors that drive youth engagement (YA) and activism among somewhat marginalized members of society: youth in post-socialist countries, African-American and Latino youth, and migrant youth. The study utilizes the systematic literature review approach, which allows the creation of a cartography of up-to-date knowledge (de Oliveira Andreotti et al., 2016).
Research questions:
1. What are the areas in which youth from different social backgrounds are most engaged/active?
2. What are the specific forms of YA manifestation for different groups of youth?
3. What are the theories underlying YA studies? How do they differ across different groups of youth?
4. How do education institutions and classrooms embrace pedagogies that enable the development of capacities for collective or individual activism? How do they differ across different populations and countries?
5. Are there overlapping theories, journals, discourses, etc. that study youth activism in different groups and contexts?
Databases used for the main literature search included ERIC, EBSCO, and WOS. Complementary searches were also carried out in Google Scholar. The search was conducted in July 2023. Eligibility criteria were: articles with the relevant search terms in the title or abstract, involving school-aged adolescents, data range were not specified a priori. Full-text accessibility and English language were additional inclusion criteria. The analytical approach consisted of both quantitative and qualitative stages. The quantitative analysis examined the distribution of publications over years, identified the main journals publishing YA research and the countries most frequently represented in the literature. It will also explore trends and tendencies over time. The relationship between youth groups and the above-mentioned parameters: years, journals, countries, etc. was also assessed. The qualitative analysis involved coding the identified articles to categorize them based on their emphasis on curriculum and education issues, underlying theories, forms of YA, YA populations, and others.
This study contributes to the understanding of YA and its relation to curriculum, pedagogy, and protest. The findings will shed light on the areas of youth engagement, specific forms of YA.

Authors

• Tanya Khavenson, Technion

• Alla Stremovskaya, Technion

• Carla Inguaggiato, Technion

• Martyna Maria Elerian, Technion

• Simon Eten, University College London UCL

• Vanessa R. Sperduti, Graduate School of Education and Human Development, GW

• Tara Lynn Bartlett, Technion Arizona State University

• Maria Leybenson, Universität Potsdam