Highlighted Session: Handing over the Mic: Centering Youth Voices in Research and Practice

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Young people are the center of efforts to improve and transform education and schools, and have the most at stake as to whether education systems transformation efforts are equitable, high-quality, inclusive, and relevant (Qargha and Morris, 2023). Youth are also central to global protests and movements such as Fridays for Future, Black Lives Matters, and efforts to transform education. However, there is often a lack of comprehensive and systematic practice on how to ensure the inclusion and active participation of youth in the collaborative process of educational research and practice. Youth are often invited to participate as token participants in education conversations, but too often they are not given equal and intentional roles in designing, implementing, and leading research and practice (Wright 2019).

Youth are not only demographically the majority across countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, but they are also the rising global and educational leaders of movements as well as political agendas. It is not a matter of if we engage youth, but how we engage them. This panel introduces theoretical frameworks on how to involve youth in research and provides examples and recommendations from research and practice in centering youth voice. In the first presentation, a youth researcher introduces the different types of research that include youth, as well as the differences between intergenerational, multigenerational, and youth participatory action research. They discuss key principles from the research in how to engage youth authentically and effectively. In the second panel, empirical data with youth in Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, India, South Africa, and Tanzania are presented to demonstrate how intergenerational research is critical to education systems change. This includes surveys on what youth think the purpose of school is relative to their teachers and parents/caregivers, as well as their own views on how they would like to see education systems change.

In the third panel, mixed-methods research that draws on both an intergenerational approach and youth participatory action research in Zanzibar Tanzania, demonstrates how to work in deep collaboration with rural youth to develop contextually relevant strategies to ensure schools and communities are more responsive to youth’s needs. The fourth panel draws on life history narratives of youth from rural or lower socioeconomic backgrounds from Kazakhstan to demonstrate an example of intergenerational research with youth. The study findings show the significance of centering youth voices in co-construction of narratives with youth that provide a nuanced understanding of their lived experiences of navigating pathways through university admission, graduation, and career development.

This panel starts with a macro view of the different ways that youth are included methodologically in research, as well as the principles for authentically involving youth as drawn from research and practice in youth studies. The second presentation, presents a meso view at how intergenerational research across geographies helps us understand and juxtapose different experiences and perspectives on education between generations (families, youth, and educators). The third and fourth presentation delve into a micro view of how intergenerational and youth participatory action research can be used to better understand the lived experiences of countries with an education system, and what they think should change to make education more equitable, high-quality, inclusive, and relevant. This empirical research captured through in-depth qualitative and arts-based methods hands youth the agency of understanding their own experiences, and the microphone so they can share their solutions and strategies with a wide-reaching audience of policymakers, education leaders, educators, and families.

Sub Unit

• Youth Development and Education SIG

Organizer

• Emily Markovich Morris, The Brookings Institution

Chair

• Zhuldyz Amankulova, University of Minnesota

Individual Presentations

• Centering Youth as Researchers and Co-researchers - Omaer Naeem, The Brookings Institution

• Youth and Intergenerational Strategies for Preventing School Pushout - Emily Markovich Morris, The Brookings Institution

• Centering Youth to Re-envision Social Capital Theory: Life Stories of Kazakhstani youth from Rural or Lower Socioeconomic Backgrounds - Zhuldyz Amankulova, University of Minnesota