3-065 - From Perception to Participation: Examining Youth Engagement to Promote Resilience among Urban Youth of Color

Session Type: Exchange Symposium

Integrative Statement

As youth transition into adolescence, their exposure to socioeconomic, community, and peer influences increase. Fostering youth engagement can help mitigate adverse outcomes related to negative influences, particularly for marginalized youth of color. The current symposium presents a continuum of youth social and civic engagement grounded in youth critical consciousness, youth participatory action, and resilience. This continuum begins with the patterns of development of youth critical consciousness, progresses into pathways of resilience, and culminates with the promotion of youth participatory engagement. This collection of work explores ways to engage youth, often living in otherwise risky and disenfranchising backgrounds, while investigating work on the individual factors and conditions in which youth might be more or less disengaged. The first presentation focuses on the role of economic inequality and self-regulation in the development of youth societal perceptions, a powerful identifier in the formation youth critical consciousness. The second presentation explores urban youth of color’s experiences with civic engagement in the context of community violence to identify pathways to resilience. Lastly, the third presentation examines youths’ reports of the impact of participatory strategies used to promote youth engagement and improved research accuracy in a large-scale study of cross-age mentoring program. Our discussant will provide expertise from her extensive work on positive youth development and youth collective efficacy to foster discussion on the complexities of youth lives that might contribute to their agency in their social environments and the related implications for further research, practice, and policy.

Sub Unit

• Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Chair

• Maryse Richards, Loyola University Chicago

Discussant

• Emilie Smith, University of Georgia

Individual Presentations

• For Us, By Us: Utilizing Youth Engagement & Participatory Action Research Strategies for Youth of Color - Presenting Author: Cynthia Onyeka, Loyola University Chicago; Non-Presenting Author: Kevin Miller, Loyola University Chicago; Non-Presenting Author: Maryse Richards, Loyola University Chicago; Non-Presenting Author: Katherine Tyson McCrea, Loyola University Chicago; Non-Presenting Author: Chana Matthews, Loyola University Chicago

• Examining Civic Engagement among Urban Youth Experiencing Community Violence: Distinct Resilience Pathways - Presenting Author: Laura Wray-Lake, University of California, Los Angeles; Non-Presenting Author: Laura S. Abrams, University of California, Los Angeles

• Predictors of perception: Examining economic context and self-regulation in the development of youths’ societal perceptions - Non-Presenting Author: Amanda L Roy, University of Illinois, Chicago; Presenting Author: Marbella Uriostegui, University of Illinois, Chicago