Youth empowerment in context: exploring tensions in school-based yPAR.
In much of the youth empowerment literature, researchers focus on the relationship between youth and adults involved in empowerment programs while neglecting the broader social framework in which these relationships and the program itself functions. Utilizing an ecological model, the current research examines the tensions that surfaced in attempts to create an empowering setting in an after-school PAR program with fifth-graders. Challenging assumptions about youth, structural challenges, and conflicting theories of change are highlighted. Results examine the role of sociocultural context as PAR researchers attempt to create a setting in which students gain skills to become change agents within their school. The study suggests that youth empowerment is a context dependent process that requires attention to a multiplicity of factors that influence possibilities for empowerment via second order change.
Psychology Department, University of California Santa Cruz, 95064, USA. dkohfeld@ucsc.edu
Danielle
D
Kohfeldt
Lina
L
Chhun
Sarah
S
Grace
Regina Day
RD
Langhout
D001290:Attitude; D002140:California; D002648:Child; D005178:Faculty; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011209:Power, Psychological; D015397:Program Evaluation; D012574:Schools / Q000458:organization & administration; D012922:Social Change; D012935:Social Justice; D012946:Social Welfare