Pushing the Envelope on Youth Civic Engagement: a Developmental and Liberation Psychology Perspective

نویسندگان

  • Roderick J. Watts
  • Constance Flanagan
چکیده

In this article, we take a critical look at the growing interest in U.S. political participation as it exists in the youth civic engagement literature. Our critique draws from principles of liberation and developmental psychology, and from the incisive writings of experts in youth organizing. Youth Organizing evolved from the Positive Youth Development (PYD) and Community Youth Development (CYD) perspectives but its addition of social justice activism is consistent with liberation psychology. The essence of our critique is this: Although there is certainly value in the current civic engagement literature, much of it focuses on the maintenance of social and political institutions rather than on action for social justice. To promote a better balance, and one more relevant to the lives of youth of color and other marginalized young people, we offer a framework for empirical research on youth sociopolitical development. The focus is on the relationship between social analysis (including critical consciousness) and societal involvement that includes the full range of service and political work. Because youth is the focus, we also include a brief discussion of a distinctive challenge that adults face in doing just work with young people—namely, adultism. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

برای دانلود رایگان متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

The psychology and practice of youth-adult partnership: bridging generations for youth development and community change.

Youth-adult partnership (Y-AP) has become a phenomenon of interest to scholars and practitioners. Despite the potential of Y-AP to promote positive youth development, increase civic engagement, and support community change, the practice remains unfamiliar to many. Although research has increased over the past decade, the construct remains vague with an insufficient grounding in developmental th...

متن کامل

Growing Social Inequalities in Youth Civic Engagement? Evidence from the National Election Study

Social class differences in civic engagement persist for both youth and adults. Althoughempiricalevidence ismixed, several recentsocial changespertainingtoyouthsuggest that social inequalities in civic engagement may be growing over time for young people. Using data from theNational Election Study, we compared trends for youth and older adults of varying education levels and tested the hypothes...

متن کامل

Family affluence, school and neighborhood contexts and adolescents' civic engagement: a cross-national study.

Research on youth civic engagement focuses on individual-level predictors. We examined individual- and school-level characteristics, including family affluence, democratic school social climate and perceived neighborhood social capital, in their relation to civic engagement of 15-year-old students. Data were taken from the 2006 World Health Organization Health Behaviour in School-aged Children ...

متن کامل

A cross-cultural examination of adolescent civic engagement: comparing Italian and American community-oriented and political involvement.

The purpose of this study was to investigate community-oriented and political civic engagement activities and intentions among youth in Italy and the United States. Adolescents (N = 566) from academically rigorous schools in both countries completed surveys assessing frequency of civic activity participation, motivation for activity, evaluations of activity, and intentions for future civic enga...

متن کامل

Bridging the Generational Culture Gap in youth Civic engagement through social Media: Lessons Learnt from young designers in Three Civic organisations

Youth civic identities and social media practices are changing rapidly, and civic organisations are struggling to exploit the potential of social media to reach youth. One major challenge concerns the generational culture gap between the networked culture of today’s youth and the top–down culture characteristic of many civic organisations. This study presents lessons learnt from three cases whe...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2007