Youth Participatory Evaluation


Book Description

Youth Participatory Evaluation: Strategies for Engaging Young People is a groundbreaking book that provides step-by-step, playful, and accessible activities that have proven effective and can be used by evaluators, educators, youth workers, researchers, funders, and children’s and human rights advocates in their efforts to more effectively engage young people.




Youth Participatory Evaluation: A Field in the Making


Book Description

Youth participatory evaluation (YPE) combines action research and participatory evaluation's commitment to stakeholder empowerment with the new philosophy of positive youth development, which emphasizes young people as community assets and resources rather than as a source of social problems. This volume illustrates a broad range of approaches YPE advocates have used to enrich evaluation practice and strength programs for youth by involving young people as researchers and evaluators. Kim Sabo begins by arguing that youth-led evaluation by it's very nature promotes youth development, because these evaluations constitute Vygotskian zones of proximal development, situations where developmental learning through performance can take place. Les Voakes uses a case study of a conference organized by Town Youth Participation Strategies to illustrate how involving youth in the planning, operational decision-making, and evaluation of programs that directly affect them can benefit both the young participants and the programs themselves. Jonathan K. London, Kristen Zimmerman and Nancy Erbstein provide case studies of evaluation methods that link community and youth development practices. Genevieve Lau, Nancy H. Netherland and Mary Haywood show how YPE can be used as a training process for youth workers, one that enables them to better understand the needs and desires of youth and therefore design better programs for them. Roger A. Hart and Jasmine Rajbhandary examine Nepal's "children's clubs", and Save the Children's YPE-inspired evaluation of these clubs, to show how children can be encouraged to develop their own programs and largely evaluate them by themselves. Bonny L. Gildin describes the All Stars Talent Show Network, an innovative program that unites youth, program funders and adult volunteers in program development and evaluation. Finally, David Fetterman sums up and reflects on the lessons learned by the contributors to this volume. This is the 98th issue of the quarterly journal New Directions for Evaluation.




Public Health Reports


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Designs and Methods for Youth-Led Research


Book Description

Youth-led research is increasing in popularity around the globe and empowers today's youth to help shape social interventions seeking to reach this population group. Designs and Methods for Youth-Led Research provides a foundation from which to plan and implement social research and program evaluation projects that place youth in central roles. In this text, author Melvin Delgado emphasizes how youth-led research represents a profound political and social statement about making relevant research result in significant changes to programs in the field of youth services. Key Features: Brings together the worlds of practice and academia by providing numerous examples of field-based youth-led research projects Encourages a partnership between youth and adults to facilitate mutual respect and give young people the opportunity to make significant and lasting contributions to the creation of solutions to many of their concerns and needs Examines future challenges in the field to help develop programs that will enrich tomorrow's youth Designs and Methods for Youth-Led Research is an excellent textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying youth development in a variety of Social Work, Psychology, Education, and Social Research courses. It is also a valuable resource for practitioners in the fields of youth development and youth services.




Practitioner Teacher Inquiry and Research


Book Description

Teacher inquiry helps improve educational outcomes Practitioner Teacher Inquiry and Research explores the concept and importance of the teacher practitioner, and prepares students in teacher education courses and programs to conduct research in the classroom. Author Carolyn Babione has extensive experience in undergraduate- and graduate-level teacher training and teacher inquiry coursework. In the book, Babione guides students through the background, theory, and strategy required to successfully conduct classroom research. The first part of the book tackles the "how-to" and "why" of teacher inquiry, while the second part provides students with real-life practitioner inquiry research projects across a range of school settings, content areas, and teaching strategies. The book's discussion includes topics such as: Underlying cultural and historical perspectives surrounding the teaching profession Hidden stereotypes that limit teacher beliefs about power and voice Current curriculum innovation and reflections on modern developments Practitioner Teacher Inquiry and Research successfully guides and encourages budding teachers to fully understand the importance of their involvement in studying and researching their classroom settings, giving a better understanding of how their beliefs and teaching practices impact classroom learning.




Handbook of Urban Education


Book Description

This volume brings together leading scholars in urban education to focus on inner city matters, specifically as they relate to educational research, theory, policy, and practice. Each chapter provides perspectives on the history and evolving nature of urban education, the current education landscape, and helps chart an all-important direction for future work and needs. The Handbook addresses seven areas that capture the breadth and depth of available knowledge in urban education: (1) Psychology, Health and Human Development, (2) Sociological Perspectives, (3) Families and Communities, (4) Teacher Education and Special Education, (5) Leadership, Administration and Leaders, (6) Curriculum & Instruction, and (7) Policy and Reform.




Evaluating Civic Youth Work


Book Description

Most youth civic engagement evaluation studies fail to reach beyond specific audiences, thereby hindering the diffusion of evaluation practice wisdom around effective methods to evaluate complex social innovations. This book therefore provides multiple case studies of youth civic engagement evaluation designs and straightforward guidance for designing youth civic engagement evaluations.




Public Health Reports


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Youth-led Health Promotion in Urban Communities


Book Description

The introduction of innovative social paradigms that stress community-participation, community-focused empowerment, assets, social and economic justice themes, and in the case of youth, civic participation, represents one of the outcomes of this questioning and bodes well for current and future generations. The subject of how best to address the current and future health needs of this country's urban marginalized comunities is one that has also received considerable attention in academic, policy, and practice arenas in the past decade. A variety of models have been put forth to achieve the goal of health in these communities. One of the most promising recommendations has been the use of health promotion as a vehicle for reaching and empowering communities of color in both rural and urban America. The youth-led environmental justice movement, as it will be addressed in various sections of this book, is one of the latest and most promising approaches towards health promotion that is grass-roots and community participatory based. Youth-led health promotion represents an emerging field with tremendous implications for addressing the health needs of marginalized urban youth of color in the United States.




Youth Participation and Community Change


Book Description

Empowered youth CAN and DO make a difference! Young people become empowered by their participation in the institutions and decisions that affect their lives—which in turn can lead to real positive change in the community. Youth Participation and Community Change presents leading authorities providing the latest research and effective approaches on how young people can be drawn to participate in organizations and communities. The diverse perspectives discuss youth participation in today’s society, the models and methods of its practice, the roles of youth and adults, and the future of youth participation and community in a diverse democracy. Approaches include those which promote participatory community-based research and evaluation, and involve youth groups in poor and racially segregated areas. The mainstream view of much of today’s youth is that of being victims of society rather than a being a possible positive influence on society as a whole. Youth Participation and Community Change seeks to shift the viewpoint from youth as being problems to empowering them to enact positive social change. The book explores community agency efforts to involve young people, and the process by which youth civic engagement promotes empowerment. Social work and public health approaches are examined, with cogent discussions on conceptual and theoretical issues. Empirically based case studies illustrate best practices and interdisciplinary work that draws upon psychology, sociology, social work, public health, education, and related academic disciplines and professional fields. Topics in Youth Participation and Community Change include: key dimensions of critical youth empowerment a case study of youth leadership development in Hawaii—the Sariling Gawa Youth Council the Lexington Youth Leadership Academy—a leadership development and community change program a new model for youth civic engagement in Hampton, Virginia three projects that engage urban youth in community change through participatory research youth engagement strategies and the benefits of youth participation in health research ten projects which used photovoice to represent, advocate, and enhance community health a participatory action research process with youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina the Growing Up in Cities project of UNESCO training students as facilitators for the Youth Empowerment Strategies (YES!) project four characteristics of engagement in the research literature and a school-community-university project differences in developmental outcomes among youth organizing, identity-support, and traditional youth development agencies Youth Participation and Community Change is thought-provoking, enlightening reading that is perfect for organizers, planners, policymakers, advocates, youth service workers, agency administrators, educators, students, and professionals in psychology, sociology, social work, urban planning, public policy, and public health.