Reading the formal descriptions of youth civic engagement projects shows that some emphasize citizenship almost to the exclusion of young person, while others emphasize young people to the exclusion of citizenship. Who and what are the youth, the young people and young persons in the three youth civic engagement initiatives? And how are these…

In civic youth work program staff focus on larger outcomes and do not often attend to the importance of seemingly mundane and simple tasks. Young people talk about how these simple tasks have powerful meaning for them and their work even as adult volunteers talked about the challenges of working democratically with young people. To integrate these…

The concept of citizenship is a central, necessary, and defining feature of youth civic engagement. Any effort to educate young people for citizenship entails an implicit idea of what a "good citizen" is. There are a number of different and sometimes competing versions of what is a "good citizen." This chapter reviews "standard" accounts of…

Youth civic engagement is a diverse field of practice, with each initiative claiming it has a unique approach. This chapter describes three initiatives, Youth-in-Government, Youth Science Center, and Public Achievement from the point-of-view of program staff. Their view is often privileged; it is the one used for official communication and public…

There have been many competent evaluations of youth civic engagement projects. Our work differs from those in assumptions, purposes, goals, methods, activities, and findings for use in evaluation capacity building and program improvement, theoretical and conceptual clarity, and decision-making. Typically, evaluations have focused on predetermined…

We propose civic youth work as a new craft orientation in the family of child and youth care, education, social work, recreation and other relevant semi-to-full professions. We envision this practice as based in the philosophies and practical sciences of pedagogy, politics, and human development. The ideal-type civic youth worker will have a…

Young people say that participation in civic youth work provides a rich experience. From the official perspective, learning is the focus, and most programs call themselves a form of experiential education. Young people do learn something from these initiatives but not always in ways experiential education theory suggests. Data from a study of the…

Young people involved in the Youth Science Center, Youth-in-Government, and Public Achievement told interviewers about their experiences, and this allows us to make explicit contrasts between formal aims, strategies, ethos, curriculums, and activities of each initiative and what it is like to be a participating youth. The contrast is, as expected,…

Adult volunteers who work as experiential educators in Public Achievement (PA) told us about their experiences, and we contrasted these with the stated aims of Public Achievement, young peoples' experiences, and what it is like to be an adult volunteer. PA coaches reflected that there was a significant disjuncture between the official aims of PA…

There is a moral panic in the US about youth civic engagement because data show decreasing rates of involvement in organized groups and with voting. There are multiple interpretations of what this means for democracy and about young people. One major reading is that interest in civic life is decreasing and this is seen to be related to…