Planning and identifying skills need is mediated by pre-existing social relations and structures of power in the society. The South African state has explored various methods, policies, programmes, and systems to understand the skills needs of the country. The uneven success of these different attempts can be explained by understanding the…

This brief examines the challenges youth face in the current job market and proposes recommendations for a national subsidized employment program that prioritizes equity and amplifies youth voices. The insights provided in this brief are informed by several listening sessions with members of the Communities Collaborating to Reconnect Youth Network…

Community schools respond to a variety of risk factors that impede student learning and development. School and community leaders in Canyons School District (CSD) have created community schools across one highly impacted feeder pattern to strengthen academic learning efforts, school climate and youth development opportunities, parent and family…

Global policy mobilities have been studied predominantly at the national level of education, but their implications and effects at the subnational level have been disregarded. This paper analyzes Proyectá tu Futuro, the first social impact bond (SIB) for education and employability implemented in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since 2010, SIBs have…

Research has demonstrated that systemic transphobia and cissexism harms transgender youth in terms of social, educational, and health outcomes. All too often, research and policy emphasizes vulnerability among trans youth in a way that denies their capabilities as agents of change or active participants in their liberation. This article analyzes…

The purpose of this study was to explore potential effects of a 12-week therapeutic mentoring program targeting social, emotional, and behavioral concerns in 52 children and adolescents between 11 and 17 years of age. Self-reported scores on a norm-referenced behavioral questionnaire were tracked across the span of a mentoring program, and then…

Youth development programs often provide young people with science learning experiences. We argue for reframing youth science learning from a focus on individual scientific literacy to an emphasis on collective scientific literacy--"community science"--to support young people in using science to address issues in their lives and…

Recently, a new program model for describing and predicting the impact of 4-H on youths was proposed. The model's structure was confirmed statistically in preliminary testing. However, youth voice had not been included in the development of the model. This article describes a study intended to assess the alignment of the six thriving indicators…

Research about the effectiveness of sponsored work experiences for youths with visual impairments is scarce, and the only research conducted on this topic has indicated that school-sponsored work experiences were not associated with future employment. In contrast, youths who found their own jobs had better future employment outcomes. Building on…

Developmental theory historically viewed demanding roles (at home, job) as important developmental contexts. However, adolescents' participation in these roles has fallen. This qualitative research examined role experiences in United States youth development programs. A central question among others was, "How can youth experience internal…

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, outdoor spaces remained one of the few places for youth recreation. Outdoor recreation and sport have been associated with positive youth development (PYD) prior to the pandemic, so we sought to test these relationships during the pandemic, accounting for self-efficacy and demographic factors that may be…

As the COVID-19 crisis exposed inequities in civic, funding, and programmatic policies -- often grounded in systemic oppression and White Supremacy -- community based, youth-focused organizations, such as Creative Youth Development (CYD) programs, were catapulted into unplanned changes in order to survive. In this tumultuous environment,…

This dissertation is an effort to better understand Black children's conceptions of smartness and the ways that teachers communicate smartness through their practice. Here, I reimagine smartness as a verb rather than a noun--that is, smartness is about what one does that is smart. I develop a conceptual framework that attends to race, mathematics,…

School-Based Agricultural Education provides students the opportunity to engage with new and emerging agricultural technologies. Employers value employability skills such as openness, preparedness, and adaptability. However, the Agricultural Education literature is limited on the preparation of students in these skills. We conducted a descriptive…

Researchers examined social and emotional learning (SEL) ratings for two samples of 559 and 406 predominantly elementary-age youth of color, who were enrolled in out-of-school time (OST) programs serving communities mostly of high socioeconomic need in Palm Beach County, Florida. Covering the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years in the context of…