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Youth Empowerment in Context: Exploring Tensions in School-Based yPAR

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
American Journal of Community Psychology

Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. All proper names have been changed.

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Acknowledgments

This paper was supported, in part, by grants to the fourth author from University Community Links, the UC Santa Cruz Social Science Junior Faculty Research Grant program, and the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community. The authors wish to thank Mylene Acosta, Samuel Jain, Mariah Kornbluth, Jessenia Meza, and Jeremy Rosen-Prinz for their assistance with this research. The authors also thank the UCSC Community Psychology Research & Action Team and Professor Craig Haney for their suggestions regarding this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, University of California Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, USA

    Danielle Kohfeldt, Lina Chhun, Sarah Grace & Regina Day Langhout

Authors
  1. Danielle Kohfeldt
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  2. Lina Chhun
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  3. Sarah Grace
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  4. Regina Day Langhout
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Correspondence to Danielle Kohfeldt.

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See Appendix A

Table 1.

Table 1 Codebook for fieldnotes and interviews
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Kohfeldt, D., Chhun, L., Grace, S. et al. Youth Empowerment in Context: Exploring Tensions in School-Based yPAR. Am J Community Psychol 47, 28–45 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-010-9376-z

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