Previous research related to Youth Adult Partnership, Empowerment and Empowering Environments, and Liberatory School Design all highlight the importance of relationships in ensuring that young people experience school environments as empowering. Currently, there is a lot of interest and energy around redesigning schools to be Learner-Centered, in…

Many students are hesitant to provide class input while others are eager to elaborate on their thoughts and feelings about physical education. As a result, some attempts to provide students with a voice risk overlooking students who are already reluctant to express themselves. Systematic approaches to provide voice to all students may help promote…

Despite the popularity of student voice initiatives, there is ample evidence that they fail to challenge power relations at school or help marginalized students make their voices heard. This paper presents a student voice project based on the Photovoice method. The project was implemented with marginalized youth in an urban high school in Israel.…

In the present study, I attempted to understand how students perceive their voice in the 2900 student public high school where I serve as principal. The study is a qualitative inquiry that combines human-centered design and action research for its conceptual framework. My dual roles of researcher and principal influenced every aspect of this…

Engaging in mental health advocacy as a high schooler has granted the author the unique opportunity to observe some of the most inspiring manifestations of hope that humanity has to offer. Simultaneously, it has opened their my eyes to the systemic underrepresentation and misrepresentation of youth. The author has been mentored by their school…

This paper highlights Latinx youth's community engagement and activist identities during their participation in CHANCE ("Campamento Hispano Abriendo Nuestro Camino a la Educación"), a college access program at UNC Greensboro. We examined Latinx youth's activist identities using critical qualitative inquiry. Findings reveal collective…

While many teachers enter the profession with the goal of creating a classroom in which both the students and the teacher are energized by the joy of learning, they often encounter obstacles to realizing this vision. In this article, Can Viva Zhao describes the creation and development of an anatomy class designed and led by students. In the…

Critical pedagogies often prioritize critical thinking and social awareness at the expense of preparing urban youth for social action. Though sociopolitical efficacy is argued to bridge critical reflection and social action, this relationship is undetermined. We argue that critical reflection and sociopolitical efficacy are independent predictors…

Esports has been adopted by high schools across the country and around the world as a school-based opportunity for students to engage in competitive video gaming. Growth of esports in secondary schools has been informed independently by student and industry interests, leaving school administrators little understanding surrounding the motives and…

Purpose: Educational leadership traditionally has defined school leadership as an adult-only space. An emerging group of scholars is expanding the field to challenge who should be considered an educational leader and whose voices should be centered in change processes. Examining the ways in which students serve as leaders in schools, student voice…

Given that learning is not neutral or politically innocent (Giroux, 1983) and education is shaped by one's sociopolitical context (Paris & Alim, 2017), this paper shifts understandings of learning from the individual to the collective, centering community as a framework for reimagining education to advance equity. This paper explores the…

This playbook provides ways in which Superintendents and teams can blur the lines between high school, postsecondary education, and the workforce. Superintendents play a significant role to Raise the Bar for student success by developing an "education-to-workforce" system that focuses on Unlocking Career Success.

Research has shown the value of including youth, especially minoritized students, in school- and district-level educational decision-making. However, power dynamics, as related to adultism, along with other inequities, are barriers to youth's political influence. We elucidate these barriers by exploring the possible relationship between…

This paper discusses high-school students' perspectives on their participation in educational survey research. Students responded to a Likert-style questionnaire about their school's social-educational portrait and were invited at its end to briefly comment on the survey itself. Qualitative analysis showed that a sizable proportion of students…

What does the development of a young person's political agency look like, and what role can schools play in this process? The authors profile Blackstone Academy, where administrators integrate social activism, community service, and other service-learning projects into the curriculum to help students develop leadership skills and confidence. The…