This paper describes an ethnographic case study of eleven First Nations adult learners in a Northern Ontario community attempting to earn secondary school equivalency through the General Education Development (GED) program. The paper maintains a focus on the power differentials at work in both the learners' prior educational endeavours and their…

Participatory research can be seen as providing affordances for "listening" to student voices. This study contributes to the debate around its affordances in ameliorating democratic processes in schools. Students in a northern city secondary school in England used multimodal methods to research questions based on "where do students…

In this rethinking of how curriculum can be approached in times of trauma, ideas around opening the curricular space to talking about taboo topics like suicide and sexual violence are discussed. Both deeply personal issues, our classrooms and students are not immune from their effects. A distinction between controversial issues and taboo topics is…

In a nation and political climate where models of communication and respect for another's ideas are difficult to find, the authors take seriously their charge to support educational practices that prepare students to critically engage in a free and democratic society. As part of a summer high school outreach program, they sought to develop a…

Formal education--four walled classrooms with a single teacher and multiple children in a school setting--did not exist in traditional Hawai'i. Traditional Hawaiian learning resembled contemporary vocational schools or specialized institutions of higher learning. Within these structures, Hawaiians became strongly rooted in cultural and familial…

Traditionally, schools have often made decisions about instruction, discipline, and other schoolwide policies without youth involvement. And yet, research suggests that when students have choice, control, and leadership opportunities, their motivation and engagement increase, which in turn is linked with better educational outcomes. This new guide…

Participation in sport during high school has been linked with a range of educational and developmental benefits. However, there is limited research investigating the benefits of participation in sport from the perspective of Aboriginal former youth sports participants. The purpose of the current research was to investigate how participation in…

This study seeks to understand how a group of boys in a Durban township achieved exceptional educational results despite the severe financial, social and educational constraints they faced. Their high school typified the worst failings of the South African educational system, but they achieved academic success in the matriculation and at…

This article applies theoretical understandings of power relations within student voice work to two empirical examples of school-based student voice projects. The article builds on and refines theoretical understandings of power and participation developed in previous articles written by the authors. The first article argued that at the heart of…

Motivated by the addition of a curriculum standard for active citizenship into New Jersey's social studies standards a group of educators and researchers set out to integrate an action research curriculum, based on a youth participatory action research (YPAR) model, into social studies classrooms. Adapting YPAR, with its promising blend of…

Youth with disabilities, compared with their typical peers, have a higher likelihood of dropping out of school and experience poorer transition outcomes. Evidence supports programs and interventions focusing on inclusive education and leadership skills results in successful transition to college and career. This article describes the experiences…

This paper reports the findings of an eight-month ethnographic study of a small group of at-risk youths in a school of a southern coastal city in China. The process leading to the young students being marginalised by the school system and how they developed a "muddling through" subculture to counteract this marginalisation is revealed.…

A qualitative research study was conducted with 15 school counselors to identify the strategies they used to empower Chicana/o and Latina/o high school students. The findings of this study revealed that participants facilitated student empowerment by developing personal relationships with students, involving alumni, building sociocultural…

Positive youth development is a strengths-based, positive psychology approach to fostering adolescents' educational engagement and achievement. It focuses not just on students' academic development but also on their vocational, social, and emotional development. The positive youth development philosophy is at the heart of Cynthia Hazel's unique…

Grounded in the context of the gap in civic participation, action-based civics curricula, and how classroom interactions may affect student development, we present the CIVVICS (Civic Interactions motiVating diVerse Individuals in Classroom Settings) observation tool. CIVVICS's four domains--Lesson Planning and Implementation, Classroom…