Engaging Youth Through Youth-Adult Partnerships (Y-AP): Implications for Education and Community Organizations

DOI

10.2991/icems-17.2018.30How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Youth-adult partnership; youth engagement; community organizations; youth programs

Abstract

In educational settings the world over, youth are increasingly disengaged from schools and communities. Increased dropout rates, truancy, crime, and general malaise within schools and youth programs indicate a disengagement problem in the context of youth learning spaces. Creating learning settings where young people feel valued, have a sense purpose, and find relevance to personal goals and futures, remains a challenge. In this presentation, I present the concept of youth-adult partnership (Y-AP) as a promising strategy for addressing the challenge of youth engagement. Y-AP is based on the premise that adult-supported youth voice on issues that affect young people will result in greater perceived value in education, and consequently, greater investment in learning by students. Drawing mostly on research from youth development organizations and afterschool programs that report high youth motivation and empowerment among young people, educators have begun to turn to similar strategies. Opportunities for voice in shaping curriculum, co-constructing assignments, and immersion in consequential activities, are found to promote student engagement. Students and youth who express voice on issues that affect them (i.e., school schedule, choice of classes, learning modality, program decision-making) are more likely to see value in their education, and consequently, become more invested in their learning. Case studies from Nigeria and Malaysia are presented to showcase how Y-AP can bring adults and youth together on issues of mutual concern, and create more engaging developmental settings for young people. The presentation concludes with four strategies for implementing Y-AP in organizations.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Steven Eric Krauss
PY  - 2017/10
DA  - 2017/10
TI  - Engaging Youth Through Youth-Adult Partnerships (Y-AP): Implications for Education and Community Organizations
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Education in Muslim Society (ICEMS 2017)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 154
EP  - 157
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icems-17.2018.30
DO  - 10.2991/icems-17.2018.30
ID  - EricKrauss2017/10
ER  -