TL;DR: Articles you may have missed

By Kate Walker

In my role as editor for the Journal of Youth Development (JYD), I read a lot of great articles. JYD is designed to bridge applied research and practice. In other words, it addresses issues and features studies and practices that have implications for those working with and on behalf of young people in youth-serving organizations and the intermediaries that support them. However, many of those folks don’t have time to read journal articles. Allow me to highlight a few important JYD publications that you may have missed (from most recent):

1. Silence is Not an Option: Oral History of Race in Youth Development Through the Words of Esteemed Black Scholars. The study of race has been silenced in many areas of science including youth development research. Harris and Outley synthesize an antiracist agenda from the perspectives of six Black scholars: Tabbye Chavous, Michael Cunningham, Davido Dupree, Leoandra Onnie Rogers, Stephanie Rowley, and Robert Sellers.
2. Youth Programs Are Important Spaces for Emotional Learning. Emotional skills are now widely recognized to be essential skills for young people to survive and thrive across all aspects of their lives. This Thought Leader Commentary by Larson and Rusk highlights key elements of youth programs that make them important contexts for youth’s active engagement in emotional learning.
3. LGBTQ+ Inclusion and Support: An Analysis of Challenges and Opportunities Within 4-H. Rand, Paceley, Fish and Anderson share opportunities and challenges in supporting LGBTQ+ youth within 4-H around organizational climate, policies and procedures, and training, education, and resources. 
4. Positive Youth Development Theory in Practice: An Update on the 4-H Thriving Model. The 4-H Thriving Model predicts that participation in high-quality 4-H programs helps youth thrive and that thriving youth achieve key developmental outcomes. Arnold and Gagnon’s update is followed by three commentaries from theoretical (Lerner), implementation (Moroney) and equity (Fields) lenses.
5. Critical Positive Youth Development: A Framework for Centering Critical Consciousness. Gonzalez, Kokozos, Byrd and McKee developed a framework to attend to the role and impact of power, privilege, and oppression on young people’s development and lived experiences.
6. Race, Antiracism, and Youth Development: From Awareness to Sustained Action. In this Thought Leader Commentary (a response to the murder of George Floyd), Outley and Blyth make the case for recognizing racism in the youth development field and for promoting a strong and sustained commitment to antiracist approaches to research, publishing, practice and policy. 
7. Youth Practitioners Can Counter Fascism: What We Know and What We Need. Arbeit, Burnham, de Four and Cronk examine how youth practitioners can mitigate the threat of fascist recruitment and deter young people from developmental trajectories leading them towards harmful ideologies and actions.
8. Preventing Bullying: Consequences, Prevention and Intervention. In a special issue featuring applied summaries of consensus reports from the National Academies, Le Menestrel summarizes Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice and what is known about the consequences of bullying behavior and interventions that attempt to prevent and respond to it.
9. Supporting Volunteerism in Youth Development Programs: Progress and Prospects for Advancing the Knowledge Base. DuBois reflects on the special issue dedicated to volunteerism -- both the strengths of the current contributions and needed next steps to build on this work.
10. Positive Youth Development Through Leisure: Confronting the COVID-19 Pandemic. Ettekal and Agans review key elements contributing to the effectiveness of youth development programs and provide ideas for how to sustain, adapt, and create these elements and bring them into unstructured leisure settings in the face of crises. 

What research has informed your work lately? When and why do you read research articles?

-- Kate Walker, Extension professor and specialist in youth work practice

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