About
31
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Introduction
My research focuses on the development and function of relationships between adolescents and non-parental adults within diverse learning contexts. I am particularly interested in how mechanisms within these relationships (e.g., trust; unfair treatment) unfold to support or hinder positive adolescent development. I conduct research on youth-adult relationships in out-of-school time learning contexts and am beginning to explore the nature of Black students’ interactions with adults within school.
Publications
Publications (31)
This is a chapter in At Our Best: Building Youth-Adult Partnerships in Out-of-School Time https://www.atourbest.net/
In this chapter, we propose a model of how young people’s trust in adult staff develops in youth programs based on our research in project-based programs. We define project-based programs as youth programs in which participants gain...
During adolescence, Black girls face the developmental task of achieving a positive identity while developing skills to navigate hostile contexts, including schools. This study brings together quotes on student-staff interactions extracted during a qualitative meta-synthesis ( n = 64 quotes) to discuss how Black adolescent girls interpret being tre...
Positive youth-adult relationships are critical in schools, yet staff commonly interact negatively with Black girls in ways that promote disproportionate discipline. Informed by a project centering the voices of Black adolescent girls, this 2-part series of briefs discusses what girls experience day-to-day with school adults in their own words and...
Positive youth-adult relationships are critical in schools, yet staff commonly interact negatively with Black girls in ways that promote disproportionate discipline. Informed by a project centering the voices of Black adolescent girls, this 2-part series of briefs discusses what girls experience day-to-day with school adults in their own words and...
Adolescents' supportive relationships with nonparental adults are beneficial when they are close and have trust, but few studies explore how adolescents believe closeness and trust unfold over time. I propose a method for prompting adolescents to retrospectively describe the development of abstract components of such relationships by sharing a stud...
Understanding the role of cultural fit and responsiveness in youth-adult relationships is crucial for positive youth development within after-school programs. This study explored (a) youth’s conceptualization of cultural similarities/differences in relationships with adult program leaders, and (b) how processes within culturally similar/different r...
Building on previous work examining the three central theoretical models driving the youth mentoring literature, the present paper presents an updated conceptual framework on how youth mentoring can equitably support health outcomes for young people, particularly minoritized or otherwise marginalized youth. Youth mentoring has been demonstrated to...
Youth mentoring as a field of study has grown immensely in recent years, with hundreds of peer-reviewed research articles on the subject. A key driver of this interest is the demonstrated ability of youth mentoring to support positive mental health for minoritized youth. Three central theoretical models, published nearly twenty years ago, drive the...
Rarely are youth voices incorporated into program and policy development. Youth participatory action research (YPAR) is an opportunity for adolescents to develop research skills by completing projects relevant to their lives and allows participation and decision‐making at systems and organizational levels. Attention to YPAR implementation detail, e...
To adequately research school-based agricultural education (SBAE), it is important to recognize the diversity of viewpoints. This chapter takes an ecological view, proposing the Ecological Model of Agricultural Education. The model considers levels of influence significant and the diversity within. The core are SBAE teachers and students, their ide...
Background
Black adolescents commonly experience unfair treatment from teachers and other school staff that can undermine Black adolescents’ engagement in school and their perceptions of adults as trustworthy.Objective
This study aimed to address the overarching research question: “How do unfair experiences with school staff manifest and impact Bla...
When an adolescent receives critical feedback from adults on what they should change, they may feel discouraged; however, such feedback can be key to learning. This study explored how adolescents attending project-based youth programs experienced critical feedback from adult leaders and the strategies these leaders employed when providing feedback....
Group mentoring programs offer multiple routes for influencing development, through both one-on-one relationships and relational processes in the group context. Less explored is how the group context impacts one-on-one relationships. This study investigated how the group influences the development of the mentor–mentee relationship in a group and on...
A program leader's ability to build trust with youth is critical in effective project-based programs that serve as interventions to support skill development. However, there is little empirical research on the trust-building process from the perspective of leaders. The current study explores trust-building through semi-structured interviews with tw...
Figure from an article that captures how youth's trust amplifies what they gain from youth programs
The current study examined characteristics of natural mentoring relationships (NMRs; i.e. mentoring relationships that develop organically with adults in one’s pre-existing social network) among underrepresented college students as contributors to NMR retention across the first year of college. The sample consisted of 209 underrepresented college s...
Exposure to race-related stressors such as discrimination may take a toll on Black undergraduates attending predominantly White institutions (PWIs) who must contend with these stressors in addition to stressors common to the developmental space of emerging adulthood and the transition to college. The aim of this study was to explore Black students’...
Trust is a critical ingredient to young people’s experience of effective learning relationships with youth program leaders. Youth’s trust typically follows trajectories that grow over time spent in a program through interactions with leaders. We interviewed 108 ethnically diverse youth (mean age: 15.7; range = 12–19 years) at 13 project-based progr...
Tip sheet summarizing literature on feedback that was distributed to Illinois 4-H Staff.
Computer-assisted data collection offers advantages over traditional paper and pencil measures; however, little guidance is available regarding the logistics of conducting computer-assisted data collection with adolescents in group settings. To address this gap, we draw on our experiences conducting a multi-site longitudinal study of adolescent dev...
Two topics commonly referenced within theories of Positive Youth Development (PYD) are supportive relationships with adults and the youth program context. This paper examines the trajectory of youth’s trusting relationships with adults at project-based programs. High-school-age youth at 7 arts, leadership, and technology programs retrospectively co...
This theory-building qualitative study examined how youth develop responsibility within the context of organized youth programs. Interviews were conducted with ethnically diverse youth, parents, and adult leaders from four programs for high school–aged teens. Analysis suggested that youth develop responsibility through a four-step cycle: (1) volunt...
The leaders of youth programs encounter a range of challenging situations that involve youth’s parents or families. This qualitative study obtained data on the variety and nature of these family-related “dilemmas of practice.” Longitudinal interviews with leaders of 10 high quality programs for high-school-aged youth yielded narrative information o...
Globalization is increasing the challenges adolescents face in developing coherent prosocial values. In many societies, traditional systems of value transmission are eroding and youth are exposed to more diverse reference groups and cultural belief systems. This chapter examines the developmental processes through which youth work together with pee...
The objective of this qualitative study was to gain preliminary knowledge of the nature of youth workers’ dilemmas involving families and the underlying issues they entail. This study used grounded theory methods of analysis to explore the dilemmas youth workers face regarding families of participants in twelve high quality youth programs serving h...
