Prejudice Reduction in Public Schools: A Dialogic Approach

Increasingly, students are facing hostility and violence as a result of one or more of their social group memberships. Such prejudicial attitudes and actions contribute to antagonistic intergroup relationships in public schools (i.e., K–12). This article examines dialogic approaches to prejudice reduction, with a specific emphasis on intergroup dialogue in public K–12 schools. Evidence-based steps and strategies that educators can use to develop intergroup dialogue competencies and cultivate a more dialogic environment in their schools and classrooms are also introduced

Youth Storytelling for Social Change: Guiding Questions for Effective and Ethical Delivery

Storytelling is a powerful medium through which to nurture and amplify youths\u27 voices. When employed effectively and ethically, storytelling has been shown to foster connection, improve intergroup relations, promote socioemotional well-being, and motivate social action. Drawing on foundational research, Aristotle\u27s three rhetorical appeals, and our experience pilot testing the #PassTheMicYouth curriculum, we developed ten guiding questions for effective and ethical youth storytelling for social change. 4-H professionals can use these questions with youths to guide them through social impact storytelling creation and delivery

#PassTheMicYouth Multimedia Program: Setting the Stage to Amplify Youth Voices

The #PassTheMicYouth multimedia program is a youth-centered, youth-led podcast and blog that amplifies the voices and lived experiences of young people across social identity groups. Grounded in a positive youth development framework and informed by a critical pedagogical tradition, #PassTheMicYouth shines a spotlight on sociopolitical issues important to young people and provides a platform that supports creativity and candor. Archived podcast episodes and blog posts are accompanied by lesson plans Extension professionals and other educators can use to promote dialogue and critical reflection among youth and adult audiences. This article introduces the #PassTheMicYouth program and examines potential applications for youth-serving professionals

Making the Best Better for Youths: Cultivating LGBTQ+ Inclusion in 4-H

4-H, as a research-based positive youth development program, should be affirming and inclusive for all youths, including those who are members of LGBTQ+ communities. This article provides 4-H youth development professionals with a series of checklists for supporting LGBTQ+ participation, focusing on systemic advocacy, guidance and protocols, programming, and professional development and dispositions. Using these checklists, 4-H professionals can identify areas of strength and growth for themselves and their programs. Further, they can enable youth thriving, increase protective factors, and reduce risk factors by cultivating inclusive and affirming 4-H spaces

The Illusion of Inclusion: Curricular Possibilities Amidst a Homonational Project

In recent years, the LGBTQ community in the United States experienced many policy changes. Certain political advancements, which promise newfound protections and rights for LGBTQ individuals, might be considered an exceptional accomplishment toward inclusion. There is a lack of research, however, as to how this model of inclusion underpinned by heteronormativity and its appendage, homonormativity, which typically privileges white, well-to-do gay men, is incorporated into curricular resources and the ways in which these depictions and manifestations tie to national interests. As more resources become available to address LGBTQ issues, especially in schools, it is imperative to examine the practices by which these ostensibly progressive approaches may unintentionally reinforce the optimization of some LGBTQ students’ well-being to the detriment of other LGBTQ students – often along intersecting axes of race, gender, sexuality, and class. In particular, an area that warrants scrutiny concerns relations of power that inform conceptualizations of national LGBTQ “inclusion”. This project investigates what types of subjectivities LGBTQ curricular resources (re)produce and how these resources can also resist LGBTQ normativities. By applying a theoretical framework critical of inclusion to mainstream examples of LGBTQ curricular resources, I expose current and emerging approaches to LGBTQ inclusion as limited or exclusionary practices, reinscriptions of existing oppressive power structures, and part of a much larger project, homonationalism, which transform homonormative subjects into model members of the country. I conclude by offering educators suggestions to further “undo” homonationalism, as they, alongside their students, contemplate curricular and pedagogical possibilities for challenging the notion that there is an exemplary mode of being in the classroom and the world