Practitioners Put Research into Practice Strengthening Community-Based Pregnant and Parenting Teen Programs

The United States teen birth rate remains the highest of any industrialized nation. Although nationally the rate is declining, the problem remains complex and significant. Cooperative Extension staff in three San Francisco, California Bay Area counties partnered with six community-based teen pregnancy program site practitioners to adopt a new best practice to improve their programs. This article reports on the process, the implementation, and outcomes for both pregnant and parenting teen participants and programs. Male involvement, family involvement, and youth development/participation in sports and exercise were the best practices chosen for implementation

A New Regional Model for Increasing Extension\u27s Capacity to Reach Metropolitan Audiences

Six western Extension organizations founded the Western Center for Metropolitan Extension and Research (WCMER) to increase the internal capacity of Extension to address metropolitan issues and elevate the value of Extension to external metropolitan audiences. In this article, we present a case study of WCMER. We describe the inception of the center and results of an analysis of its functionality. Those results include findings related to the advisory board’s ability to build social capital and leverage power networks, WCMER’s originating within a culture of innovation and being modeled after other innovative centers, and the concurrent formation of WCMER and the National Urban Extension Leaders network, which propelled WCMER to a national level

Best Practices in Teen Pregnancy Prevention Practitioner Handbook

The Best Practices in Teen Pregnancy Prevention Practitioner Handbook presents 10 best practices from the literature, as well as findings from surveys and visits made to local teen pregnancy prevention programs in schools, community-based agencies, and health care agencies. Each of the best practices in this handbook includes key research findings, program recommendations, and tips for the field. The handbook has been widely used in California and across the nation to enhance the content and delivery of teen pregnancy prevention programs

Increasing Latinx Youth Engagement Across Different Types of After-School Organizations

This article explores how Latinx youth engagement practices vary across different types of out-of-school organizations that successfully sustain Latinx youth participation. Data are drawn from a qualitative study of 13 California organizations that each emphasize one of 3 missions: social justice youth development, “one-stop” wrap-around services, or academic enrichment. While all organizations are found to adhere to a core set of Latinx youth development guiding principles, there are nuanced differences in how they are operationalized in practice across varied organization types, reflecting variation in terms of discourse, scale, and scope. These findings highlight the need for youth development practitioners and collaborating researchers to understand the context of youth-serving organizations when identifying and implementing promising practices and extension programs

Engaging Latino Communities from the Ground Up: Three Tools

California\u27s 4-H Youth Development Program has adopted an asset-based community development approach to extending programming with Latino youths and families. This approach entails learning and relationship building with local Latino communities and building on untapped existing resources, such as Latino-serving organizations and networks. Here we present three tools developed to further the effort

Building Partnerships with the Latino Community: Fact Sheet for 4-H Staff

One in a series of fact sheets for 4-H and youth development professionals to use when designing a program to increase diversity in program participation

Teaching and Learning Participation: Latino Youth Civic Engagement in a High School

AbstractFe MoncloaTeaching and Learning Participation: Latino Youth Civic Engagement in a High SchoolCivically and politically engaged Latino youth are the future for bolstering American democracy because Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in this nation, and they constitute more than half of the youth population in California. To support Latino youth civic participation, this study aims to understand high school organizational programs, practices, and policies that influence Latino youth civic engagement. This investigation is a comparative case study of the institutional factors that foster or impede high school Latino youth civic engagement. In this study I adopted Ogawa, Crain, Loomis, and Ball (2008) conceptualization of cultural-historical activity theory and institutional theory as an integrated framework and as a lens to describe and analyze four participation learning spaces, defined as spaces where youth have voice, influence and shared decision making. My observations and interviews were informed by an interpretivist and constructivist epistemology (Lincoln & Guba, 2000) and utilized ethnographic approaches . Data sources were comprised of 320 hours of participant observation field notes from October 2012 until November 2013, artifacts and interviews. I collected artifacts from the school and the school district. I conducted focused participant observation in two elective classes and two student clubs, and conducted formal interviews with 12 Latino youth from low-income families, 10 teachers, and two school administrators. I analyzed participant structures, goal mediated activity, and social interactions among teachers and youth, as well as youth peer processes that supported civic engagement.The findings of this study indicate that institutional pressures such as increased graduation rates and a focus on discipline, contributed to an absence of administrator leadership for civic engagement. Teachers who supported participation learning spaces had autonomy for the instruction and content of these spaces, and they exhibited organizational citizenship by giving the limited free time they had to support students’ civic engagement. Teachers’ style and choices, which were shaped by their training and personal experiences, influenced classroom or club climate, peer interaction, and pedagogy. This analysis is relevant to educators and administrators who wish to support Latino and diverse youth civic engagement in high schools, and for researchers interested in elective participatory learning environments