ABOUT
The “Youth Voice 4 RPPs” (formerly “Student Voice 4 RPPs”) Awards program recognizes, honors, and further supports existing RPP efforts that have a strong interest in and/or currently support youth involvement in RPP work. As long-term partnerships between education research and practice communities, RPPs hold great promise for disrupting typical dynamics between “R” and “P”, in addition to generating new opportunities for a wider variety of voices to co-construct knowledge for decision making. With this awards program, we hope to highlight and learn from how NNERPP member RPPs center youth voice in their work as they pursue democratization of evidence generation and use.
This awards program is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. We thank them for their support but acknowledge that the findings and conclusions that may result from the projects in this program are those of the authors alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Foundation.
2024 YOUTH VOICE AWARDEES
Through an application process, three NNERPP members were selected for awards of $7,500 to further develop, expand, or strengthen their student involvement strategies. At the end of the project period, honorees will be invited to share artifacts developed and lessons learned through a variety of engagement opportunities. We are eager to learn alongside their efforts and look forward to helping support their work in the year ahead.
DETROIT PARTNERSHIP FOR EDUCATION EQUITY & RESEARCH
Detroit PEER will convene up to 20 Black and Brown youth for a Summer Youth Research Institute (SYRI) to expand youth leadership in Detroit PEER’s RPP. Youth activists from the RPP member organizations will be SYRI workshop co-facilitators. They will co-create and carry out curricula to teach principles of youth leadership and organizing to a new cohort of Detroit PEER youth advisors. The new cohort will engage in Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) to develop campaigns for educational justice based on critical issues of personal importance to them. They will also receive culturally relevant learning about the educational experiences of Black and Brown youth in Detroit, engage in youth empowerment exercises, learn the foundations of critical qualitative and quantitative research, and use storytelling for liberatory educational policy change. By summer’s end, the youth will showcase their YPAR results and develop political actions to call for the educational opportunities they identify as necessary for Detroit youth thriving.
CENTERING YOUTH VOICE: STANFORD REDWOOD CITY SEQUOIA MENTAL HEALTH COLLABORATIVE
The Youth Action Research Fellowship—which the Gardner Center has now facilitated with six research-practice partners and more than 50 student researchers—centers student perspectives and provides new and critical information and analysis. This knowledge advances the ability of schools, districts, and other youth serving organizations to improve their programs and build deeper relationships with youth.
The team anticipates using funds to serve the Stanford Redwood City Sequoia Mental Health Collaborative by documenting the curriculum and tools to prepare to host a future cohort of SUHSD students, as well as for fellowships that support other research-practice partnerships. The Stanford Redwood City Sequoia Mental Health Collaborative team also wants to ensure that youth action research is well understood as a path to advance equity in education, and so they plan to develop publicly available tools and information that can be used by other RPPs interested in expanding youth voice in their research.
THE VERMONT COMMUNITY SCHOOLS RPP (VT CS RPP)
An essential component of both the VT RAYS project and Community Schools implementation is the centering of shared governance, collaborative leadership, and youth/family agency. This award will provide critical support for ongoing efforts to recruit and support student involvement in ongoing VT RAYS Youth Advisory Boards at five Community School sites across rural Vermont. Further, this funding will facilitate the expansion of existing clinical and public health information and supports including the refinement of the Adolescent and Youth Friendly Clinic Environment Assessment Tool to support youth-led walk-throughs during which youth share ideas and recommendations for making healthcare environments more welcoming and safer for young people. In conjunction with integrated student supports and family engagement activity, two critical components of community schools, this funding will support youth-developed informational flyers, context-specific public health campaign materials, and community-building activities led by VT RAYS Youth Advisory Boards.
PREVIOUS AWARDEES | 2023
Through an application process, three NNERPP members were selected in 2023 for awards of $7,500 to further develop, expand, or strengthen their student involvement strategies.
CIRCLE + ILLINOIS CIVICS HUB
(Twitter: @IL_CivicsHub)
CIRCLE + Illinois Civics Hub will use the award to provide funds for young people in three school districts to lead a participatory budgeting process to plan and disburse grants to improve civic opportunities that benefit all students in a school or a district. In the initial phase, youth teams will receive training to conduct focus groups and learn about building decision-making tools (such as rubrics and deliberation strategies) as they make their spending plan. In the second phase, the same young people will apply the skills to refine the “democracy schools” success metrics with the RPP, by providing feedback and by engaging more and younger students in their districts to gather and make recommendations.
DC EDUCATION RESEARCH COLLABORATIVE
(Twitter: @urbaninstitute)
The DC Education Research Collaborative intends to use award funds to further develop an ongoing project with the Columbia Heights Education Campus, a globally-themed bilingual public school for grades 6 through 12 where students and educators are now guided by the co-created principle of design thinking. The research project is being advised and guided by the Collaborative’s Research Director, but conducted entirely by students. The project focuses on two priority issues: reducing tardiness and eliminating restroom vandalism. The students are investigating whether proposed solutions have the intended effects and the degree to which students are being included and centered during school-wide decision-making.
CAROLINA YOUTH COALITION RESEARCH PRACTICE PARTNERSHIP
(Twitter: @CarolinaYouthCo)
The Carolina Youth Coalition will use award funds to initiate and conduct the “I Belong” photovoice project. Ten students will participate in the planning and execution of the project, which will provide them with an opportunity to share how they engage in their community and express their sense of belongingness. Students will have full agency in deciding what is important, concerning, or interesting for them to share. They will capture their individual perspectives and use images to inform others and advocate for engagement / belongingness, especially at a time when youth mental health is declining. Students will receive stipends to support their involvement and will share their work with their peers and community.
PREVIOUS AWARDEES | 2021
Through an application process, the following six NNERPP members were selected in 2021 for awards of $7,500 to further develop, expand, or strengthen their student involvement strategies.
DIGITAL PROMISE (KENTUCKY)
Tough as Nails, Nimble Fingers: Developing a K-8 Coding Pathway for KY Appalachia
Digital Promise plans to use the funds to work with educators on co-designing interview protocols that will help teachers and administrators conduct empathy interviews with their students. This will empower both educators to listen and students to share, as the partnership advances understanding of and relationships with computing and tech. Ultimately, the interviews will provide context for the design of student learning experiences that will benefit students.
EQUITY IMPLEMENTED PARTNERSHIP (IOWA)
Waterloo School District + Center for Educational Transformation, University of Northern Iowa
The Equity Implemented Partnership is co-designing a culturally responsive professional development initiative that addresses systemic and institutionalized racism embedded in school practices and policies. The funds from this award will be used to establish partnership infrastructure to ensure that racial minority, underserved youth benefit from and are supported to participate in the RPP. In particular, EIP will develop an “Emerging RPP Scholar” program to center student voice.
JOHN W. GARDNER CENTER (CALIFORNIA)
Oakland Unified School District, Community Schools, Gardner Center, Stanford University
The Gardner Center will use funds to support and expand a new Youth Action Research internship designed to center student perspective and expertise in research. The internship will engage high school seniors as critical stakeholders and active participants in research on the implementation of Oakland Unified’s Full-Service Community Schools Initiative to support OUSD’s interests in better understanding what it means to be a learner-centered community school.
GEORGIA POLICY LABS (GEORGIA)
Achieve Atlanta + Georgia State University
GPL will use funds to strategically plan for the long-term involvement of college students as partnership teammates by actively including them in the planning stages. In particular, GPL will compensate Achieve Atlanta scholars attending Georgia State University for participating in semi-structured interviews to better understand the opportunities and barriers students may experience when engaging with the RPP and collaborating to conduct participatory action research.
ORANGE COUNTY EDUCATIONAL ADVANCEMENT NETWORK (CALIFORNIA)
UCI GEAR UP + OCEAN at UC, Irvine
OCEAN plans to support an examination of students’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, positioning students as experts and shapers of the research through the development of their own research protocols, which primarily focus on mental health and wellbeing. Through the Student Voice Project, up to ten rising tenth grade students from a predominantly Black and Brown school district will receive support, mentorship, and training in order to elevate their experiential knowledge.
SAN FRANCISCO UNIFIED – UC, BERKELEY (CALIFORNIA)
San Francisco Unified School District + University of California, Berkeley
SFUSD-UC Berkeley will strengthen current youth involvement in district initiatives by mapping existing student groups in SFUSD and describing recommended district routines for embedding youth voice in district decision-making processes. Funds will cover stipends for middle and high school student leaders to participate in focus groups and produce user-friendly media about student research and insights, as well as staff time to support focus groups and the creation of media.