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Session Title: Youth Participatory Evaluation: Reviewing the Status of the Field and Exploring Critical Questions for the Future
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Panel Session 233 to be held in the Quartz Room Section A on Thursday, Nov 6, 9:15 AM to 10:45 AM
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Sponsored by the Collaborative, Participatory & Empowerment Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Kim Sabo Flores,
Kim Sabo Consulting,
kimsabo@aol.com
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| Abstract:
What is the current status of youth participation in evaluation research, and what policies and practices can help strengthen their engagement? This panel will feature presenters who have been actively strengthening the field of youth participatory evaluation over the last decade. The presenting panelists will draw from their research and their own experience in practice to discuss the current status of youth participatory evaluation since the Wingspread symposium, a meeting that took place in 2002 and brought together youth leaders and adult allies to discussion specific strategies for strengthening youth participation in community research and evaluation. In particular, the panel will discuss the declaration of principles developed at Wingspread, lessons learned over the last five years, and the critical issues related to policy and practice that will be needed to strengthen youth participation in the future.
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Youth Led Evaluation as a Sound Educational Strategy
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| Robert Shumer,
University of Minnesota,
drrdsminn@msn.com
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Youth led evaluation has been part of my research/evaluation agenda for the past several years, working in both national and international settings. Approximately half of these projects were conducted through youth organizations and the other half were part of educational efforts in school. One of my goals as someone who believes evaluation is a sound educational strategy is to use evaluation practice as an integral part of education in schools. In this role youth-led evaluation can be both a service and a learning experience.
In doing this work, several important issues have arisen that require discussion. Those items that are most important include: how much and how often must training occur to produce quality work; how do youth deal with moral and ethical issues of evaluation, especially participatory work that places them in privileged positions within their school or community; and, as a school-based activity, how do we ensure that the academic work translates into credits in traditional academic subjects?
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From Tokenism to Action: Youth Participatory Evaluation and Research in Town Planning
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| Louise Chawla,
University of Colorado,
louise.chawla@colorado.edu
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When youth participate in city and town planning, they enter an arena of fiercely contested spaces where a partnership with adults is necessary for any significant change to be achieved. All too easily, youth participation can be tokenistic. Based on the experience of the Growing Up in Cities program of UNESCO, a series of considerations are presented to ensure that projects function in a context where city officials will act on ideas that youth generate for the improvement of their communities. These considerations serve as a type of checklist to evaluate the likelihood of successful action when a project is being designed. One of the spurs to action can be advance notice to city decision-makers that there will be follow-up evaluations of how effectively they respond to youth ideas. This presentation examines how youth and adult partners can collaborate in these processes of project design and follow-up evaluations.
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Youth Participatory Evaluation: Lessoned Learned, Challenge and Future Issues for Policy and Practice
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| Katie Richards-Schuster,
University of Michigan,
kers@umich.edu
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What do young people need to strengthen participation in evaluation? What are the specific skills needed? What are the factors that support participation? What are the challenges? Over the last five years, we have conducted education and training workshops to prepare young people to engage in participatory evaluation. We will draw on findings from a training program on participatory evaluation to discuss lessons learned, facilitating and limiting factors, and future issues for policy and practice.
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From The Margins to Center: Exploring Policies and Practices that Can Support Authentic Youth Engagement in Evaluation
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| Kim Sabo Flores,
Kim Sabo Consulting,
kimsabo@aol.com
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Over the past two-decades, I have experimented with playful strategies, and creative methods that seek to authentically engage young people in evaluations of the programs that are meant to serve them. What I have discovered through this work is that youth participatory evaluation has the potential to support youth development, organizational development, community development, and methodological development.
However, youth participatory evaluation, while a growing field still remains on the margins. During this presentation and discussion, I would like to explore the questions, along with my fellow panelists and the audience: how do both evaluation practices and policies need to be revised and/or modified to be supportive of the inclusion of both children and youth? Throughout the dialogue I will draw on specific examples of both the challenges and potentials of this type of work,
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Core Concepts and Guiding Principles of Youth Participatory Evaluation
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| Barry Checkoway,
University of Michigan,
barrych@umich.edu
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Youth participatory evaluation is emerging as a field of practice and, as it does, it scope and quality will be strengthened by more research on its models and methods, objectives and outcomes facilitating and limiting factors, empirical case studies and lessons learned from practice. The emergence of a field of practice is advanced by articulation of core concepts and guiding principles, and this effort is newly underway. The Wingspread Conference featured development of the first such statement of principles of which we are aware, and they will be discussed and debated in this session.
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