Given the emerging interest among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in youth participation, it is important to examine and assess carefully the promise and challenges of youth engagement.
This work describes the design, building, and testing of miniature, low-cost LED−LDR colorimeters for absorption-spectrophotometry experiments. It also describes using these colorimeters for simplified context-based-learning (CBL) activities in school teaching laboratories and for publicengagement events. The colorimeters are simple and robust, performing well against a conventional benchtop UV−vis spectrophotometer. Data collection and analysis is quick and intuitive, allowing for efficient turnaround between groups and making it particularly useful at public-engagement events. The experiments and activities described here are based on real-life examples to emphasize the usefulness of chemical analysis and quantification in everyday life.
Face-to-face outreach activities with scientific researchers provide schools with tangible role models, real world context for the curriculum, and a unique shared experience for groups of students. Moving from face-to-face to online engagement at short notice represents a unique challenge for the continuation of many outreach activities. The development, logistics, and feedback for a new series of live virtual sessions between university-based researchers and secondary schools are described here. Stories from the Lab was developed and run with science teachers during the initial phase of the COVID-19 lockdown in Ireland. In addition to the benefits afforded to teachers and students, it also provided the researchers with suitable work experience and peer-learning as part of their structured Ph.D. program.
Community-based youth organizations represent potentially powerful settings for activism among marginalized urban youth. This article uses quantitative and qualitative data collected in one such organization to examine the link between youth—adult relationships and youth activism. Survey data point to adults as contributing to youth's activist development and reveal pathways that lead to this outcome. Interview and observation data clarify youth's perceptions of adult support, highlight the complexity of building egalitarian relationships, and situate youth—adult interactions within broader public action. Analyses direct attention to transformations among youth and convey the challenges inherent in breaking out of conventional patterns of youth—adult interaction.
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