Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development
Series Editor: Roger J.R. Levesque Department of Criminal Justice Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/7284
Joan G. DeJaeghere • Jasmina Josić Kate S. McCleary Editors
Education and Youth Agency Qualitative Case Studies in Global Contexts
Editors Joan G. DeJaeghere University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Jasmina Josić Pearson Mahwah, New Jersey, USA
Kate S. McCleary University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, Wisconsin, USA
ISSN 2195-089X ISSN 2195-0903 (electronic) Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development ISBN 978-3-319-33342-7 ISBN 978-3-319-33344-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33344-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946434 © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland
We dedicate this book to Dominik, Noah, Luka, Gabriela, and all young people who have been part of our research and work.
Acknowledgements
This volume is a testament to many collaborations among researchers in the academy, program managers in foundations, and leaders and practitioners of nonprofit and non-governmental organizations in efforts to understand and improve the role of education in youth’s lives and futures. We owe our appreciation to The MasterCard Foundation and CARE, USA, that funded some of this research and the many other organizations that allowed us to be participants in their schools, institutions, and communities. Each contributor worked very closely with different institutions to carry out the research. We hope that the work we have done has helped you and others to learn from the experiences of youth in new ways, and that we all have a better understanding of the contributions made by such institutions and groups in the lives of young people. Within each organization, we got to know youth who opened their hearts and minds and shared with us their lived experiences, their realities, and their desired and imagined futures. Their thoughts and ideas are captured in each chapter, and we thank and honor them for the knowledge and wisdom they shared with us. The ideas and chapters for this volume came about over the past decade through many conversations to conceptualize research studies and projects with graduate students and colleagues of ours in and outside the academy; many of whom have contributed chapters here, while others have furthered our thinking and understanding on the the topic of youth agency. Our profound appreciation goes to all who have engaged in these discussions in efforts to extend our knowledge and our practice. We are particularly grateful to colleagues from the University of Minnesota who have shared their curiosity with us and pushed us to think in new ways. They cannot all be named here, but we express a special thanks to Frances Vavrus, Peter Demerath, Chris Johnstone, and David Chapman, who have shared in this journey with us. Shirley Miske, Jenny Parkes, Emily Morris, and Leon Tikly have also offered valuable insights on improving our chapter and this book. Thank you for your critiques, collegial support, and friendship. We are extremely grateful to the contributors of this volume for exploring with us diverse perspectives on the topic with such intellectual rigor. They engaged in a
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peer-review process that strengthened the contributions of each chapter and allowed for collegial dialog across institutions. We are also thankful to the series editor, Roger J.R. Levesque, for his valuable and timely feedback in shaping this volume, and Springer’s team, especially Judy Jones and Michelle Tam, for support and assistance in the publication process. Our appreciation also goes to Bharath Krishnamoorthy and his team of editors for their attention to editorial details throughout the book. We are indebted to our families for their understanding and support and for providing us space and time to complete this volume.
Contents
Conceptualizing Youth Agency ...................................................................... Joan G. DeJaeghere, Kate S. McCleary, and Jasmina Josić Part I
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Youth Agency and Community, Historical, and Political Contexts
“You Are Building on Something”: Exploring Agency and Belonging Among African American Young Adults ............................ Beth Dierker
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Community Context and Relations Conditioning United States Youth’s Citizen Agency ................................................................................... Jasmina Josić
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Confronting “The Conditions” of Sénégalese Higher Education: Reframing Representation and Activism ..................... Casey Stafford
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Part II
Youth Agency and the Intersectionality of Gender, Religion, and Class
Agency as Negotiation: Social Norms, Girls’ Schooling and Marriage in Gujarat, India..................................................................... Payal P. Shah
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Enactments of Youth Agency to Resist, Transgress, and Undo Traditional Gender Norms in Honduras..................................... 103 Kate S. McCleary Exploring Boys’ Agency Towards Higher Education: The Case of Urban Jamaica ........................................................................... 121 Shawanda Stockfelt
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The Last Great Hope for Transforming the Lives of Girls: The Rhetorics of Girls’ Education in Upper Egypt ..................................... 139 Mohamed K. Sallam Malala Yousafzai as an Empowered Victim: Media Narratives of Girls’ Education, Islam, and Modernity ............................... 157 Ayesha Khurshid and Marline Guerrero Peers, Sexual Relationships, and Agency in Tanzania ................................. 173 Laura Wangsness Willemsen and Anna Ndesamburo Kwayu Part III
Youth Agency and Socio-Economic Contexts
Considering Children’s Economic Agency: Work and School Decisions in Kanchipuram, India .............................................. 195 Miriam S. Thangaraj Social Capital, Agency, and Creating Micro-enterprises: A Case of Entrepreneurship Education for Tanzanian Youth .................... 217 Nancy Pellowski Wiger Vocational Training and Agency Among Kenyan Youth ............................. 233 Acacia Nikoi Youth Agency and Education: Reflections and Future Directions ............. 251 Roozbeh Shirazi Index ................................................................................................................. 265
About the Editors
Joan G. DeJaeghere is an Associate Professor of Comparative and International Development Education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota and an affiliate faculty of the Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change. Her scholarly work and professional practice are concerned with inequalities in education and how education can foster future livelihoods, well-being, and social justice. She has co-edited two special issues and published articles and books chapters on educating for citizenship, youth agency, gender equality, as well as international development and educational policy in journals including Comparative Education Review, Compare, Comparative Education, International Journal of Educational Development, and Human Development and Capabilities Journal. DeJaeghere’s research and education and development projects have taken place in several countries including Bangladesh, Honduras, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Vietnam. Jasmina Josić is a Manager in the Efficacy and Research team of Pearson’s Global Product organization. She works with the product and research teams to develop research frameworks and implement evaluations of digital products in K-12, higher education, and English language learning sectors. Her research is concerned with examining the internationalization of higher education, dynamics of educational policies in urban spaces, youth citizenship and identity, and student engagement and achievement. Josić has conducted multiple research studies with youth and managed youth programs in urban United States settings. Josić received her Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Administration from the University of Minnesota. Kate S. McCleary is an Associate Researcher with the LEAD Center in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she focuses on evaluation and assessment of higher education programs. McCleary has worked in international education and carried out research on gender in education, youth agency, and intercultural learning. After holding fellowships with Save the Children and CARE International, McCleary served as the director of the Global Education Office at Washington College prior to her current position at xi
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the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Educational Policy & Administration with a focus in Comparative International Development Education.
About the Contributors
Beth Dierker holds a Ph.D. in Comparative and International Development Education from the University of Minnesota. She is an independent consultant conducting research and program evaluation related to youth and community development, efforts to address educational inequities, and university-community partnerships. She is currently working with the University of Minnesota’s Urban Research, Outreach, and Engagement Center. Also a parent of a child with autism, Dierker writes and speaks for a local non-profit organization that supports families and educators of children on the autism spectrum. Marline Guerrero is a Domestic Violence and Child Welfare Specialist in Tallahassee, Florida. She has worked with various organizations serving minority communities in the United States. Guerrero received her master’s degree in International and Comparative Education from Florida State University and bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara. Ayesha Khurshid is an Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Education at the Florida State University. Her ethnographic and qualitative research focuses on the issues of gender, modernity, and education in Muslim countries and communities. She received her Ph.D. in Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Anna Ndesamburo Kwayu holds a master’s degree in Gender Studies from the University of Dar es Salaam and a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and Tourism from Tumaini University. She has considerable experience working with non-governmental, governmental, and local organizations in her native Tanzania to represent a range of socio-economic and political concerns with a particular emphasis on gender. Ndesamburo Kwayu currently works as a policy analyst, researcher, and facilitator on gender, development, and socio-economic issues. She conducted a research project on gender and education with Joan DeJaeghere and Laura Wangsness Willemsen from the University of Minnesota.
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About the Contributors
Acacia Nikoi has her Ph.D. in Comparative and International Development Education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota. She has spent over 15 years working in higher education on issues of community development and youth and childhood well-being in East and West Africa. Her research interests center on the role of non-formal and vocational education in youth development and empowerment, and she is currently completing her dissertation on Kenyan youth conceptualizations of and experiences with empowerment. Mohamed K. Sallam is the Director of the Pan-Afrikan Center and Instructor in the Department of History at Augsburg College—Minneapolis, USA. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative and International Development Education from the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on examining the effects of international development discourse and national education policy formation on women in postrevolution Egypt. Payal P. Shah is an Assistant Professor of Educational Studies in the College of Education at the University of South Carolina. Her primary research interests include girls’ education, international development and education policy, and qualitative research methodology, with geographical expertise in South Asia. Shah has published in a variety of journals across the fields of research methods, gender studies, and international and comparative education. Her research has been funded by the Fulbright Program, Spencer Foundation, and the University of South Carolina. She holds a Ph.D. in Education Policy Studies from Indiana University. Roozbeh Shirazi is an Assistant Professor in the Comparative and International Development Education Program in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. His scholarship examines questions of youth citizenship and national belonging in times of sociopolitical transformation; migration and globalization in education; and the role of schooling in formations of youth subjectivities. Shirazi received his Ph.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University. Casey Stafford is a Grants Manager in the Equitable Development Thematic Area at the Ford Foundation, New York. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative and International Development Education from the University of Minnesota. During his doctoral studies, he had the opportunity to partner with a resilient and vibrant group of Senegalese university students and learned the value of collective organizing. His research focuses on access and success in higher education. Shawanda Stockfelt is a senior research associate and a British academy postdoctoral fellow within the Centre for Comparative and International Research (CIRE) and the Centre for Multilevel Modelling (CMM), in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on key issues relating to inclusion, equity, and social justice in education. Stockfelt has a keen interest in
About the Contributors
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methodologies that involve innovative qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches with an emphasis on holistic research that covers the lifespan. Miriam S. Thangaraj is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests encompass global policy discourses of development, education, child labor, and child rights, as they shape the daily lives of “real” children and families. In her dissertation, Reconstructing “Childhood”: Silks, Schools, SEZs, she offers an ethnographic account of how children and families in a weavers neighborhood in Kanchipuram, India, experienced and navigated transnational projects to prohibit child labor and enforce schooling. Her account foregrounds children’s voices to consider a key, if taken-for-granted, question: Do children only belong in school? Nancy Pellowski Wiger is the Project Director for the Learn, Earn, and Save Initiative grant in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota with responsibility for evaluating the overall impact of three educational initiatives on youth from marginalized backgrounds in East Africa. Her professional interests include gender and education, social capital, and youth policy. Her past scholarly work includes partnerships with CARE investigating youth empowerment and education initiatives and girls’ leadership, and with UNICEF’s child-friendly school standards in Ghana. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative and International Development Education from the University of Minnesota. Laura Wangsness Willemsen is a researcher specializing in schooling, gender, and teaching with a geographic focus on East Africa. She completed her Ph.D. in Comparative and International Development Education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota, with an ethnographic study of an all-girls school in Tanzania alongside life histories of young women who attended it. With a background in anthropology and education, Wangsness Willemsen has taught widely, from English in high school classrooms in Tanzania and urban and suburban Minnesota, to seminars on qualitative research and culturally relevant teaching at the University of Minnesota.
