Scholars of youth civic development have assessed agency using a wide range of constructs, including motivation, efficacy, empowerment, and sociopolitical control. We propose a multidimensional framework and describe the development and validation of a measure of civic agency, conceptualized as competence, drive, individual power, and collective power. In Study 1, we developed a set of items and employed exploratory factor analysis with a pilot sample of adolescents ( N  = 295, M age  = 17.1, 65.4% youth of color, 47.9% female, 15.8% nonbinary), which supported our hypothesized four-factor model of civic agency. In Study 2, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis of our final items with a separate adolescent sample ( N  = 1120, M age  = 16.2, 73.0% youth of color, 55.7% female, 23.3% nonbinary), which demonstrated measurement invariance on race/ethnicity, gender, and age. In Study 3, we validated our scale in a sample of young activists ( N  = 342, M age  = 19.1, 57.6% youth of color, 72.6% female, 23.0% nonbinary). Confirmatory factor analysis supported a four-dimensional hierarchical structure and we established measurement invariance between adolescents and young adults. Overall, the 16-item Civic Agency Measure consistently demonstrated validity and reliability. We discuss the utility of our work for advancing sociopolitical development theory and supporting adolescents' efforts for social change.

Political polarization undermines democratic civic education by exacerbating identity-based resistance to opposing viewpoints. Emerging AI technologies offer new opportunities to advance interventions that reduce polarization and promote political open-mindedness. We examined novel design strategies that leverage adaptive and emotionally-responsive civic narratives that may sustain students' emotional engagement in stories, and in turn, promote perspective-taking toward members of political out-groups. Drawing on theories from political psychology and narratology, we investigate how affective computing techniques can support three storytelling mechanisms: transportation into a story world, identification with characters, and interaction with the storyteller. Using a design-based research (DBR) approach, we iteratively developed and refined an AI-mediated Digital Civic Storytelling (AI-DCS) platform. Our prototype integrates facial emotion recognition and attention tracking to assess users' affective and attentional states in real time. Narrative content is organized around pre-structured story outlines, with beat-by-beat language adaptation implemented via GPT-4, personalizing linguistic tone to sustain students' emotional engagement in stories that center political perspectives different from their own. Our work offers a foundation for AI-supported, emotionally-sensitive strategies that address affective polarization while preserving learner autonomy. We conclude with implications for civic education interventions, algorithmic literacy, and HCI challenges associated with AI dialogue management and affect-adaptive learning environments.

This Special Issue examines the links between sociopolitical action and healthy youth development. The 12 featured studies use diverse conceptual and methodological approaches to advance understanding of how the costs and benefits of youth sociopolitical action are dependent on identity, context, and structural factors. Key findings demonstrate that intersectional identities shape youth experiences of activism and that social contexts can exacerbate or buffer against personal risks, underscoring the importance of supportive environments that are attentive to each young person’s experiences of oppression. The contributing authors propose pragmatic strategies to encourage mutually reinforcing associations between personal well-being and sociopolitical action, such as integrating healing-centered approaches into youth programming and contextualizing resistance to systemic oppression as a component of healthy development. This Special Issue calls for future research to refine theoretical models and develop sustainable, health-promotive strategies to support young people in their vital work to advance justice and equity.

The ACLU’s National Advocacy Institute (NAI) is a one-week residential program designed to build youth’s capacities to advocate for civil rights and challenge injustices. This study assessed its role in fostering adolescents’ critical consciousness. We surveyed NAI participants and a comparison group of engaged youth before, one week after (N = 58(NAI)/166(comparison)), and six months after the program (N = 47(NAI)/165(comparison)). Using difference-in-differences analyses with covariates, NAI youth increased their likelihood of taking low- and high-risk political actions after one week and high-risk action frequency after six months, relative to the comparison group. NAI youth increased three forms of critical agency one week and, marginally, six months post-program. No associations were found for critical reflection. As a robustness check, propensity score models mostly replicated results. Findings show the promise of short, intensive programs for sparking growth in critical agency and action and highlight the need for more critical consciousness-raising spaces.

Drawing on data from 401 US youth activists, this study examined what they describe as their biggest wins. The most common responses pertained to changing the hearts and minds of others, followed by changes to the policies or practices of their schools, electoral impacts, and local or state policy change. Participants who reported successful direct aid campaigns, school changes, and policy changes rated their activism as more effective than those without these types of wins. Additionally, youth who had been activists for a longer period of time reported greater effectiveness. Identity differences related to the issue areas in which wins were accomplished, rather than the type of win achieved, with the exception of an association between gender and direct aid wins. Findings highlight the need to value "changing hearts and minds" as important wins in wider public discourse and to recognize the wide range of impacts youth activists are achieving.

There is a great need to understand how we might leverage research-practice partnerships (RPPs) to change K–12 school practices, organizations, and policies that continue to reflect structural racism in schooling. In this paper, we present case vignettes of RPPs that aim to create educational improvement efforts but focus on building from the racialized understandings of student and educator experiences. The case vignettes explore the tensions and obstacles that RPPs might face in this context and how partnerships might operationalize processes to create conditions for positive change when putting racial experiences at the center of their work. We illustrate how the creation of RPPs and the moves we made helped us understand the connection between race and the personal, interpersonal, and systemic dynamics of partnership work. These cases contribute a deeper conceptual understanding that may be transferable to other RPP contexts and inform the work of other RPPs.

Anti-racist change in schools entails fostering meaningful relationships with diverse school stakeholders and community members. Educational leaders, which include principals, assistant/associate principals, and teacher leaders, are catalysts for organizational change and have the power and responsibility to enact boundary-spanning practices that contribute to emancipatory progress. However, support for educational leaders to navigate and challenge the overlapping racial and organizational boundaries that reinforce White supremacy is lacking. Drawing on a systematic review of literature on anti-racist educational leadership and community partnerships, we identified 44 publications that described boundary-spanning roles and practices of K–12 educational leaders. We found that boundary-spanning practices were common amongst educational leaders and community partners, but boundary-spanning was underutilized as a conceptual frame. In our chapter, we elaborate on the ways in which scholars describe boundary-spanning in equity-oriented educational leadership, theoretically, empirically, and pragmatically. Drawing from the themes of our analysis, we conceptualize five anti-racist boundary-spanning practices of educational leaders: promoting (un)learning of deficit-based views, challenging White privilege and color-evasiveness, fostering intentional dialogue, cultivating organizational power-sharing, and mobilizing coalitions for systemic change. We conclude with a brief discussion of boundary-spanning practices within our own work.

Scholars acknowledge that adolescents' political discussions with peers and adults contribute to political development, yet longitudinal relationships between discussions and political motivation remain unclear. To address this issue, we analyzed data from students enrolled in government courses at three Midwestern high schools, who completed political engagement surveys at the beginning and end of the spring 2016 semester (N = 350; 47.8% Hispanic; 37.2% White; 53.7% male). Informed by theories of motivation and political socialization, we used cross-lagged panel models to examine the longitudinal associations between the frequency of political discussions (with friends, classmates, teachers, and parents) and motivational constructs (political interest, internal and external political efficacy). Multigroup analyses examined differential effects for students with low, average, and high political open-mindedness. Results indicated that frequency of political discussions with parents predicted later political motivation for adolescents with low open-mindedness. Interest, internal and external political efficacy distinctively predicted types of discussions over time, with interest emerging as the most consistent predictor. Findings suggest that educational practices could better cultivate youth political motivation by considering fadeout effects for different types of conversational partners and tailoring discussions to suit adolescents' open-mindedness.

Scholars have documented positive and negative relationships between adolescents’ critical consciousness and mental health. This study aims to clarify the role of friendship networks contributing to these associations. Using egocentric network data from a nationwide adolescent sample (N = 984, 55.0% female, 23.9% nonbinary, 72.7% non-white), regression analyses examined whether adolescents’ psychological distress and flourishing were predicted by their friend group’s average critical consciousness and the difference between adolescents and their friends on critical consciousness dimensions (sociopolitical action, critical agency, and critical reflection), accounting for network and demographic covariates. Higher friend group critical consciousness positively predicted flourishing, and higher friend group sociopolitical action negatively predicted psychological distress. Adolescents who participated in sociopolitical action more frequently than their friends had higher psychological distress and lower flourishing. Those with higher agency than their friends had lower flourishing. At the individual level, adolescents’ sociopolitical action predicted higher psychological distress and flourishing, critical agency predicted higher flourishing, and critical reflection predicted higher psychological distress and lower flourishing. Adolescent mental health is uniquely related to their friends’ critical consciousness. Findings highlight the utility of social network analyses for understanding social mechanisms that underlie relationships between critical consciousness and mental health.

The current study positions high school relationships and resources as assets to college-going Latinx students, examining the potential academic benefits of maintaining high school friendships and participating in support services offered from the high school context. The participants were 165 graduates (86.4% Latinx; 75.6% low-income) from a high school that operates an Alumni Success program delivering college support services to alumni. Interval regressions with moderation tests were used to investigate associations between a college GPA outcome and (a) sense of belonging and (b) friend group composition. The findings suggest friendships from the high school context may promote academic success for students with low sense of belonging in two-year colleges. Contrary to studies of predominately white students, high school friendships appear to have an enduring association with academic achievement. Next, t-tests and proportional equivalence z-tests were used to investigate differences between students who utilized the Alumni Success program and those who did not, and further, how these differences compared to other types of college-based support services. The results suggest providing college support services from the high school context may be an effective, culturally responsive strategy that complements existing college-based programs and recognizes diverse pathways to college success for Latinx students.

This brief report characterizes the tendency of adolescent friends to be similar on civic behaviors and critical consciousness. Using two waves of network data from a high school that serves primarily low-income Latiné youth (2019, N = 519; 2020, N = 521), the present study examined homophily on service, activism, and awareness of inequities. The results of Exponential Random Graph Models indicated that adolescents tended to be friends with peers who had similar service behavior and awareness of inequities, but not activism. The findings suggest that schools could foster civic engagement by providing infrastructure that encourages civic interactions between peers. The current study highlights the potential that social network analysis holds for generating novel insights into the relational underpinnings of youth civic engagement.

This study examines opportunities for teacher professional growth and innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey data, including responses to both closed and open-ended questions, were collected from 276 elementary-school teachers who taught online in two school districts in California. Quantitative and qualitative analyses document the extent to which teachers experienced opportunities for professional growth and innovation, how they described these opportunities, and what factors explained variability in teachers’ responses. Contrary to some extant research produced in the last few years, teachers overwhelmingly agreed that the transition to online instruction provided opportunities to be innovative and to learn to teach with new technologies. Specifically, they reported new approaches for connecting with students and their families as well as integrating technology into classroom practice beyond the period of remote learning. Consistent with prior theory related to teacher learning, factors that predicted perceived opportunities included their overall satisfaction with the support provided by their school/district, collaboration with colleagues, and their self-efficacy for using technology to teach specific concepts and curriculum. Findings suggest implications for how to leverage this period of professional growth beyond the pandemic.

The present study advances a model of critical civic motivation grounded in expectancy-value theory and highlights diverse manifestations of motivation among marginalized adolescents. The participants were 447 high school youth (85.0% Latinx; 62.9% low-income). Two complementary methodological approaches were employed to examine civic motivation, conceptualized as expectancies (individual and collective), and values (interest and attainment). First, regression analyses found that civic expectancies and values differentially predicted behavioral outcomes of service and activism. Expectancies and values interactively predicted activism, whereas only main effects of individual and collective efficacy and interest value positively predicted service. Second, person-centered analyses yielded a five-cluster solution, with one-third of the participants exhibiting discrepancies between expectancies and values. Distinct patterns in the manifestations of civic motivation components may inform practices that support civic engagement of marginalized youth. Overall, the findings illustrate the utility of a holistic, critical framework that integrates established literatures on political efficacy and interest.

Amid unprecedented political polarization, the US continues to grapple with the simultaneous crises of COVID-19 and structural racism. We examine potential predictors of COVID-19 mask-wearing at the intersection of these crises, with particular attention to the behavior of conservatives and young people, who have resisted compliance with efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19. Specifically, we investigate perceptions of racial/ethnic inequities in the healthcare system and civic values as predictors of COVID-19 mask-wearing frequency and potential moderators of the relationship between political orientation and COVID-19 mask-wearing frequency. Diverse college students at a university in southern California participated in our longitudinal survey, which was initiated prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (N = 431). We found that perceptions of inequities and civic values predicted mask-wearing, whereas political conservatism was negatively related to mask-wearing. Further, conservative participants were more likely to wear masks if they reported greater perceptions of inequities. Our results provide a foundation for future research that may inform targeted public health interventions aimed at encouraging responsible COVID-19 behavior and fostering dialogue on structural equities in a contentious political environment.

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) offer promising approaches to improve educational outcomes. Navigating boundaries between contexts is essential for RPP effectiveness, yet much work remains to establish a conceptual framework of boundary spanning in partnerships. Our longitudinal comparative case study draws from our experiences as graduate student boundary spanners in three long-term partnerships to examine boundary spanning roles in RPPs, with particular attention to the ways in which power permeates partnership work. Using qualitative, critically reflexive analysis of meeting artifacts and field notes, we found that our boundary spanning roles varied along five spectrums: institutional focus, task orientation, expertise, partnership disposition, and agency. Our roles were shaped by the organizational, cultural, relational, and historical features of the partnerships and contexts of interaction. We aim to promote the development of effective RPP strategies by leveraging the perspectives and positionality of graduate students in order to advance understanding of boundary spanning roles.

Jutta Heckhausen is a Professor in the Department of Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine (PhD, 1995, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Great Britain). Her research addresses the role of individual agents and their motivation in life-span development. Richard Arum is Dean of the School of Education at University of California, Irvine. He served as Senior Fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (2013– 2015), and Director of Education Research at the Social Science Research Council (2006–2013). Luise von Keyserlingk is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Project Manager of the Next Generation Undergraduate Success Measurement Project in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on students’ motivation, educational choices and trajectories, and students’ mental health and well-being.

Scholars acknowledge that friends shape youth civic engagement, but the relative contribution of peer influence and critical beliefs to civic behaviors has yet to be disaggregated. Informed by sociopolitical development and critical consciousness theories, the present study used longitudinal social network analysis to examine peer socialization and adolescents’ awareness of systemic inequities in relation to participation in service and activist activities at a high school serving primarily low-income Latinx youth. Students were surveyed in May 2019 and May 2020 ( N = 354; 51% female; in 2019, M age = 15.9, age range 14.4 to 18.5). The results yielded evidence of peer influence on service activities, but not activism or perceptions of inequities. In contrast, adolescents’ perception of inequities predicted their activist behavior, but not service, after controlling for network effects and individual covariates. The school provided scaffolding for service activities, but not activist activities, potentially explaining the salience of service participation in youth friendship networks.