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Rules of (youth) engagement
By empowering youth to plan and lead educational activities for their peers, Extension's 4-H program puts decades of youth development research into practice every day. 4-H alumna Brittany Eich and many others have joined 4-H and developed key skills to succeed in college, their careers, and communities.
News from the Center for Youth Development
Documenting the impact of 4-H volunteers
Pamela Larson Nippolt of our center has co-written an article that quantifies and documents the impact of volunteer contributions to 4-H. The article is based on surveys from more than 3,000 4-H volunteers across the north central region of the US. This survey showed the typical roles that volunteers play, the number of hours they spend on various tasks, the benefits to the organization and benefits experienced by the volunteers themselves.
North Central Region 4-H Volunteers: Documenting Their Contributions and Volunteer Development appears in the April 2012 issue of the Journal of Extension. Pamela Larson Nippolt is program leader for program evaluation of the Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development.
Developing culturally responsive youth workers
Ann Walter and Samantha Grant of our center have published an article in the Journal of Extension on the importance of cultural responsiveness in youth work.
The article describes results of a study of youth workers who have taken the Youth Work Institute course “Culturally Responsive Youth Work Matters.” The course and this study both build upon existing research by Geneva Gay, who says that “when knowledge and skills are found within the lived experiences and cultural contexts of youth, they are more meaningful and more engaging and are learned more easily.”
Our work featured in the media
- 5/14 Big Urban Woods 4-H Club | Russo | 4-H Science in Urban Communities
- 5/1 North Central Region 4-H Volunteers: Documenting Their Contributions and Volunteer Development | Nippolt, Pleskac, Schwatz, Swanson | Journal of Extension
- 4/10 Telling your ag story to 155 people | Minnesota Farm Guide
- 4/3 Empowering youth work supervisors with Action Research strategies | Herman | Afterschool Matters
- 3/28 Where the U of M and the north side meet | MinnPost
Youth Development Insight Center for Youth Development faculty & educators blog about issues in the field
Learning from Caine's Arcade: Programming free play
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Last month, I presented an online webinar titled, "Natural Spaces: A Place for Positive Youth Development." In it, I talked about four research-based design principles that I believe can improve ... More
Do you dare to be coached?
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
In my experience, most youth work professionals are constantly scrutinizing their own work. But how willing are we to allow others to do so? Could coaching be a key to ... More
Worth reading
What our faculty members are reading, from journals and the media
- 3/26 Continuous Quality Improvement in Afterschool Settings: Impact findings from the Youth Program Quality Intervention Study | Weikert Center for Youth Program Quality
- 3/15 Generational Differences in Young Adults' Life Goals, Concern for Others, and Civic Orientation, 1966-2009 | Twenge, Campbell, Freeman | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- 3/1 Filling the learning gap helps close the achievement gap | MinnPost
- 2/10 Soft Skills to Pay the Bills — Mastering Soft Skills for Workplace Success | U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy, Youth in Transition
- 1/23 The weirdest people in the world? | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Henrich, et al.
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