Un/Learning Developmentalism: How Teachers and Youth Researchers Conceptualize “Youth” in an Intergenerational Collaboration

This paper examines what early-career teachers learn about young people through interactions with youth engaged in youth participatory action research. I draw on individual interviews from a larger research study to examine the stories seven early-career teachers tell about the youth researchers they encountered in a university-based collaboration, and about the students they teach in traditional classroom contexts. I also look at the stories two youth participants tell about themselves in interviews. Findings suggest that adults relied on descriptions of youth as under-developed, while youth participants described themselves and their peers as vulnerable to structural inequities but inherently valuable.