Ben Kirshner

Exploring how formal and informal education initiatives and training systems in the US, UK and Australia seek to achieve a socially diverse workforce, this insightful book offers a series of detailed case studies to reveal the initiative and ingenuity shown by today’s young people as they navigate entry into creative fields of work. Young People’s Journeys into Creative Work acknowledges the new and diverse challenges faced by today's youth as they look to enter employment. Chapters trace the rise of indie work, aspirational labour, economic precarity, and the disruptive effects of digital technologies, to illustrate the oinventive ways in which youth from varied socio-economic and cultural backgrounds enter into work in film, games production, music, and the visual arts. From hip-hop to new media arts, the text explores how opportunities for creative work have multiplied in recent years as digital technologies open new markets, new scenes, and new opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovation. This book will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of youth studies, careers guidance, media studies, vocational education and sociology of education.

Exploring how formal and informal education initiatives and training systems in the US, UK and Australia seek to achieve a socially diverse workforce, this insightful book offers a series of detailed case studies to reveal the initiative and ingenuity shown by today’s young people as they navigate entry into creative fields of work. Young People’s Journeys into Creative Work acknowledges the new and diverse challenges faced by today's youth as they look to enter employment. Chapters trace the rise of indie work, aspirational labour, economic precarity, and the disruptive effects of digital technologies, to illustrate the oinventive ways in which youth from varied socio-economic and cultural backgrounds enter into work in film, games production, music, and the visual arts. From hip-hop to new media arts, the text explores how opportunities for creative work have multiplied in recent years as digital technologies open new markets, new scenes, and new opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovation. This book will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of youth studies, careers guidance, media studies, vocational education and sociology of education.

This bundle includes two essential books on Transformative Student Voice (TSV): the research volume for school leaders and the step-by-step guide for teachers to begin incorporating TSV into classrooms and driving student-centered change in their schools. Transformative Student Voice and its companion Transformative Student Voice for Teachers introduce readers to TSV, a framework that promotes student agency and activism through youth-adult partnerships, with tangible outcomes for school improvement. Grounded in fifteen years' research on youth voice in school reform in urban, suburban, and rural schools and districts, these revelatory works illustrate the benefits of the TSV framework as a strategy for both student development and systems change. The research volume gives school leaders, administrators, and other stakeholders a host of conceptual and practical tools for making student voice a core feature of decision-making and equity-focused transformation. The practical companion book features actionable steps to help teachers build a classroom community that empowers students through critical reflection, inquiry, and action to drive school transformation. Together, these books offer tools for superintendents, principals, and teachers alike to drive change and renewed outcomes in their schools.

A testament to the power of centering youth voices in planning and implementing school reform In Transformative Student Voice, Shelley Zion, Ben Kirshner, and Carlos P. Hipolito-Delgado introduce readers to Transformative Student Voice (TSV), a framework that promotes student agency and activism through youth-adult partnerships, with tangible outcomes for school improvement. Grounded in 15 years' research on youth voice in school reform in urban, suburban, and rural schools and districts, this revelatory work illustrates the benefits of the TSV framework as a strategy for both student development and systems change. Zion, Kirshner, and Hipolito-Delgado advocate this student-led, bottom-up approach as a means of raising critical consciousness, encouraging civic inquiry, and promoting engagement in school and community reform efforts. Each chapter showcases a specific, real-world application of TSV, identifies possible tensions, and provides evidence of the framework’s effectiveness. Together, they explore how TSV can be implemented at the district level as well as in classrooms and curricula and in extracurricular settings such as afterschool clubs and summer programming in a way that prepares students to claim their power by identifying problems, proposing solutions, and driving change. This book gives school leaders, administrators, and other stakeholders a host of conceptual and practical tools for making student voice a core feature of decision-making and equity-focused transformation.

A step-by-step guidebook for teachers on how to build a classroom community that empowers students through critical reflection, inquiry, and action to drive school transformation In Transformative Student Voice for Teachers, Dane Stickney, Ben Kirshner, Carlos P. Hipolito-Delgado, and Shelley Zion offer clear frameworks that support student agency and center the voices of young people in the process of school improvement and transformation. They illustrate how the frameworks, Critical Civic Inquiry and Transformative Student Voice, give educators the tools to adopt a youth-centered approach to learning that runs counter to the top-down leadership and behaviorist and adultist practices common to the US K–12 educational system. This practical companion to Transformative Student Voice guides teachers and other adults to cultivate self-awareness and recognize unearned power, form authentic student-educator partnerships, facilitate critical inquiry in student groups, and sustain this work. Each chapter highlights a specific, real-world application of these approaches in a classroom community that organizes student learning around cycles of critical reflection, civic inquiry, and action. Each also identifies challenges, cautions against common pitfalls, and provides key questions and takeaways to aid implementation. These actionable guidelines help set the course for adults and young people to develop critical consciousness and capacity for engagement in sociopolitical activism, transforming both themselves and the settings where they live and work.

Winner, 2016 Best Authored Book presented by the Society for Research on Adolescence Diverse case studies on how youth build political power during an era of racial and educational inequality in America This is what democracy looks like: Youth organizers in Colorado negotiate new school discipline policies to end the school to jail track. Latino and African American students march to district headquarters to protest high school closure. Young immigration rights activists persuade state legislators to pass a bill to make in-state tuition available to undocumented state residents. Students in an ESL class collect survey data revealing the prevalence of racism and xenophobia. These examples, based on ten years of research by youth development scholar Ben Kirshner, show young people building political power during an era of racial inequality, diminished educational opportunity, and an atrophied public square. The book's case studies analyze what these experiences mean for young people and why they are good for democracy. What is youth activism and how does it contribute to youth development? How might collective movements of young people expand educational opportunity and participatory democracy? The interdependent relationship between youths' political engagement, their personal development, and democratic renewal is the central focus of this book. Kirshner argues that youth and societal institutions are strengthened when young people, particularly those most disadvantaged by educational inequity, turn their critical gaze to education systems and participate in efforts to improve them.

Winner, 2016 Best Authored Book presented by the Society for Research on Adolescence Diverse case studies on how youth build political power during an era of racial and educational inequality in America This is what democracy looks like: Youth organizers in Colorado negotiate new school discipline policies to end the school to jail track. Latino and African American students march to district headquarters to protest high school closure. Young immigration rights activists persuade state legislators to pass a bill to make in-state tuition available to undocumented state residents. Students in an ESL class collect survey data revealing the prevalence of racism and xenophobia. These examples, based on ten years of research by youth development scholar Ben Kirshner, show young people building political power during an era of racial inequality, diminished educational opportunity, and an atrophied public square. The book's case studies analyze what these experiences mean for young people and why they are good for democracy. What is youth activism and how does it contribute to youth development? How might collective movements of young people expand educational opportunity and participatory democracy? The interdependent relationship between youths' political engagement, their personal development, and democratic renewal is the central focus of this book. Kirshner argues that youth and societal institutions are strengthened when young people, particularly those most disadvantaged by educational inequity, turn their critical gaze to education systems and participate in efforts to improve them.