Youth-Constructed Narratives on the Negotiation of Urban Youth and Peer Educator Identities
Open AccessThis research investigates how 10 self-identified urban youth, ages 18 to 24, who formerly served in an arts-based peer education program reflect on their identities as urban youth and peer educators. A participatory action research (PAR) stance informs the qualitative study design to engage these college-aged youth as participants with research roles. The youth shared their stories and also helped interpret and distill its meanings for the study’s public arts-based research exhibit. The visual narratives displayed in the study exhibit are derived from the “poetic transcription” (Furman, 2006, p. 560) of their semi-structured interviews—as the primary data source—and includes the narrations of their personally constructed identity maps (Futch & Fine, 2014; Milgram & Jodelet, 1978). The other data source includes their written responses (Faulkner, 2005) on the outcomes of the study’s exhibit, which corroborates and expands the personal data poems derived from their poetically transcribed interviews. This study is rooted in Goffman’s (1959) symbolic interactionism theory that explores how relational agency (Kennelly, 2011) mediates the sub/conscious (Bourdieu, 1990; Lawler, 2008) performances of identity and is further expanded with the concepts of double consciousness (Du Bois, 1903) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989). When it came to their urban youth identities as peer educators, the first three study themes reveal that the youth are (a) experiencing identity, (b) reclaiming identity, and (c) shifting identity. When it came to their peer educator identities as urban youth, the last two study themes indicate that the youth are engaging in (d) being change agents and (e) reflection. Analysis of the five study themes reveals that the youth broadly perceive an urban youth identity as a negative group label constructed by others that limits their exposure and access to opportunities in their schools and neighborhoods. Identifying as peer educators who are also urban youth is what the youth credit for perceiving their multi-dimensional urban youth identities in affirming ways. Practitioners who work with urban youth in out-of-school-time settings can draw upon these study findings to conceptualize the aim of their work, expand what counts as curriculum, and safely critique what youth share as co-constructors of knowledge.
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