Democratic youth participation.

Australia's policy imperatives for improved student performance have again put the spotlight on the pervasive disengagement of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Rather than finding more evidence about how schooling does not work for some young people, and how background impacts on that, this paper argues for contributions to a different kind of knowledge by turning to these same young people and investigating what does work to engage them in learning. Consequently, the view put forward here is for an approach that turns the focus from disengagement to engagement, and from youth as contributing to the problem to youth as contributing to the solution. This paper provides a synthesis of literature on educational engagement, strength-based research approaches, and democratic youth participation that framed the development of a democratic, strength-based approach to young people investigating educational engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]