Storytelling through a Critical Positive Youth Development Framework: A Mixed Methods Approach

The benefits of youth voice and meaningful and informed youth participation in social and systemic change initiatives are well-documented (Gonzalez et al., 2020; Gonzalez & Kokozos, 2019; Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007), and storytelling has shown promise as an effective pedagogical tool for nurturing and amplifying youth voices. Inspired by the benefits of youth leadership, the authors collaborated with three university undergraduate students to develop #PassTheMicYouth, a multimedia extension program that aims to amplify the social justice contributions of young people and provide educators with resources that center diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in high school and undergraduate classrooms as well as within youth-serving organizations. The flagship resource is a twenty-lesson curriculum entitled "Amplifying Youth Voices: A Storytelling for Social Change Curriculum," which is informed by the Critical Positive Youth Development (CPYD) framework. This paper first reviews and synthesizes scholarship related to the CPYD framework and storytelling as a pedagogical tool, with specific emphasis on personal storytelling and counternarratives. Quantitative and qualitative findings are then introduced and discussed, and finally the strengths and limitations of the study are reviewed and implications for future research and practice are outlined.