Boundary-crossing to support youth civic engagement

Current research affirms the value of scaffolding authentic youth civic engagement through action-oriented methods. Yet, consistent pressure from testing, fossilized pedagogies focused on lecture, and a new spate of United States state laws curtailing civic engagement in the classroom threaten these efforts. This paper analyses the perspectives of two early-career teachers working in schools in the United States—one elementary and one secondary—that they perceived as unfriendly towards youth civic engagement while enrolled in a university-based class on civic education. They valued the vision of youth civic engagement that they learned in their university class and devalued the school-based norms that they felt constrained such engagement. We view their testimonies through theory to consider the articulated binaries and the hindrances they pose for a democratized possibility of teacher learning and the enactment of youth civic engagement. We make recommendations on how teachers’ perceived contradictions can be explored and norms of collaboration, or boundary-crossing between the university and the school, can support youth civic engagement. We illustrate how engaging more members of schools and universities in professional learning opportunities and purposefully drawing on their expertise and commitments can support youth civic engagement in schools today.