Youth Radio and the Pedagogy of Collegiality

Abstract

In this article, Vivian Chavez and Elisabeth Soep explore the collaboration among youth and adult participants at Youth Radio, a broadcast-training program in the San Francisco Bay Area. At Youth Radio, participants transcend the conventional relationship between adult "teachers" and youth "learners" to coproduce media products. Chavez and Soep introduce the concept of "pedagogy of collegiality" to describe this process. Using two case studies, they demonstrate the four features of this pedagogy: joint framing, youth-led inquiry, mediated intervention, and distributed accountability. Chavez and Soep articulate a framework that recognizes the asymmetrical relationships among adults and disenfranchised youth while presenting a nuanced alternative. Their work contributes to the growing literature illuminating the role of youth media as a tool for expanding democratic participation.