Critical Discourse in Community-Based Education Spaces: A Systematic Review of Qualitative Research

Background and Purpose: Adolescents spend a significant portion of their time in school, which makes it an important context in their lives. Schools provide academic training, but they also provide tangible supports, while fostering students’ social and emotional growth. However, for Black youth in particular, schools also sometimes function as sites of harms. There is support and enthusiasm for community-based education spaces (CBES) because their independence from schools allows youth workers to be flexible and responsive to the Black youth who participate, leading to the empowering and supportive environment that makes CBES successful. However, CBES are also vulnerable to many of the same pressures that plague schools.

Additionally, there is currently a lack of consensus among those who study youth work and non-school based adolescent development about to best way to conceptualize the “third space” that is neither in the classroom nor in the home. This definitional variability means there is also a lack of consensus regarding the purpose of CBES. This systematic review of qualitative studies seeks to answer the question: “What are the underlying assumptions about the purpose of CBES for Black adolescents and young adults?”

Methods: I conducted a systematic search of three scholarly databases to identify empirical and theoretical qualitative articles that (1) focused on programs or organizations that primarily served Black adolescents or young adults age 16-24; (2) was community-based and not situated within a school; and (3) was written in the English language. Given the relatively short history of community-based education spaces, it was not necessary to constrict the search by year as the vast majority of these articles were published between 1995 and 2021. There were also no restrictions placed on location. After an initial abstract review was conducted to determine eligibility, the full text was then coded and analyzed thematically.

Results: This search generated 26 studies. From them, five key themes emerged regarding the underlying assumptions about the purpose of these programs for Black adolescents and young adults: academic achievement, protective resilience from risk factors, sociopolitical development, social capital development, and counter spaces as a response to Black suffering.

Conclusions and Implications: Initial findings suggests that there is little consensus on how to define the spaces where education, broadly defined, occurs that exist outside of the classroom. However, there are key organizing themes as identified in this review. While all of these underlying assumptions exist to address perceived needs of Black adolescents, there was a notable lack of overlap. For example, studies that discussed academic achievement or risk factors did not discuss sociopolitical development, social capital, or counter space. Meanwhile, studies in which the theme of sociopolitical development emerges favored community-centered language, which reflects the mission of those programs to attempt to disrupt systems that often make schools sites of harm for Black youth in the first place. A more cohesive understanding about the purpose and function of these spaces is crucial for understanding how they function to support the holistic development of Black adolescents and young adults.