Realising Identities of Youth Researchers: Weakly Framed Capacity Building in a Community Centre Setting

Whilst there is a range of evidence demonstrating the benefits of young people undertaking their own community-based research, youth capacity building for research is often adult-led (Cullen and Walsh, 2020). In this project, we explore a deliberately ‘weakly framed’ (Bernstein 2000) approach to capacity building in a community centre, where youth researchers have control over their participation and key decisions in their project design and implementation. We find that a weakly framed approach aligns well with informal education and that by giving youth control over their development as researchers, power relations between adults and youth are negated. Furthermore, by responding to youths’ interests, facilitating choice and validating the fluid nature of their participation, youth can both recognise and realise researcher identities that embody critical and ethical thinking. Through this exploration of weakly framed capacity building in an informal educational setting, we make key pedagogical recommendations for how youth research should be facilitated in methodologies like community-based participatory research and youth participatory action research to deepen young people’s critical understanding of and engagement in research.