Adam F.C. Fletcher | |
---|---|
Born | |
Occupation | Educational consultant |
Youth rights |
---|
Adam F.C. Fletcher is an educational theorist, scholar and advocate [1] focused on youth voice, student engagement and community empowerment. He is recognized for founding The Freechild Project. [2]
His work centers on youth studies, student voice, and the development of democratic society. Former United States Surgeon General David Satcher named him a "Healthy Schools Hero" for Action for Healthy Kids in 2010. [3]
Fletcher was a youth worker in several nonprofit organizations and in government agencies for more than a decade. [4] He completed his undergraduate degree in critical pedagogy and youth studies at The Evergreen State College, [5] and conducted graduate studies at the University of Washington in educational leadership and policy studies. He graduated from Omaha North High School in North Omaha, Nebraska.
Since 2007, Fletcher has been the owner and lead consultant of CommonAction Consulting. Working with educators and government administrators around the world, his consultancy focuses on democratic education. [6] [7] Additionally, he regularly speaks at local, state, national and international conferences across North America, in Brazil and beyond. [8] [9]
Fletcher has also served as a director and advisor to several organizations including the National Youth Rights Association [10] and others, [11] and is a contributing editor to the Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, published by Taylor and Francis. [12] He has written more than 50 publications related to education, youth work and social change.
Pedagogy, from Ancient Greek παιδαγωγία (paidagōgía), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as an academic discipline, is the study of how knowledge and skills are imparted in an educational context, and it considers the interactions that take place during learning. Both the theory and practice of pedagogy vary greatly as they reflect different social, political, and cultural contexts.
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. His influential work Pedagogy of the Oppressed is generally considered one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement, and was the third most cited book in the social sciences as of 2016 according to Google Scholar.
Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture.
Henry Armand Giroux is an American-Canadian scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory. In 2002 Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period.
Ephebiphobia is the fear of youth. First coined as the "fear or loathing of teenagers", today the phenomenon is recognized as the "inaccurate, exaggerated and sensational characterization of young people" in a range of settings around the world. Studies of the fear of youth occur in sociology and youth studies. It is distinguished from pedophobia by being more focused on adolescents than prepubescent children.
Youth voice refers to the distinct ideas, opinions, attitudes, knowledge, and actions of young people as a collective body. The term youth voice often groups together a diversity of perspectives and experiences, regardless of backgrounds, identities, and cultural differences. It is frequently associated with the successful application of a variety of youth development activities, including service learning, youth research, and leadership training. Additional research has shown that engaging youth voice is an essential element of effective organizational development among community and youth-serving organizations.
Adultism is a bias or prejudice against children or youth. It has been defined as "the power adults have over children", "prejudice and accompanying systematic discrimination against young people", and "bias towards adults... and the social addiction to adults, including their ideas, activities, and attitudes".
Student voice is the individual and collective perspective and actions of students within the context of learning and education. It is identified in schools as both a metaphorical practice and as a pragmatic concern. Tech educator Dennis Harper noted that student voice gives students "the ability to influence learning to include policies, programs, contexts and principles."
Fear of children, or occasionally called paedophobia, is fear triggered by the presence or thinking of children or infants. It is an emotional state of fear, disdain, aversion, or prejudice toward children or youth. Paedophobia is in some usages identical to ephebiphobia.
The civil rights movement in Omaha, Nebraska, has roots that extend back until at least 1912. With a history of racial tension that starts before the founding of the city, Omaha has been the home of numerous overt efforts related to securing civil rights for African Americans since at least the 1870s.
The youth rights movement in the United States has long been concerned with civil rights and intergenerational equity. Tracing its roots to youth activism during the Great Depression in the 1930s, the youth rights movement has influenced the civil rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam War, and many other movements. Since the advent of the Internet, youth rights is gaining predominance again.
Lake School was a public elementary school in the Near North Side neighborhood of Omaha, Nebraska, United States. The school was one of Omaha's "black schools", and served grade one through grade eight. It closed in the 1970s.
Youth engagement is the sentiment young people feel towards a particular person, activity, place or outcome. It has been a focus of youth development, public policy and social change movements for at least forty years. According to a Cornell University program, "Youth engagement is one of the buzzwords in the youth development field. Similar terms are youth voice, youth involvement, youth participation, and youth in governance."
The Omaha Presbyterian Theological Seminary was located at 3303 North 21st Place in North Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Opened in 1891 in downtown Omaha, the institution moved to the Kountze Place neighborhood in North Omaha in 1902 and closed in 1943. Converted to apartments, the building stood until 1979 when a fire destroyed it.
The youth rights movement seeks to grant the rights to young people that are traditionally reserved for adults, due to having reached a specific age or sufficient maturity. This is closely akin to the notion of evolving capacities within the children's rights movement, but the youth rights movement differs from the children's rights movement in that the latter places emphasis on the welfare and protection of children through the actions and decisions of adults, while the youth rights movement seeks to grant youth the liberty to make their own decisions autonomously in the ways adults are permitted to, or to lower the legal minimum ages at which such rights are acquired, such as the age of majority and the voting age.
The Freechild Institute for Youth Engagement is a nonprofit organization focused on creating connections between adults and young people through programs, technical assistance, publications, training, and curriculum. Adam Fletcher is the executive director, and the institute is located in Olympia, Washington. The School Library Journal has said Freechild's website is, "By far the largest repository of projects, ideas, and organizational links, this resource provides more than adequate information to help students brainstorm ideas in order to start their own initiatives."
The Maoist Youth Union was a youth organization in Spain during the transition to democracy. It was founded as the youth wing of the Workers Revolutionary Organization (ORT) in 1975.
Public sphere pedagogy (PSP) represents an approach to educational engagement that connects classroom activities with real world civic engagement. The focus of PSP programs is to connect class assignments, content, and readings with contemporary public issues. Students are then asked to participate with members of the community in various forms of public sphere discourse and democratic participation, such as town hall meetings and public debate events. Through these events, students are challenged to practice civic engagement and civil discourse.