“‘It’s All Connected’: Critical Bifocality and the Liminal Practice of Youth Work”

​Fourth-year doctoral student Jennifer Renick is first author of an article in Child & Youth Services exploring equity-centered noticing frameworks for mathematics instruction.
 
The title of the article is “‘It’s All Connected’: Critical Bifocality and the Liminal Practice of Youth Work.”
 
Co-authors are alumnus Miguel N. Abad (Ph.D. ‘20), Professor Elizabeth van Es, and Postdoctoral Scholar Elizabeth Mendoza.
 
Renick’s research interests include adolescents’ sense of school belonging, factors that impact positive school climate, and community-engaged research methods. Renick serves as a graduate student researcher in UCI's OCEAN project, where she has been working to develop a research-practice partnership with a local middle school and college access nonprofit​. In 2019 she received the Newkirk Fellowship in Community-Based Research to work with the Orange County Environmental Justice (OCEJ) organization and its People for Environmental Justice (PEJ) program. 

Jennifer Renick

Renick is the recipient of a 2021 Public Impact Fellowship to facilitate a youth-participatory action research project in partnership with a local middle school. Renick is specializing in Human Development in Context (HDiC). Professor Reich serves as her advisor.

Abstract
 
Efforts to transform educational systems advocate for shifting and expanding the voices of those who generate research. This study was part of a project that brought together mathematics teachers, youth workers, and researchers to create equity-centered noticing frameworks for mathematics instruction. We explore youth workers’ understandings of the relationship between local educational equity problems and larger structural forces. By applying the framework of critical bifocality, we explore how youth workers demonstrate praxis where their pedagogical responses are animated by an understanding of the inherent linkages between broad social, economic, and political forces and educational equity issues in the local community.