Youth Studies’ faculty generated the following four broad categories in response to the question, “What characterizes academic and professional communication in this discipline?”

Critically reflective and reflexive: Reflecting on one's own lived experience in relation to another person supports high-quality practice and informs scholarship on practice (and scholarship in practice). It includes identifying one's own assumptions, situating the experience in relation to another person, and recognizing and acknowledging that there are multiple perspectives to any single experience.

Descriptive: Scholar­ practitioners need to be able to describe a situation and have the capacity to separate self from interpretation and judgments. They need to be able to describe what happened and the multiple ways this situation or experience has been/could be interpreted by others. Students should also know how different theoretical perspectives provide unique explanations of situations and experiences.

Analytical: Faculty also agreed that students need to move beyond describing positions to analyzing and bringing in multiple forms of evidence to critique and challenge personal, practical, and scholarly assumptions. Special emphasis should be placed on connecting and attending to how ideas are historically constructed, and how certain assumptions about young people are presented as "scientific," when often they connect more to a moral stance. Good Youth Studies writing brings together multiple points of view and draws a conclusion using supporting evidence.

Persuasive: Youth Studies aims to develop scholar-practitioners. Communication in this field often requires persuasion. Indeed, Youth Studies writing seeks to spark action: to receive funding, to gain permission to offer a new program, to support youth voice and agency, and to create community, policy, or organizational change that better supports young people to flourish. Much of the writing is directed outward to convince others of a better response, intervention, or program. Writing is always audience-directed, and writing in the field is characterized as responding to multiple audiences (community, practitioner, scholar, and policy-maker). Writing often requires translating evidence (including narratives) to other audiences and writing concisely and descriptively so that evidence is understood and can be responded to by additional stakeholders.

By the time Youth Studies majors graduate, the faculty expects them to be able to demonstrate the following writing-thinking abilities:

Gather and Create Data:

• Ask and revise critical and productive questions.
• Create concrete and concise descriptions of situations, experiences, and practices.
• Represent the voices of subjects in ways that are accurate to them and evoke empathy and/or action in readers.
• Notice, gather, and understand relevant data from a variety of empirical, narrative, geographical, and historical sources.
• Attend to the role of researcher/practitioner in gathering data and the researcher’s relationship/position vis subjects of research.

Interpret and Analyze Data:

• Situate and understand one's lived experience in relationship to someone else, such that one can recognize and appreciate what is shared and what is not.
• Analyze multiple forms of both qualitative and quantitative data in order to understand young people's everyday lives and how individuals, communities, and society do (and might) respond to youth.
• Synthesize data by summarizing or critiquing two or more individual sources and explicating a relationship between them.
• Explore, locate, understand, confirm the accuracy of, and apply relevant theories, concepts, and discipline-specific content to expand understanding of young people's everyday lives.
• Work reflectively and reflexively: When interpreting an issue/situation/action, the writer notices and explains personal assumptions and biases, the root sources of these biases, and the impact these “lenses” have on ideas and interpretations.

Inform and Persuade:

• Mobilize a variety of types of data for constructive, value-based arguments about the situations and conditions of young people's everyday lives.
• Inform and persuade a variety of lay, scholarly, and professional audiences about one's work, programs, or services in ways that capture the voices of subjects and that (where appropriate) evoke empathy and actions in readers.
• Writing ability: are not their own. While Youth Studies recommends APA, there can be an emphasis on internal consistency so that readers can find sources easily. (Youth Studies recommends APA, but supports Chicago as well).
• Identify a focused action and response that is reasonable and realistic given the evidence provided.
• Write about written and multimedia sources in writing in a way that engages in scholarly conversations.
• Demonstrate a close and careful read/understanding of texts and ideas using strategies like quoting, paraphrasing, and analysis that best fits.
• When writing, articulate a unique voice or perspective that demonstrates a point of view or position, and that successfully articulates what is at stake (e.g. for the student author, for communities). Another term for this would be writing that has “heart.”

Develop Writing Processes and Practices:

• Develop a working writing process that includes text generation, revision, and getting feedback from community, peers, instructors or other resources on campus and off.
• Have and employ multiple tools for proofreading with a goal of revising your draft to improve readers' comprehension, as opposed to “perfection” in writing. In addition to reducing error, demonstrate skills in editing and proofreading that result in texts that are written in language that is appropriate for an audience.
• Use writing as a tool for thinking (not necessarily short, concise, or plain).

The Youth Studies faculty translated their list of expected writing abilities into the following menu of grading criteria, a menu from which appropriate items can be selected and adapted by all departmental instructors:

Gather and Create Data:

• The research questions provide direction for the student’s inquiry. The research question connects to an existing body of literature and invites additional insights, questioning, and critical analysis.
• Descriptions provide an understanding of others' experiences and contexts and, when included, an explanation of the student’s awareness and acknowledgement of their own interpretation.
• The student writer has captured and described the subject's lived experience and the meaning they have for their actions, behavior, and context. They have described subjects' lived experience in ways that are true to their (subject) understanding, interpretation, and meaning-making.
• The student has supported writing with data (of various forms) in ways that allow the reader to understand the analysis provided.
• The student has described their research/practice process and the decisions they made that impact content and writing choices.

Interpret and Analyze Data:

• There is an acknowledgment of lived experience and the writer’s relationship with the Subject,  when relevant. The writer has considered how their own lived experience and relationship to the subject has shaped their understanding of what important data to include, how it should be analyzed, and what should be shared.
• When relevant, the writer has articulated positionality in systems of power and privilege such as race, gender, class,or ability. The writer acknowledges the limits of perspective and the importance of listening to and being led by those most impacted.
• The writer has explained the theories and/or concepts they are using. They use relevant sources representing high-quality scholarly or experiential knowledge about young people. They are making arguments and claims in their writing that connect theory and concepts to their everyday lives or scholarly knowledge about young people in a way that expands an audience’s thinking.
• The writer demonstrates consideration of multiple types of data relevant to answering the question or topic you are writing about. They represent the data used in writing with clear explanations.
• When writing about more than one source, the writer demonstrates their ability to bring in information from multiple sources to support an original idea or claim.
• When asked to write reflective and reflexively, the writer explains how
  experiences, assumptions, and biases have influenced understanding. When writing reflectively and reflexively, the writing articulates positionality, especially when writing about marginalization.

Inform and Persuade:

• This writing includes sources as specified by the specific assignment/course. The writer has made arguments more specific by naming stakeholders and explaining the consequences of what they advocate for. They acknowledge the values and assumptions that guide the argument.
• The writing has been written for an audience whose needs have been taken into account. The writer has named stakeholders and considered the motivations and biases of their audience. This writer has identified specific action steps, and the writing appeals to empathy.
• Quotations, paraphrases, and summaries of source materials are cited consistently (APA or Chicago). Course AI policy has been observed. (Most courses require that students not use generative AI. Courses that allow AI use require that it be clearly cited. No courses allow uncited use of AI.)
• The student’s writing names specific action steps to address an issue. Action steps are supported by evidence as required by specific assignment. They explained why these steps would be effective in the given context.
• Sources and readings that have been selected are consistent with course expectations articulated in the assignment prompt. The writer has explained the significance of quotes and paraphrases in their own words. The frameworks of analysis they have chosen are relevant to the course.
• This writer has made intentional choices to develop their voice in this writing. They have articulated an original position or understanding, meaning they have articulated why they care about this topic and what is at stake. For example, if reflecting on personal experiences, they have articulated why these experiences mattered. If writing about youth from another point of view (scholarly, observational) they have identified important tensions, issues, and experiences and explain their importance.

Develop Writing Processes and Practices:

• There is evidence of this writer’s drafting process (e.g. the instructor has reviewed a draft and given feedback for revision, the student reports using a resource for feedback, there is an early draft included with a final draft) There is evidence that this student has used feedback to make changes.
• This writer has made changes to sentence-level details that have improved the writing with the reader in mind.
• This writer has reported using a prewriting process, or has done so in class. In developing the final draft, writing was used to develop reflection and to grow critical understanding, questioning, and analysis of major topics/learning objectives.
• Further process-oriented criteria might include: completing and receiving feedback on an early draft or participating in a classroom activity such as mapping, listing, freewriting, or another form of in-class writing.

Youth Studies’ first-edition Writing Plan focused primarily on the understanding, conceptualization, improvement, and assessment of assignments across the major through the sharing of assignments, curriculum mapping, and two lively faculty-workshops. Youth work practitioners from the larger Twin Cities community also spoke to the students and faculty about the many ways in which writing, as well as other forms of communication, are critical to the field.

The program’s second-edition Writing Plan continued the focus on assignment review and coordination, deepening faculty understanding of students' experience of writing in the major, and developing faculty understanding of digital stories as a way to enhance student communication skills, including writing.  Focus groups were conducted to gather student impressions of writing and writing instruction in the field and major.  A clear theme that emerged in focus groups in 2018 around writing in Youth Studies highlighted a cohesive address of content but a relatively non-cohesive approach to writing instruction and assessment between courses. For example, one student commented: "The content, I think, really flows together between [different courses] and really interlocks with each other. But writing...it's different styles and it's kind of like different tools at all times." Thus, in small and large group meetings, faculty members continue to learn more about what others are doing in their classes and about ways to align what they are doing with the work others have done previously, what others are doing concurrently, and what others will do in subsequent courses.

To implement its third-edition Writing Plan, the faculty has launched a three-pronged strategy: First, they will leverage members’ expertise in programmatic assessment by designing and completing an annual process evaluation. This evaluation process will look at how the Youth Studies faculty has implemented WEC activities and how these activities impact student writing abilities and student writing experiences in the major. Second, in order to better understand students’ writing-related concerns and to connect students with existing sources of writing support, the department has hired an experienced graduate student who will serve as an embedded “writing coach.” Third, the faculty has planned a series of facilitated discussions that will focus specifically on teaching with writing in courses that enroll high percentages of students from underrepresented populations and/or who are first-generation college attendees.

Youth Studies also developed a WEC Legacy plan in 2024, creating an opportunity to gather new survey data from students and departmental faculty about their perceptions of writing in the field. In addition to the traditional survey data, the faculty also brought undergraduate students into WEC meetings to encourage their participation in student writing abilities and outcomes discussions.  Working with students this year has led the program to two additional department goals: to identify strategies that faculty can use to make the context and purpose clearer to students and to clarify the meaning of data in our classes.

Because of evolving faculty changes and new engagement from students, faculty in Youth Studies have proposed activities in these areas: To identify barriers that keep our new community faculty from engaging in WEC fully through a series of focus groups, engaging new community faculty members differently to help build a shared vision for the program; to develop and grow student involvement in WEC using the existing leadership structure of the YOST Student COOP; to fully complete a map of our curriculum using a Padlet started during the Legacy Year; to continue the work initiated at WEC themed meetings each semester.