From Pedagogy to Participation: Progressive Youths' Paths to Formal Civic Engagement

Over the past decade, declining electoral engagement among young people has led to a proliferation of research preoccupied with how best to educate for "active citizenship." It is therefore within a context of heightened theoretical attention that this thesis embarks on a unique, retrospective exploration of the relationship between pedagogy and political participation for a diverse group of progressive young adult Canadians. Whereas young people are commonly deemed apathetic, this research conceives of this cohort as mountingly alienated from liberal, capitalist democracy. At the same time, however, this thesis conceives of young progressives‘ electoral participation as strategically necessary, insofar as the collective disengagement of these young adults has a well-documented tendency to benefit those political parties/candidates most radically averse to justice-oriented social change. Ultimately, this research concludes that the capacity of pedagogical interventions to engender participatory tendencies among progressive young people is therefore essential, albeit limited in important ways.M.A