New Grant Expands Professor’s Research-Practice-Partnership with Indigenous Community

Lora Henderson Smith, assistant professor at the UVA School of Education and Human Development's Youth-Nex research center, and Dustina Gill, founder and director of the Native American non-profit youth organization, Nis'to Incorporated, will continue their longstanding partnership with new funding from the Spencer Foundation.

The nearly $400,000 grant will leverage youth participatory action research (YPAR) to engage youth to help identify strengths and challenges of culturally informed educational opportunities. Focusing on out-of-school time, this project will explore cultural learning opportunities for Nis’to participants and other youth in their community that will complement students’ in-school learning.

“We know that Indigenous youth thrive when they can participate in cultural and learning experiences, especially with their Elders,” Henderson Smith said. “Unfortunately, limitations exist that keep these kinds of experiences from being integrated into schools as much as they could be. Through this project, we hope to expand these opportunities for youth during their out-of-school time.”

Centering the cultural knowledge and community assets of the Indigenous youth, Gill, Smith and her UVA colleagues, David Edmunds and Irène P. Mathieu, will work to improve outcomes for youth by meeting community-identified needs. The three-year study will engage rising 10th, 11th and 12th graders, as well as adult community members to co-design and pilot the out-of-school educational curriculum for students in middle and high school.