Youth

This study investigates how Croatian students from the University of Split and Italian students from the University of Salerno perceive and use sex-related taboo language, focusing on differences between their first language (L1), Croatian or Italian, and their second language (L2), English. Data were gathered through an anonymous online survey exploring participants’ perception and use of 15 sex-related taboo expressions in both their L1 and L2. A total of 160 university students participated (N = 160), including 80 Croatian and 80 Italian students. The results indicate that students perceive sex-related words and phrases as more offensive in their L1 than in their L2. However, contrary to expectations, they reported using such language more frequently in their L1, both in oral and written communication. This study contributes to understanding how bilinguals navigate sex-related taboo language across their L1 and L2. Unlike most previous research, which has mainly focused on taboo language in general, this study specifically examines sex-related taboo words. The findings contradict the common notion that speakers choose L2 for swearing due to the emotional distance it provides. Instead, it suggests that participants may intentionally choose their L1 to convey stronger emotional intensity, especially in close or personal situations.

Young women from historically marginalized backgrounds face significant barriers to accessing the professional guidance and social capital necessary for career advancement. To address this problem, a flash mentoring digital tool was developed to expand underrepresented young women’s access to time-limited guidance from pre-screened professional women within Step Up Women’s Network, a mentorship nonprofit program. This community-based program evaluation used a user-centered design approach to develop and refine the platform. In-person workshops and informal group discussion sessions with young Step Up women aged 18 to 29 provided feedback on networking approaches and mentorship needs, which informed the platform design. A total of 285 female mentors and 363 female mentees downloaded and engaged with the platform over two years. Implementation metrics included 5008 messages exchanged with 2528 sent by mentees, 316 meetings held, and high usage of goal-setting features with 1445 goals set and check-ins with 72 percent of mentees. Evaluation findings suggested that the intervention was acceptable and feasible, fostering new, short-term supportive relationships within Step Up Women’s Network. Although additional evaluation with rigorous outcome measures is needed, this program evaluation highlights the potential of a scalable intervention for Step Up Women’s Network that extends the framework of youth-initiated mentoring interventions, which have shown considerable promise in recent years.

In alternative education programs, school wellbeing is enacted partially through the spatialized (emplaced and embodied) lived experiences of students whose educational futures are fragile. Displaced to a series of trailers and limited to half-day attendance, the participants in this qualitative study were removed from mainstream classes in a large urban high school to attend alternative programming. Utilizing a critical counter-mapping youth participatory action approach, 24 participants mapped their barriers and supports to school wellbeing by moving through, sitting within, and writing together in the school spaces they were no longer permitted to occupy during their studies. As a research collective, students produced twenty-six annotated counter-maps, inscribing their school histories, present tensions, and hopes for educational futures onto existing geographical maps of the building. Findings contribute to understandings of students’ perspectives on best practices for complex school interactions as a foundation for building school climates that center educational wellbeing, care, play, and relationships. In addition to insights into current spatial practices in schools and how they might be rewritten to advance an equity-orientation, this work makes visible the tensions between the school’s emphasis on academic performance and the youth’s lived experiences of injustice on the spatial and metaphorical edges of the system.