1. 1
The Unmet Social and Emotional Needs
of Ethnic Minority GLBT Youth:
Impediments to Empowerment
and Social Action
Mark A. Biernbaum, PhD
Department of Child Development
California State University, Sacramento
and
Lambda Community Center
citation format:
Biernbaum, M.A. (March, 2005). The unmet social and emotional
needs of ethnic minority GLBT youth: Impediments to
empowerment and social action. Talk presented at the 11th
Annual Multicultural Education Conference, California State
University, Sacramento.

2. 2
Empowering Sexual Minority Youth:
Working with the Lambda Community Center's
Youth Programs
 Began working at Lambda in May of 2004
 Lambda Center is in the midst of both a physical and
service expansion, and wanted data on what types of
services their youth were most interested in having/were
most in need of.
 Lambda's Youth Groups serve young people from the ages
of 13 to 24. Center staff estimate that approximately 150-
200 different youth take part in their groups on a rotating,
drop-in basis.
 Two different groups meet one time per week. The groups
are led by youth-facilitators, who are supported by adult
facilitators from Lambda and Breaking Barriers. Topics
discussed are wide ranging: from gays in the media, to self-
esteem, domestic abuse, gay pride, chosen family.
 Through discussions with the youth, a survey
instrument, the Lambda Youth Services Survey, was born.
Youth provided the majority of the items on the survey
 I collected data using the Youth Services Survey at each
scheduled group for a period of two weeks. Data from
approximately 50 youth were obtained. Data collection is
ongoing.

3. 3
Lambda Youth Services Survey:
Findings, surprises, challenges
Sex of youth Frequency Percentage
Male 31 63.3
Female 16 32.7
Transgendered 2 4.1
Total 49 100%
Race/Ethnicity of youth Frequency Percentage
Caucasian 26 53.1
Hispanic/Latino 3 6.1
African-American 2 4.1
Asian/Pacific Islander 5 10.2
Mixed Ethnicity 12 24.5
Total 48 98%
Minority youth merged Frequency Percentage
Caucasian 26 54.2
Minority 22 45.8
Total 48 100%

4. 4
Lambda Youth Services Survey:
Findings, surprises, challenges (cont.)
Age of youth Average Minimum Maximum
17.4 13 23
Service Needs by Gender
Full Sample Women Men
Recreational 1.19 1.07 1.22
Educational 1.33 1.16 1.45
Instrumental 1.55 1.63 1.52
Health 1.50 1.53 1.48
*Note: Transgendered youth indicated maximum needs in
all categories
Service Needs by Race/Ethnicity Merged
Full Sample Caucasian Minority
Recreational 1.19 1.21 1.17
Educational 1.33 1.27 1.38
Instrumental 1.55 1.57 1.52
Health 1.50 1.38 1.65

5. 5
Reflecting on the Data
1. All youth wanted the Center to provide more
instrumentally
2. Both Female and Male youth endorsed needs for
Health services, but Recreational and Educational
services seemed somewhat more essential to Male
youth.
3. Trangendered youth endorsed maximum needs in
all service categories, making them the most at-
risk of these demographic groups.
4. Ethnic/Minority GLBT youth were the
demographic group most concerned with
psychosocial health and support services -
significantly more so than their Caucasian peers.
These youths most basic needs centered on
enhancement of their mental and emotional well-
being

6. 6
Mental and Emotional Well-Being:
Necessities for Engagement, Empowerment, and Social Action
Compromised mental and emotional well-being
difficulties in identity development; integration of multiple
identities, low self-esteem/self-efficacy, mental illness, social
disconnectedness, external struggles occupy all attention

Compromised ability to engage
lack of achievement motivation; distractedness- inability to
focus; minimal effort expended; lack of personal investment in
school, work, world, future, relationships -- life

Compromised receptivity to empowerment
disconnect between learning and application; critical
pedagogy is applied without true connection to self-
enhancement

Diminished likelihood of social action

7. 7
Biernbaum's Social-Emotional Learning Model
(SEL Model) of Youth Empowerment
This model utilizes the basics of Social-Emotional Learning to
engage students in critical pedagogy via a learner-centered
approach in order to produce student empowerment and the
potential for social action
Step 1:
Meeting student
social-emotional
needs
Results:
1. Trust in instructor
2. Sense of being
recognized as unique
3. Group/Class
cohesion and sense of
belongingness
4. Increased ability
to face personal
challenges
Step 2:
Finding student voices
through critical
pedagogy combined
with self-reflection
Results:
1. Students learn to
use course content to
self-reflect with
encouragement of
instructor and
group/class
2. Students learn to
use critical pedagogy
to analyze their world
Step 3:
Empowering
student confidence
in their voices and
their right to
critically examine
their world
Results:
1. Critical analysis
continues to
empower student
self-discovery
2. Increased
student confidence
leads to confidence
and social action

8. 8
Why is the SEL model of youth empowerment more
developmentally-sensitive?
 The teen and young adult years are crucial for
strong identity development
 A strong sense of confidence in their identity is
essential for the engaged application of critical
pedagogy
 Many students enter our classrooms with a
compromised sense of self and/or with challenges
to forming a strong and integrated personal
identity
 Students who must integrate a racial/ethnic
identity into their personal identity face additional
challenges. These challenges are increased as students
add other aspects of identity, such as gender identity
and sexual orientation, to their personal identity

9. 9
 Instructors must move each student, via a learner-
centered approach, towards the integration of a
strong personal identity. Only those students with
a strong core identity can experience
empowerment
Why is Learner-Centered instruction/exploration
so vital in this process?
 Learner-centered principles view both learning and
motivation as natural processes that work best when the
instructional context supports individual student needs,
strengths, prior experiences, and interests
Learner-centered writing assignment series
1. Diagnostic assignment: Utilize Bronfenbrenner's
Ecological Systems Theory to analyze a the life of
Rosalee Wright, featured in a Frontline episode called
The Confessions of Rosalee
 Allows instructor to gauge each student's readiness to
engage in critical thinking and analysis
2. Self-reflection integrated with course content:
Students generate three possible topics for final paper
in which they analyze important aspect of self, life, or
past using course content.

10. 10
 Students begin to utilize course content to analyze areas of
concern/difficult/confusion in their own lives, providing
link between self-development and topical learning
 Instructor begins written dialog with each student about
each of their potential ideas, providing individualized
instruction and support
3. Information gathering: After choosing a topic, students
gather information on this topic from multiple sources
in order to begin to see multiple perspectives
 Enables students to view their personal concerns through
multiple lenses, and allows them to critique these lenses
 Instructor assists student in starting to integrate personal
reflections with different points of view in a critical and
self-reflective fashion
4. Designing and conducting interview: Students choose
another individual in their lives who they believe may
have a unique perspective on their topic. They design
and administer open-ended interviews.
 Promotes student interpersonal communication on topic of
personal interest
 Exposes student to alternative personal viewpoint on topic
 Exposes students to an important research method in the social
sciences

11. 11
5. Final paper--Triangulation: Students integrate all of
the above information into a final paper with
reflective/critical format:
Abstract
Personal Reflections
Information gathered and Additional personal
reflections
Interview information and Additional personal
reflections
Conclusion/Triangulation: Students are asked to explain
how their views on their topic have changed as a
result of this exploration.
Conclusions
 Teaching critical pedagogy alone does not insure
Empowerment
 Attention to the psychosocial and developmental
needs of youth is essential; Impediments here impede
learning; mental well-being is a necessity for optimal
youth engagement
 A focus on social-emotional learning increases student
engagement and motivation
 Critical pedagogy and active self-reflection can be
fruitfully combined to produce engagement and
empowerment