Youth Research/Participatory Methods for Reform

In the movement to increase equity and inclusion in schools, students are often treated as silent recipients rather than agentive participants. This brief introduces youth participatory action research (YPAR) as a powerful equity tool that centers youth perspectives and participation in school change.

Educational systems worldwide are committed to the critical work of transformative change in order to create more equitable and inclusive schools (Ainscow, 2005; Artiles, Kozleski, & Waitoller, 2015; Kozleski & Smith, 2009; Kozleski & Thorius, 2013). This work can happen at different levels of the educational system (i.e., state, district, school, practitioner levels) and involve a range of foci and priority areas (i.e., research, policy, pedagogy) for advancing systemic change (Kozleski & Smith, 2009; Kozleski & Thorius, 2013). Although these efforts are much needed, historically they have been top-down, adult-centered understandings of equity and inclusion done to support youth but without including youth (Kozleski, Thorius, & Smith, 2013).

2012

The United States education system denies many Black and Latina/o students a quality education due to systemic racism, which is manifested in racial inequalities in access to educational resources. These disparities are multifaceted. For instance, Latina/o and Black students have fewer opportunities to take college preparatory courses than their white peers (Darling-Hammond, 2004a; Fanelli, Bertrand, Rogers, Medina, & Freelon, 2010; J. Rogers, Fanelli, & Bertrand, 2009). Also, there are inequalities in access to qualified and experienced teachers (Darling-Hammond, 2004a), college counselors (Fanelli et al., 2010), technology (Margolis, 2008), and schools that are not overcrowded (Fanelli et al., 2010).My dissertation research examines how a group of youth and adults called the Council challenges these manifestations of systemic racism while engaging in Youth Participatory Action Research--youth-driven, critical research and advocacy. The Council includes about 30 Black and Latina/o ...

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2017

In this essay, I explore my experiences as a practitioner researcher collaborating with my students on a participatory action research project aimed at institutional change. I take up two areas: blurring the boundaries of professionalism in working toward authentic collaborations with students, and secondly, incorporating perspectives of 'healing justice' into schoolbased youth participatory action research (YPAR). I first provide a framework by delineating the emancipatory aims of YPAR and how these may be at odds with much of the research teachers/practitioners currently conduct in their school sites. While ultimately acknowledging the risks in taking up emancipatory change efforts as insiders, I make the case that there are also clear benefits to the process. While there is a dynamic youth participatory action research (YPAR) movement taking place, fostered by community and youth organizing (Warren, 2014), it has yet to infiltrate school settings to any great degree (Ozer & Wright, 2012). Ironically many of these community-based YPAR efforts focus on educational reforms (Warren, 2014). Youth, with adult allies, have collectively organized around issues of school 'pushouts' and zero tolerance (Youth United for Change, 2011) and the proliferation of charter schools in urban school districts (Mirra, Garcia, & Morrell, 2016) to cite just two examples. The Funder Collaborative for Youth Organizing estimates that while youth organizing groups take up multiple issues, two-thirds of them address public education and educational justice issues in some manner (Shah, 2011; Warren, 2014). These efforts demonstrate a passionate interest on the part of youth to influence their educational experiences and contexts. Yet these same youth sit as students in our classrooms, move through our school hallways, young activists who are invisible in the eyes of the educational community. A growing body of evidence documents the multiple benefits of youth being involved in YPAR (Warren, Mira, & Nikundiwe, 2008), so to try to further incorporate this type of inquiry into educational settings is worth further exploration. YPAR has been shown to cultivate a variety of academic, social and civic skills in youth (Rubin & Jones, 2007). Others have noted youth's increased confidence in their research skills and in presenting community issues of concern to those in power (Shah, 2011). Some report higher than expected numbers of youth from low-resourced areas being college bound after participating in YPAR (Mirra et al., 2016). YPAR may offer a particularly important opportunity for those most marginalized in schools who experience social justice concerns first hand (Bland & Atweh, 2007; Fine & Torre, 2004). Fine and Torre (2004) argue that youth of poverty and/or color have paid the greatest price as neoliberalism has infused our schools and processes of YPAR provide a vehicle for a reframing of the local and large questions of ARTICLE HISTORY

Public schools are microcosms of the larger social order, so one need only to spend time in almost any urban public school in the United States to bear witness to the unresolved paradoxes of our time: the promise and possibility in schools as well as the pervasive and persistent inequities. Public education as we know it is at a crossroads. Black and brown communities have endured a legacy of institutional neglect and they will soon become the majority population in certain states across the country. Many young people of color now attend racially segregated schools and inequities in school funding abound (Orfield and Lee 2005). As black and brown youth walk the hallways of public schools in the urban context, much of their experiences are colored by marginalization and inequity (Orfield et al. 2004). From a very young age many students are forced into an education that lacks cultural relevancy and where they must navigate a system of domination under which white, middle-class values set the standards for success. It can be argued that consciously and subconsciously, students are aware of the ways in which the experience of schooling pushes them from a positive sense of cultural and linguistic identity toward an active denial of self. In the age of standardized testing and the ensuing teach

Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis, 2012

This article presents a youth participatory action research (YPAR) study, which was conducted through a theoretical lens incorporating the social justice youth policy framework and Critical Race Theory. Led by youth from the Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association (VAYLA), the study explored the impacts of post-Katrina school reforms on student experiences at six New Orleans high schools. The findings from the study exposed troubling educational disparities by race, class, limited English status, and geography. The YPAR project's results counter neoliberal reform advocates' narrative of a post-Katrina New Orleans school "miracle." This article illuminates YPAR as both research method and pathway for the future of urban school reform to include youth as engaged stakeholders.

English Journal, 2015

It is certainly a good time to rethink adolescence/ts. The murders of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Renisha McBride, Trayvon Martin, and Jordan Davis-and too many others-make it quite clear: certain social constructs of adolescence/ts get certain adolescents killed. As English language arts (ELA) educators, we despair over the loss of young lives-both literally, through their physical deaths, but also figuratively, as we know that too many youth of color1 experience symbolic deaths through miseducation and dispossession in today's public schools. The work of contemporary researchers focused on adolescence reminds us that those privileged in definitions of adolescence are also privileged in frameworks of education; those who are ignored in those definitions are also ignored in school. But who gets to be an adolescent and who doesn't? Whose adolescence matters in school and in life? Perhaps more importantly, who gets to live? Who gets to be human?These are questions we began to a...

Children and Youth Services Review, 2021

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In New York City, many stakeholders in education are fighting for changes in practices like zero tolerance policies, testing, and curriculum and pedagogy that continue to marginalize youth of color. These marginalized youth do not feel like policymakers are concerned with their interests (Fine, 2004). Much work has been done with youth organizing groups that highlight promising educational practices and the civic engagement and development of young people (Ginwright & Cammarota, 2002; Kirshner, 2012; Rogers, Morrell & Enyedy, 2007). Unfortunately, much of the research on social justice education focuses on teacher perspectives and teacher education (Applebaum, 2007; Picower, 2011; Portfilio & Mallott, 2011; Strong-Wilson, 2008). To gain greater insight into how social justice can be theorized and enacted pedagogically, I conducted an 18-month critical case study at Youth of Color Organizing (YoCO), a youth organizing network in New York City. The purpose was to explore the conceptualizations youth of color ages 15-26 have of social justice and how they actively construct and enact social justice praxis, or reflection and action (Freire, 2007). I conducted semi-structured interviews with three youth facilitators and five youth participants, observations, and document analysis. Findings from this study highlight detailed insight into youth of color social justice praxis present at one youth organizing network in New York City. Findings indicate that youth of color believe that in order to organize effectively, efforts require intersectional, interdependent, and global analyses of oppression that complexly consider factors contributing to problems. Findings also show that they don’t believe social justice has been attained in the permanent sense, but rather that there exists a need for a fight for social justice that is anti-oppressive, democratic participatory in nature, and youth-led. Lastly, this study found that the acts of facilitating, learning, and organizing shift over time, depend on the context, and are actively constructed and reconstructed by the youth participants. I indicate prominent knowledge and skills, tensions such as creating a safe space, and challenges within youth and adult roles. These findings have implications for youth organizers and activists, educators, teacher educators, and policymakers.

… !: youth activism and community change: new …, 2006