Activating student voice through Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR): policy-making that strengthens urban education reform

“Hopefully This Motivates a Bout of Realization”: Spoken Word Poetry as Critical Literacy

“…These findings echo those from other scholarship recognizing that youth already have a voice but just need opportunities to be heard (e.g., Warren & Marciano, 2018). It is the responsibility of school adults, including teachers, administrators, and policymakers, to nurture those voices and then bring youth knowledge to the ears of those in power.…”

“…YPAR is a critical, collaborative approach to inquiry that resists deficit views of youth and instead recognizes them as experts on their own worlds (Warren & Marciano, 2018). YPAR engages youth in collecting and analyzing their own firsthand knowledge to understand systems and structures of oppression that affect their lives, and then articulate and implement a plan of reform (Caraballo & Hill, 2014).…”

“…YPAR engages youth in collecting and analyzing their own firsthand knowledge to understand systems and structures of oppression that affect their lives, and then articulate and implement a plan of reform (Caraballo & Hill, 2014). Rooted in democratic epistemology, YPAR often has been traced to Freire’s (1970) critical pedagogy through which youth participate in meaningful learning, knowledge creation, and action on issues that concern them (Warren & Marciano, 2018). We believe that educators can and should address these issues at a deeper level through critical literacy pedagogy as a form of YPAR inquiry.…”

Why Black Adolescents Are Vulnerable at School and How Schools Can Provide Opportunities to Belong to Fix It

“…Such vehicles as leadership clubs and CTE courses can incorporate materials and practices that help students learn how to function as educational consultants on school belongingness issues impacting Black students. Offering educational leadership opportunities to students that incorporate empowering training models and methodologies (Bertrand, 2018) can help reform urban education (Warren & Marciano, 2018). Congress appropriates over one billion dollars annually to CTE programs, which in part could be used to create innovative, interdisciplinary student training opportunities that incorporate student leaders in school belonging improvement efforts.…”

Writing Toward Change Across Youth Participatory Action Research Projects

“…Numerous publications and resources have provided detailed instructions about how to organize students’ participation in YPAR projects. See the More to Explore sidebar at the end of this article, resources available on the YPAR Hub website (http://yparhub.berkeley.edu/), Warren and Marciano (), and scholarship cited throughout this article for more detail. YPAR projects forefront student perspectives, creating opportunities for students to take the lead in writing about issues of importance to them.…”