The Quandary of Youth Participatory Action Research in School Settings: A Framework for Reflecting on the Factors That Influence Purpose and Process

Abstract

Youth participatory action research (YPAR) is a form of critical participatory action research that provides young people with opportunities to identify injustices in their current social realities, to gather and analyze data about these phenomena, and to determine actions that will begin to rectify their negative outcomes. A growing body of evidence suggests that YPAR projects improve outcomes for individual youth as well as the organizations/settings they act on. Despite this, the extent to which YPAR can and should be used in institutions that reproduce dominant cultural power dynamics remains a subject of debate. Building on recent studies that explore the tensions inherent in school-based YPAR projects, in this theoretical essay Gretchen Brion-Meisels and Zanny Alter put three fundamental tenets of YPAR—participation, purpose, and level of analysis—into conversation with each other. Illustrating their points using examples from an ongoing YPAR project that explores barriers to on-time graduation at an urban high school, they describe the ways in which these tenets are central to YPAR projects and identify several elements of schooling that complicate decision making around these fundamental ideas.

A Qualitative Systematic Review of Youth Participatory Action Research Implementation in U.S. High Schools

“…That project utilized time both before and after school to engage youth researchers with research on the topic of antiracism and whiteness. These examples may reflect a tension with YPAR epistemology about youth researchers’ agency (Brion‐Meisels & Alter, ). Specifically, youth researchers may exercise their agency and opt not to participate in a project that they may otherwise be required to participate in during dedicated instructional time.…”

“…A recent theoretical case study suggested that implementation of YPAR in schoolbased settings may include a unique set of demands that need to be addressed by adult researchers (Brion-Meisels & Alter, 2018). Specifically, the authors described four tensions of YPAR in school-based settings: power sharing between stakeholders, time constraints, centralized control over policies, and increasing student agency within constrained educational settings (Brion-Meisels & Alter, 2018). Similarly, a study of one middle-school PAR project described challenges, essential processes, and considerations for implementation (Ozer et al, 2010).…”

“…Research has shown that this epistemology and methodology have the potential to improve the outcomes of students (e.g., academic, leadership; Anyon, Bender, Kennedy, & Dechants, 2018). Yet there has not been an empirical synthesis of factors influencing implementations of YPAR projects in the high school setting (Brion-Meisels & Alter, 2018). Thus, an examination of the context-specific considerations for YPAR implementation is needed to support the usage of participatory pedagogy in high school students' education.…”

Transforming School Hallways Through Critical Inquiry: Multimodal Literacies for Civic Engagement

“…In schools, YPAR projects risk being schoolified, its aims of inquiry and action transformed into mere graded assignments (Rubin, Ayala, & Zaal, ). Brion‐Meisels and Alter () noted that the “context, relationship, and urgency within schools can make it difficult to center the critical, participatory, and transformational aspects of YPAR” (p. 447). As with these scholars, we search for ways to honor the liberatory aims of YPAR within institutional confines that often reproduce existing structural relationships, while also navigating the complex, sometimes fraught, politics of a school setting.…”

Youth Voices in Education Research

“…YPAR therefore engages an epistemological and pedagogical commitment to center youth, which is unique in the education research landscape. However, YPAR scholars themselves frequently point out how difficult this work can be, especially within the structural constraints and increasing standardization of schools (Brion-Meisels & Alter, 2018;Buttimer, 2019;Rubin, Ayala, & Zaal, 2017). And while YPAR is a crucial approach for elevating the concerns and priorities of young people, it is not the only way that youth and adults can collaborate to produce knowledge.…”