Demystifying the Research Process: A Career Intervention With Latinas

Abstract

Youth participatory action research (YPAR) is a methodology in which youth and researchers collaborate to engage in research within a shared community. This article describes a career intervention conducted with Latina middle school students using YPAR in the school’s Latino community outreach program. Participating students were members of the Latina science club #CHICAS, which was founded by the school counselor. A Latina school parent and researcher collaborated to structure the YPAR exercise. This project allowed Latina students to undertake aspects of the research process within the framework of their communities’ interests, while educating the school counselor about the specific needs of the Latino community. The YPAR exercise also developed skills students could transfer to future career options, such as being able to listen to conversational Spanish while simultaneously translating and transcribing written responses in English. The program highlighted students’ ability to coordinate multiple perspectives as they were informing their school’s administrators while transparently communicating the needs of their ethnic communities. This article highlights YPAR as an effective, mutually beneficial tool for school counselors to engage their ethnically diverse student populations.

Antiracism Starts With Us: School Counselor Critical Reflection Within an Multitiered Systems of Support Framework

“…Finally, we suggest extending research on what constitutes an evidence-based practice within MTSS. Promising studies focused on action research that incorporates family voice (e.g., Betters-Bubon & Schultz, 2018) and youth participatory action research (e.g., Edirmanasinghe & Blaginin, 2019; Levy et al, 2018) may be used as models for expanding how we incorporate voice in the intervention process within antiracist MTSS.…”

School Counselors as Critical Consumers of Research: Guidelines for Evaluating Quantitative Research by Recognizing Quality Indicators

“…Moreover, Dei (2005) suggested that antiracist research goes a step further to also strengthen communities’ capacities to formulate and initiate research within and for their own communities, contributing to the collaborative and transformational impact of research. Youth participatory action research (YPAR), for example, can offer collaborative opportunities for school counselor practitioners, local schools, and school counseling programs to center, engage, and empower youth to utilize research skills that lead to critical analysis of identified issues and justice-focused outcomes that promote social change (Cook et al, 2020; Edirmanasinghe & Blaginin, 2019; Smith et al, 2014). Counselor education programs can help graduate students to partner with local schools, listen to and support schools’ communicated needs and inquiries, and collaboratively implement interventions that advance social justice and action.…”

Using Youth Participatory Action Research to Promote Self-Efficacy in Math and Science

“…The results of this project and the impact of participating in the project were shared with administrators, state representatives, teachers, and parents. In previous years of #CHICAS projects, the school saw changes for the Latinx community as a whole, such as translation of home correspondence to Spanish, development of a Hispanic Heritage Night, and training for teachers on interpretation resources for parent/teacher conferences (Edirmanasinghe & Blaginin, 2019).…”

“…The group began with eight Latina students, facilitated by the school counselor and a bilingual parent. The original group researched the school and parent collaboration with monolingual Spanish-speaking families (Edirmanasinghe & Blaginin, 2019). The name #CHICAS originated from the 2016–2017 group, where each letter stood for a different Spanish word related to the students’ expectations of the group: cientifícas (scientists), héroes (heroes), intelligentes (intelligent), confidente (confident), activistas (activists), and soñadores (dreamers).…”