Practicing youth participatory action research for school equity: A pedagogical model

Abstract

The application of emancipatory pedagogical methods such as youth participatory action research may serve as a valuable practice for addressing educational inequity. This article presents educational leaders, teachers, researchers, and youth advocates with a description of applicable pedagogical methods that comprised the implementation of a youth participatory action research seminar at the middle school level. The authors describe a seminar that incorporated tenets of critical pedagogy and radical healing to maximize student engagement and enhance the impact of student voice in a project to expand school equity. Also provided is a course outline highlighting topics covered and activities implemented throughout the 12-week seminar. Important considerations and lessons learned are also discussed.

Youth Participatory Action Research as School Counseling Praxis: A Scoping Review

“…With regard to school counseling practice, a total of five intervention studies described how YPAR can be used within classroom spaces to support students’ development. These included school elective classes (Ozer & Wright, 2012; Voight & Velez, 2018), school counselors joining teachers in classrooms for developmental lessons (Smith et al, 2018), or YPAR as teacher-led classroom pedagogy (Cammarota, 2017; Gonell et al, 2021). Each of the studies actively taught students to use YPAR as a methodology to identify and develop solutions to social injustices in their lives.…”

“…), two articles conceptualized YPAR as a transformational methodology that allows youth to be mixed-methods researchers poised to instill changes in their community (Garnett et al, 2019), while also being a mechanism for school counselors to evaluate the effectiveness of their group counseling interventions (Smith et al, 2010). Last, each article evaluated in this study highlighted how the products youth create while engaging in YPAR function as an advocacy tool and center their voices in explaining social phenomena and fostering critical consciousness (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Chou et al, 2015; Gonell et al, 2021).…”

“…YPAR is evidenced as a process to reflect on and actively disseminate projects that call for systemic change (Cammarota, 2017). Incorporating YPAR in group work as emancipatory education (Gonell et al, 2021) can help youth gain skills to push back against larger systemic inequities (Levy et al, 2018). Last, two articles discussed how YPAR functions as a model for designing group counseling curriculum (Cook & Kruger-Henny, 2017), and that through facilitation, school counselors can develop their own multicultural competency (Cook et al, 2020).…”

Action Research Pedagogy in Educational Institutions: Emancipatory, Relational, Critical and Contextual

“…The emancipatory move illustrated in this issue is crucial for ART and has been a frequent topic in this journal (e.g. Carl & Ravitch, 2018;Gonell et al, 2020). Transformations for a better world will need the unleashed creativity of many who currently feel unable to contribute and unable to grow towards their own potential.…”