YPAR and Critical Epistemologies: Rethinking Education Research

Abstract

Knowledges from academic and professional research-based institutions have long been valued over the organic intellectualism of those who are most affected by educational and social inequities. In contrast, participatory action research (PAR) projects are collective investigations that rely on indigenous knowledge, combined with the desire to take individual and/or collective action. PAR with youth (YPAR) engages in rigorous research inquiries and represents a radical effort in education research to value the inquiry-based knowledge production of the youth who directly experience the educational contexts that scholars endeavor to understand. In this chapter, we outline the foundations of YPAR and examine the distinct epistemological, methodological, and pedagogical contributions of an interdisciplinary corpus of YPAR studies and scholarship. We outline the origins and disciplines of YPAR and make a case for its role in education research, discuss its contributions to the field and the tensions and possibilities of YPAR across disciplines, and close by proposing a YPAR critical-epistemological framework that centers youth and their communities, alongside practitioners, scholars, and researchers, as knowledge producers and change agents for social justice.

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

“…The demonstrated benefits to youth across academic, social, and leadership domains (Anyon et al., ; Shamrova & Cummings, ) show that YPAR is a worthwhile mode of inquiry in school settings. Indeed, when grounded in YPAR's epistemological foundation, YPAR in high school settings has the potential to subvert traditional educational paradigms by legitimizing students’ experiences and knowledge (Freire, ; Caraballo et al., ). With the current review's considerations for implementation in mind, YPAR projects provide a meaningful avenue for sharing power within high school settings.…”

“…In a review of YPAR projects to address educational inequality, Caraballo et al. () highlight similar historical roots of PAR, as well as PAR's usage with diverse multicultural and multinational origins (Mirra, Filipiak, & Garcia, ). The origins of PAR are important to understand when examining PAR projects with youth populations because it informs the implementation of such projects.…”

“…Theoretical Framework: Youth Participatory Action Research Participatory action research (PAR) has a distinct epistemological foundation that underlies critical inquiry projects like YPAR (Caraballo, Lozenski, Lysiscott, & Morrell, 2017). PAR's theory of knowledge construction posits that all individuals are experts and can contribute to research and knowledge production (Caraballo et al, 2017;Fine, 2008).…”

“…Theoretical Framework: Youth Participatory Action Research Participatory action research (PAR) has a distinct epistemological foundation that underlies critical inquiry projects like YPAR (Caraballo, Lozenski, Lysiscott, & Morrell, 2017). PAR's theory of knowledge construction posits that all individuals are experts and can contribute to research and knowledge production (Caraballo et al, 2017;Fine, 2008). This epistemological theory disrupts traditional notions of knowledge construction, which emphasizes the knowledge of the researchers and deemphasize, if not altogether discount, the knowledge of the researched-those closest to the social issues being studied (Fine et al, 2004).…”

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

“…Using activist, liberation pedagogies within institutional spaces designed to maintain rather than challenge dominant power structures further poses practical and epistemological challenges. Caraballo et al (2017) identified four dominant entry points to YPAR, all of which, to varying degrees, inform the curriculum we describe here: (1) academic learning and literacies, (2) cultural and critical epistemologies, (3) youth development, and (4) youth organizing and civic engagement. In schools, YPAR projects risk being schoolified, its aims of inquiry and action transformed into mere graded assignments (Rubin, Ayala, & Zaal, 2017).…”