Collaborating for Change: Possibilities and Barriers to Teacher and Student Action Research

• In Event: Roundtable Session 53
  In Roundtable Session: Participatory Action Research: Doorway to Coconstruction of Knowledge and Power

Abstract

Despite significant growth in both practitioner/teacher research and youth participatory action research, there are few published accounts of teachers and students collaborating together on inquiry based change efforts in their own school sites. This paper explores why these two movements (teacher research and YPAR) seem to so infrequently intersect within school sites. Drawing on published accounts of teacher research and YPAR as well as a case example of a practitioner research study with teachers and students as research collaborators, this paper takes up 1) the range of possible collaborations between adults and youth in conducting inquiry toward educational reform and 2) examines the opportunities and barriers to research collaborations between youth and their teachers within their school sites.

Author

• Kathryn G. Herr, Montclair State University