The Use of Participatory Action Research to Excavate the Hidden Curriculum of Schools: Toward a Critically Hopeful Approach to More Equitable Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Participatory Action Research and the Multicultural Classroom

Abstract

Working within a Freirian framework and the democratic, reflexive premise of participatory action research (PAR), presenters explore how PAR methods serve as a means of “reading” – in collaboration with students, teachers, and school leaders – the hidden curriculum in schools and can be used more broadly to engender school-based change related to issues of equity, pedagogy, learning, and social engagement. We examine school-based research that seeks to excavate, critically consider, and address the hidden curriculum of schools with a focus on intersectionalities of gender, race, culture and sexuality. We conceptualize Freirean theory and PAR as a hybrid conceptual-methodological frame for the development of critical research design towards the enactment of Freire’s (1998) ideal of a pedagogy of freedom.

Authors

• Sharon M. Ravitch, University of Pennsylvania

• Nicole Mittenfelner Carl, University of Pennsylvania