Developing a Critical Eye (1): Complicating and Extending Critical Participatory Action Research With Black Youth

• In Event: Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Deconstructing Power: Expanding the Role of Young People as Researchers

Abstract

Using a critical sociocultural lens, this paper explicates how high school youth of African descent engaged in critical participatory action research (CPAR) at a community-based organization, make meaning of their practices and identities as researchers. It frames CPAR as a pedagogical practice that mediates students’ self-perceptions, resistance, and educational space and time. Through an analysis of practices the students are developing, it uses situated learning theory and mediated discourse analysis to uncover the “sites of engagement” where social practices align to analyze actions that are mediated by environment and language. This study is significant to the fields of curriculum development and teacher education, and extends the scholarly research on CPAR as both methodology and pedagogy.

Author

• Brian Lozenski, Metropolitan State University