Participatory Action Research Principles in Action: The PRAXIS Project in San Bernardino

• In Event: Growing Your Own, Grounded in Participatory Action Research: Using Participatory Approaches in Teacher Education

Abstract

The proposed presentation will highlight The PRAXIS Project, a school-based, university affiliated action research initiative aimed at understanding and responding to the dropout crisis facing low-income students of color across the Inland Empire in Southern California. The PRAXIS Project uses PAR and critical pedagogical approaches to organize research and action initiatives to engage students, teachers, leaders, parents, and other community stakeholders. The project situated in the context of a set of complex educational policy and reform initiatives that address educational inequality but struggle to realize that goal. Students’ experiences and perspectives are used to illuminate their voices and hopes to create equitable policies and practices at the local and national levels.

The objective of the project is to expand an understanding of the role of meaningful student engagement to mediate against student failure and produce critical, high-performing, college-bound students. Through qualitative methods this identifies specific practices that alienate children from school and offer insights into how high school students meaningfully engage with school (Maxwell, 1996). There are two primary objectives of the project: 1) to engage high school students in an action project that gives them a voice to address student engagement issues in school, and 2) to allow researchers to understand how participation in these processes will impact student engagement and achievement in large city high schools such as those in the Inland Empire.
Student-researchers within The PRAXIS Project engaged in a series of group research projects on topics identified by them. Students explored dropouts, the achievement gap, teacher quality, school violence, community issues, student engagement, and school policy (among several others). Students then generated methodological approaches to generate data from school stakeholders (i.e., students, teachers, administrators) using interview protocol, surveys, focus groups, and video analysis of schooling conditions. Students then created a series of presentations and practical/policy recommendations that were shared with teachers and leaders, students, community members, community members and district leadership including the superintendent and school board members.

The need to be “public” about what is happening in public schools through the voices and experiences of Latina/o youth is vital to the PAR-process. Because The PRAXIS Project was driven by several social justice principles, the project has achieved several concrete outcomes: 1) elimination of counterproductive school-based policy, 2) raising total number of actual graduates from 500 to 600 over a two year period, 3) mobilization of community members around key issues impacting the school and community, 4) inclusion of PRAXIS principles in a local district’s strategic plan, and 5) a community-wide awareness about the power that students’ voices and experiences bring to the education reform dialogue.

Authors

• Louie F. Rodriguez, California State University - San Bernardino

• Julio Cammarota, The University of Arizona