Youth Inquiry as Justice Work: Challenging Testing Culture in a School Community

• In Event: 52.083 - Youth and Adults Engaging in and Embodying Literacy for Change

Abstract

This paper offers a case study of a youth participatory action research project in a small public urban high school. The practitioner inquiry interrogates the creative design and facilitation of a four-month long qualitative research project into standardized testing conducted by five 10th grade students in a course on qualitative inquiry. In the analysis, I interrogate how the youth researchers fostered conversation among fellow students, faculty, and school leadership around high stakes testing and attendant test-prep pedagogies, keying into the ways in which the youth researchers strategically built relationships and coalitions in the school and community for research and social goals. In doing so, I build theoretical connections between the orientations of youth participatory action research and cosmopolitanism.

Author

• Tiffany A. DeJaynes, Lehman College