Students and Preservice Teachers Becoming Critical Researchers in a Figured World of Youth Participatory Action Research

• In Event: Enacting Justice: Critical Literacy and Social Action Across Educational Contexts

Abstract

Drawing upon the work of high school students and pre-service teachers in an afterschool seminar, Speaker 4 examines how Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) projects contribute to the critical reframing of youth voices within teacher education. The paper is based on a project that engaged students as lead researchers and teacher candidates as supportive facilitators; students designed their own inquiries and explored multiple literacies to communicate their perspectives and findings as well as enact social change. Such reframing of traditional student-teacher roles builds capacity among pre-service teachers to draw from critical youth social action (Kinloch, 2012; McIntyre, 2000) toward supporting the academic achievement of minoritized youth and culturally sustaining (Paris, 2012) educational environments in the interest of educational equity and social justice.

Framed by an identities-in-practice lens (Caraballo, 2011; Holland et al., 1998; Rubin, 2007) this study is grounded in the assumption that identities and literacies are multiple and contextual, always being negotiated in particular cultural worlds, or figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998). A figured world is “a socially and culturally constructed realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others” (p. 52). Through continual participation, the expectations of the figured world become embodied and inform participants’ perceptions and perspectives. In this paper, Speaker Four examines how critical literacies and social action in the YPAR seminar function as a figured world in which students and pre-service teachers construct identities as agents of change and leverage critical literacies across multiple contexts.

This paper draws from a larger IRB-approved qualitative study of the experiences of high school students and preservice teachers in the context of after school critical social research seminar in a culturally and socioeconomically diverse urban school. Data sources include audio session recordings, interviews, field notes, and student artifacts. Students’ and preservice teachers’ narratives are analyzed as part of an ongoing iterative process (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007) to examine how the students’ and teacher candidates’ YPAR experiences informed their perceptions about literacies, social change, and social justice.

The data suggests that students’ and preservice teachers’ experiences in a YPAR context can challenge existing perceptions about literacies, education, and social action. This study promotes a critical broadening of pre-service teachers’ conceptions of youth, literacies, and social action and extends the current scope of research and scholarship in teacher preparation by rethinking curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher education as collaborative and democratic endeavors with, rather than for, youth. Because YPAR can expose the complexities of collaborative spaces and intersections among youth, preservice teachers, and teacher educators, among others, it decentralizes existing norms that constrict learning, creativity, and voice. These complexities are central to the work of YPAR in its capacity to create spaces in which we can learn from the authentic interactions between youth and the educators who care for them. Via YPAR, the process of conscientization (Freire, 1970) is shared among students, teachers, and teacher educators.

Author

• Limarys Caraballo, Queens College - CUNY