Educacíon y Liberacíon: The Role of Participatory Action Research for Creating a New Pedagogy for Latinx Youth in U.S. Schools

• In Event: The Necessity and Possibilities of Latinx Youth-Focused Participatory Action Research

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes
Latinx youth continue to be woefully underserved by mainstream public schools in the U.S. Charter schools, promises through curricular and standards-based reform, and language strategies and programmatic models have all attempted to create more equitable opportunities for Latinx youth in the U.S. and have largely fallen short. This presentation aims to share how a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project with Latinx youth not only engages students in meaningful intellectual activity but helps transform the very schooling conditions they face. PAR helps educators reimagine a more liberatory pedagogy that is necessary for Latinx youth in the U.S. (Freire, 1972).

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
Using Participatory Action Research (PAR) to engage Latinx youth, the paper will describe a four-part pedagogical/methodological approach to engage youth including Educational Journeys, the history of educational inequality, powerful ideas in education, and the group research project (Rodriguez, 2014). This paper will describe how each approach engaged and created the agenda to transform the schooling conditions as driven by Latinx youth.

Methods, techniques or modes of inquiry
This paper employs a Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology prioritizing various data sources including interviews, surveys, focus group, and photo voice techniques. This paper will highlight how Latinx youth describe their schooling conditions as a platform to create action-oriented agendas to change school policy and practice.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Data from this paper will be drawn from the CREER Project (Collaborative Research for Equity and Excellence in Our Schools). CREER is a school-based, university affiliated research partnership that engages youth, schools, and communities in research collaborations to create educational equity for all students. Data for the current paper will be from one of the four high schools engaging in research.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/points of view
The project will collect data from September 2017 to April 2018 (and beyond). It is expected that key findings will include the ways in which school culture significantly shapes the Latinx student experience. Particular attention will be place on the ways in which students, educators, and the system responds to PAR with Latinx youth particularly when Latinx youth begin to demand an educational experience that is relevant, intentional, and just.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the student or work
While volumes have been written about the educational crisis facing Latinx youth, this paper aims to highlight what is possible when research driven by PAR converges with on-the-ground realities resulting in an intentional partnership for social change and justice for and with Latinx youth.

Author

• Louie F. Rodriguez, University of California - Riverside