PowerView: Increasing Equality in a Youth Participatory Action Research Class

• In Event: 75.041 - MTCC Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: 75.041-7 - Youth-Led Participatory Action Research: A Research Approach to Bring About Productive Change in the Community

Abstract

Conducting a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) within schools is challenged by traditional asymmetrical power relations between adult teacher/researcher and young participants. In this paper, we present a new practice we developed and examined - the PowerView - a methodological tool that can reduce power hierarchy in the research class. Based on postcolonial theory and the work of Bhabha (1998) and Foucault (1969), we implemented the concept of 'Reversal the Gaze' by asking the students participants in the study to turn their cameras toward the researcher and capture images that represent their point of view of her/him. That act created a new space in which students were given the opportunity to subvert traditional power relations in the research classroom.

Authors

• Avy Dwight Hemy, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

• Assaf Meshulam, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev