Youth Stakeholders: Youth Participatory Action Research and Understanding How Youth of Color Are Pushed Out of Schools

• In Event: Use of Collaborative Action Research to Create Change

Abstract

Increasingly, educational researchers have sought solutions to the racial disparities that exist in education, also referred to as the “educational debt” by Gloria Ladson-Billings. However, youth of color are rarely recognized as stakeholders in their own education. Through one Youth Participatory Action Research project, youth were recognized as such through a Community Advisory Board. Although this work represented only a small piece of change needing to occur to truly bring youth in as experts in the field, program shifts were effectively created based on the research conducted by youth. This paper examines research co-conducted with youth of color to examine how they are pushed out of traditional educational systems and structures that effectively reengage them.

Author

• Raquel Y Saenz Ortiz, Southwestern University