Youth Inquiry as Resistance

• In Event: Resistance as Responsibility

Abstract

Drawing from fieldwork in multiple youth participatory action research (YPAR) projects and decolonizing theory, critical race theory, and critical youth studies – this paper presents findings that position youth inquiry as a form of resistance to schooling. The driving research questions were: (1) what is the capacity of inquiry to operate as a form of resistance? and (2) how does youth inquiry disrupt normative schooling? To answer these questions I pulled from ethnographic research projects with youth conducting YPAR across multiple sites. YPAR consists of collective investigations of problems, centers the knowledge of those affected, and pushes participants to take action against social injustice (McIntyre, 2000).

To establish the capacity of youth inquiry to serve as a form of resistance against the intersecting systemic violences of traditional schooling for Black and Brown students, I draw on anticolonial scholarship (Smith, 1999; Tuck & Habtom, 2019; Tuck & Yang, 2012), Critical Race Theory (Ladson-Billings, 1998; Leonardo, 2013), and Critical Youth Studies (Ayala, 2009; Lyiscott, Caraballo, & Morrell, 2018; McIntyre, 2000). These fields offer specific ways of knowing and being that help in orienting my social, political, and ethical commitments to work with youth.

Using an ethnographic approach allowed me to examine the participants and salient events in the YPAR settings (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011). Critical ethnography helped me to stay attentive to issues of power and domination (Madison, 2011). Data sources included participant observations, field notes, student artifacts, and interviews.

The findings illustrated youth inquiry as resistance to (1) the violence of epistemic injustice, (2) the violence of invisibility, and (3) the violence of standards. First, epistemic injustice dehumanizes and delegitimizes certain people as not holding or being able to produce valid knowledge (Fricker, 2007). Many of the students noted how traditional schooling centered Whiteness and acted as a form of epistemic injustice. However, as Judy (all names are pseudonyms) noted, inquiry offered her the space to push back against Whiteness and find a space where her voice and modes of knowledge production were valued. Secondly, the youth noted how inquiry offered them the space to push back against schooling’s standardized curriculum and the limited agency offered within schools. Rather than being rendered invisible, inquiry offered youth the space to revel in their uniqueness. Third, the youth noted how schools were overwhelmingly standardized spaces. Inquiry offered youth the space to express themselves, their views, and their research in ways that were authentic to them.

All too often schools function as spaces of domination and dehuamization (Irizarry & Brown, 2014). Schooling spaces operate through standardized curriculum stifling creativity, limiting student agency, and providing the illusion of meaningful choice. Youth participatory action research, but more specifically, youth inquiry, makes an intervention into epistemic injustice, domination, and dehumanization. This study indicates that when youth are provided platforms to conduct inquiry, the process of inquiry operates as a form of resistance.

Author

• Thomas Albright, Georgia State University