Using Youth Participatory Action Research to Disrupt the Hidden Curriculum in a Teen-Centric Museum Program

• In Event: Invited Roundtable. Youth Participatory Action Research: Collaboration Across Generations for Social Justice Education

Abstract

Since the 1990s, teen-centric programs (Szekely, 2013) have proliferated, as museums target young people to diversify art museum audiences. However, few studies examine the hidden curriculum or the impact of these programs on youth development (Linzer & Munley, 2015). Inspired by YPAR methodology (Cammarota, 2008), youth experiences from an art museum program in the southwestern US take center stage. Teens and their adult counterparts investigated two questions: (1) What are the spaces of participation within an art museum teen council; and (2) what possibilities/obstacles exist within those spaces for young people to develop creative agency? Informed by arts equity (Kraehe, Boyd, & Travis, 2016) and understanding the museum as a curriculum space (Cary, 2006; Judson, 2006), findings demonstrate an incremental constriction of teens agency within the neoliberal art museum. The presentation will focus on the curricular and pedagogical aspects of this unique approach to art museum education. In sharing the challenges and opportunities of engaging in these practices within the neoliberal art museum, the aim is to demonstrate the ways in which YPAR can disrupt the hidden curriculum of inclusive programs for teens in art museums.

Author

• Kendall Crabbe, The University of Arizona