Creative Spaces for Healing and Transformation Through Youth Participatory Action Research!

• In Event: Global Pedagogies of Self-Determination: Indigeneity as a Response to Structural Violence Within Schools

Abstract

Social science research on youth of color often positions youth as problems before they are seen as people. These researchers (Best, 2007; Clark, 1965) have come to understand academic failure and communal disenfranchisement as a result of individual pathological behavior, rather that a consequence of structural inequality. Youth critical studies (Akom, 2009; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008) serve as an essential field of academic inquiry, specifically as an approach that supersedes pathological approaches to youth development and achievement. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), in particular, creates spaces in which youth develop a critique of their own oppression in order to “understand how to improve conditions and bring about greater equity” (Akom, 2009, p. 4). As a pedagogy and ceremonial practice of holistic connection, YPAR engages participants’ histories of resistance and resilience, provides pathways for healing historical trauma and illuminates new opportunities to erode structural inequality through modalities of mind, body and spirit. By engaging our own YPAR projects and pedagogical frameworks, this paper illuminates and examines the use of YPAR to better understand the beliefs, practices and overall disciplines needed to implement and sustain critical youth spaces. Furthermore, this paper explores the role of YPAR in developing youth agency and pathways within critical pedagogical spaces.

Author

• Aaron Nakai, Project VOYCE