Youth Participatory Action Research, Cyphers for Justice, and Youth Leadership

• In Event: Affirmative Development: Civic Engagement Ontologies of Hope and Action

Abstract

Drawing from my research on identities-in-practice, Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), and the Cyphers for Justice (CFJ) program, in which students engage in arts and activism via social action, youth culture, and participatory research, I will discuss how youth-engaged research can lead to a more expansive and nuanced understanding of civic engagement in classrooms. While academic conventions typically characterize students as achievers based on standardized test scores and the internalization of the dominant academic knowledge and conventions implicit in the curriculum, the CFJ YPAR program seeks to cultivate a context of critical participation to develop and sustain youth's multiple literacies and rhetorical and linguistic modes (e.g. hip-hop, spoken word, and digital literacy), as well as disrupt hierarchies between teachers and learners and school and community spaces that inhibit intergenerational collaboration. I will discuss principles and practices that normalize the presence and leadership of youth in dominant academic spaces, and expand our understanding of activism and civic engagement in schools and communities.

Author

• Limarys Caraballo, Teachers College, Columbia University