Know Local: Youth Participatory Action Research for a New Political Competence

• In Event: Youth Voices and Experiences on Civic Education, After-School Program, Teacher Whiteness, and Classroom Learning

Abstract

Civic education is the primary opportunity for students to develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed for democratic life. However, civics curricula and tests are unjust because they focus on a narrow set of political facts irrelevant to many young people, particularly students from race-class subjugated communities. This youth participatory action research (YPAR) project leverages a critical policy analysis framework to democratize both political learning and the policy making process by centering student voice. Student analysis underscores they prefer to actively learn about local political and policy knowledge. Further, YPAR that enables youth as co-producers of new social science knowledge proves to build trust and self-efficacy and can be a model of reconceptualized civics curriculum and collaborative, mutually beneficial research.

Author

• Abigail Dym, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author