(Re)Designing Youth Research Spaces for Educational Empowerment

• In Event: Transformative Ruptures in Education: (Re)Constructing Frameworks of Leadership, Research, and Action in South Texas

Abstract

With this presentation, we share findings from a research project with the Trinity Youth Scholars (TYS) program, a university-school partnership that creates afterschool space for high school students to conduct youth-led research. TYS is a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project that utilizes a culturally responsive curriculum to develop critical consciousness and social justice advocacy with students who participate.

Objectives or Purpose
This session will share how critical consciousness develops in youth scholars, and describe how this development impacts their pathway to higher education.We will present our process for conceptualizing and implementing a partnership focused on community-based action research in a historically underserved school community, and present findings from our first two years of research. The research questions are: 1) How does a critical race and cultural studies curriculum develop and shape the critical consciousness of Latina/o/x youth? and 2) How are the educational trajectories of Latina/o/x youth impacted when engaged in youth-led research and critical race/cultural studies curriculum?

Perspective(s) or Theoretical Framework
Our theoretical perspective is melded from concepts foundational to critical race theory (Bell, 1995; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Solórzano, 1996); student empowerment and activism (Romero, Arce & Cammarota, 2009; Sleeter, 2011); and, community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005). Our methodologies and research design are shaped by youth participatory action research (YPAR) (Cammarota & Fine, 2010; Lac & Cumings Mansfield, 2018), as is our method for co-developing and sustaining our research collective with teachers and youth. We ground our work in a critical race and feminist praxis that specifically creates transformative ruptures which have the potential to challenge educational inequities for the youth and in the communities we work alongside.

Methods, Techniques or Modes of Inquiry
We conducted and will share data from semi-structured individual and focus group interviews with sixteen youth participants, three teacher fellows, and three college mentors. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and conducted in English, Spanish and Spanglish.

Data Sources
In addition to the individual and focus group interview data, we analyzed research projects and research posters completed by youth researchers. Observational data and field notes of our workshop sessions, and our curriculum are other sources of data.

Results & Conclusions
Results indicate that creating spaces for youth to collectively address issues that directly impact them and their communities results in critical strategies for youth development, youth organizing, self-efficacy and community action. Youth are aspiring to college, and desire spaces where their voices are centered. Our co-created curriculum is fluid while being fundamentally about providing access to texts, videos and presenters that have recently been banned by the Texas Legislature.

Scholarly Significance
By chronicling and attempting to understand the phenomenon of critical conscious development and educational empowerment across K-12 and higher educational contexts, our study contributes to the scholarly conversation on YPAR, CRT and community-based partnerships. We share our example of applying a critical race feminista praxis in our engagement with youth for community change, and facilitate a conversation on the complexities of doing so.

Authors

• Enrique Aleman, Trinity University

• Lisa Mendoza Knecht, Trinity University