Youth Participatory Action Research: Schooling, Learning, and Out-of-School Time

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 5:25 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Leading by Example: Critical and Innovative Methods in the Social Context of Education (Table 13)

Abstract

This article focuses on an out-of-school YPAR project to better understand both how schooling emerged and was challenged in a liberatory space. There were six youth and one academic researcher involved in the project which spanned from 2018-2020. This project explored the questions: how does schooling manifest in an afterschool YPAR space, and how, if at all, was schooling interrupted/challenged? Findings illustrated the participants were constantly in tension of holding to/pushing against hierarchical relationships, adultism, prescriptive entanglements, and internally disciplining and surveilling themselves. However, by centering democratic collaboration, youth knowledge/experiences, and learning, the collective demonstrated how YPAR can be a tool of resistance to the dominating forces of schooling.

Author

• Thomas Albright, Georgia State University