Healing Spaces: Challenging Adultism in YPAR Through Critical Self-Reflection, Discussion, and Inquiry

• In Event: Youth Participatory Action Research to Inform and Transform: Insights From Five States

Abstract

Objectives: Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) disrupts traditional power dynamics associated with teaching and learning by centering youths’ voices in examining issues important to them (Fine & Torre, 2004; McIntyre, 2000). Research noting the importance of relationships between and among youth and adult collaborators in YPAR (Mirra et al., 2016) calls attention to the varied ways adults and youth interact. We reflect on such interactions by examining a three-year iteration of an activity used to discuss youth’s desires for our shared space to be an affirming place (NYSED, 2018). This needs-assessment activity, while designed/implemented to invite youth voice, was laden with constraints set by adults. Critical self-reflection of our roles in contributing to adultism created space for mutual healing from the othering, oppression, and spiritual silencing of academia (Lara, 2002) and schooling towards YPAR spaces centering students’ ways of knowing and being.

Perspectives: Educational research about YPAR emphasizes the importance of positioning youth as knowledge producers in examining issues they identify as important (Caraballo et al., 2017; Fine et al., 2007). This stance differs from youth’s positioning in schools as needing to learn from adult teachers who control students’ access to knowledge. As a result, challenges may emerge in YPAR contexts as youth and adults seek roles different from those enacted in schools.

Methods: Data examined in this paper draws from a community-situated YPAR initiative with middle and high school students who live in a subsidized housing community in Michigan. Since 2019, we have met weekly with youth, online during COVID and at the community center otherwise. We examine data from the 2021-2024 academic years, including individual reflections written by each author following our YPAR sessions and notes from weekly research team meetings where we collectively reflected, asked questions, and made decisions about how to engage with youth in future sessions. We, the four authors, additionally explore how our reflections, questions and decisions are guided by our positionalities as graduate students (Authors 1 and 2), faculty members (Authors 3 and 4), former K-12 teachers (all Authors), Chicana (Author 2), and white mother scholars (Authors 1, 3, and 4).

Findings: We found that enacting a critical inquiry stance was helpful in challenging adultism and centering youth voice in co-constructing and understanding what the collective group desired to feel affirmed in our space. Through reflection on this iterative needs assessment activity we found youth resisted the permanence and homogeneity embedded within it. Together, through their requested changes, we transformed the activity away from being ‘school-like,’ where western ways of knowing devalue multiple ways of being, towards embracing the freeform of the spirit which invited healing (Lara, 2002). We found that creating art provided the space that was authentic to the complexities of our constantly changing desires.

Significance: Through illustrating the iterative nature of our discussions along with reimagining this activity, our findings provide generative insights for adults seeking to engage in YPAR collaborations with youth, calling attention to the important role ongoing critical self-reflection, discussion, and inquiry may play in this work.

Authors

• Katie Tasch Bielecki, Michigan State University

• Sabrina Zarza, Michigan State University

• Joanne E. Marciano, Michigan State University

• Beth A. Herbel-Eisenmann, Michigan State University