Contemporary Problems of Practice in YPAR: Research, Policy & Storytelling

• In Event: Supporting Youth Activism in Hostile Times: Case Studies in Deepening YPAR Practices

Abstract

Objectives
In this poster, Kentucky Student Voice Team (KSVT) members, with support from their adult research partner, will examine contemporary problems of practice related to their ongoing research, policy, and storytelling work at a state level, as well as learned lessons, which hold relevant insights for those doing YPAR in politically conservative regions and spaces.

Perspective
KSVT is a youth-led, intergenerationally sustained organization whose mission is to co-create more just, democratic Kentucky schools and communities as research, policy, and storytelling partners. With over a decade of experience fighting for educational and other forms of justice for young people around the state, KSVT has emerged in recent years as a national model for state-level youth organizing.

Methods
As this session evidences, there is a growing body of educational scholarship around the potential and problematic of YPAR as a critical methodology and political practice in and outside of schools with regard to youth development. At the same time, less is known empirically from cases of contemporary YPAR projects with regard to its impact on the policy contexts in which it is embedded. Toward that end, this poster examines the impacts of ongoing, intergenerationally sustained YPAR projects within one local education policy context within a deeply conservative state context.

Results & Significance
Bringing together insights from several of its recent youth-led, mixed method studies, KSVT youth members will reflect in this poster and in the joint session on the impacts their youth participatory action research has had, and is having, on various levels (school, district, community, state) of education-related policy in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. As one small example, KSVT recently conducted a study related to student perspectives on cell phone use in schools, with the goal of Kentucky student voices not only being heard, but actually part of the design of the contemporary state level legislation that seeks to limit and/or ban cell phone use in schools (House Bill 208). At a larger scale and gaining national attention at the time of the writing of this proposal, KSVT is also the lead plaintiff in a court case against the state, in hopes of holding the state accountable to its constitutional commitment to an equitable and effective education for all K-12 students–not just those who reside in financially well-resourced communities. Of note, this poster discussion will also include their reflections on the most pressing problems of practice with regard to sustaining and building their youth-led, intergenerational organization over time, especially today in the face of contemporary challenges related to the entrenchment of authoritarian and totalitarian political ideologies.

Authors

• Daniela Kruel DiGiacomo, University of Kentucky

• Chase Colvin, Kentucky Student Voice Team

• Arivumani Srivastara, Claremont University - Claremont McKenna College