Exploring youth participatory action research through the study of a youth-led social justice movement organization

• In Event: Part 1: Advancing peace, justice and human rights through community-engaged praxis in education

Proposal

The mission of the youth-led movement organization, Hearing Youth Voices (HYV) is to “develop working class, Black and Brown young people into courageous and skilled leaders capable of running issue-based campaigns, leading coalitions and alliances, and uniting us across our differences to build the power necessary to advance racial, economic, and gender justice" (Hearing Youth Voices, 2023). Recently, a university faculty member and two college students and Hearing Youth Voices (HYV) activists, engaged in collaborative research and analyzed whether and how HYV disrupts systemic racism in education and how movement participants are influenced by the movement. In this presentation, we share how we engaged in Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR). We share opportunities and challenges - for each of us and for the study - of using this methodology. We explore the process from our diverse positionalities including through the study design and context, recruitment, data collection, analysis, and presentation of the data. YPAR has contributed to efforts to disrupt racism (Cammarota & Fine, 2010; Caraballo et al., 2017; Tuck & Yang, 2014) and empower youth to effect change (Anyon, Bender, Kennedy, & Dechants, 2018; Cammarota & Fine, 2010; Kornbluth, Ozer, Allen, & Kirshner, 2015). Our study builds on that research to explore the question: How do young Black and Brown educational justice movement participants define and understand their own agency, empowerment, and academic success?

For this pilot study, we analyzed semi-structured interviews that we conducted with 13 HYV participants. Participants were selected to complete interviews with a goal of ensuring a variety of perspectives and experiences with HYV and included questions about their involvement with different educational justice campaigns, number of years of involvement, roles within HYV, and understandings of their challenges and successes. The interviews, which each lasted for approximately one hour, were conducted with eleven youth members and two adult staff. Through the interview process, youth reflected on their perceptions of systemic racism in education, their self-perceptions of their experience with HYV and their own academic success, empowerment, and agency. Interviews were conducted with the two adult staff focused on the history and approach of HYV, the staff members’ roles in the organization, their perceptions of systemic racism in education, the strategies and progress of the movement, and any changes in youth participants they have witnessed. While we briefly share findings from our research, this presentation focuses on the experience of the three authors of engaging in YPAR together and the surprising insights we gained through the proces.

Authors

• Sandra Sirota, University of Connecticut

• Taylin Santiago

• Zeraiah Ramos