Taking Education Back in the Context of Takeover: Participatory Action Research and the Potential of Urban Youth

• In Event: 58.055 - Praxis of Participatory Action Research: Generating Equitable Educational Experiences With Youth and Communities

Abstract

The students voices featured in this paper argue that they have been conditioned not to think, or at least not critically, about their schooling experiences. They are encouraged to “do” rather than question, a popular strategy within school reform contexts that focus almost exclusively on student outcomes, as measured by standardized test scores, rather than the development of students who can actively participate in a democracy and assert agency in shaping their communities. This strategy isn’t new.
Alerting us to the power that comes with the ability to shape what people think or believe Carter G. Woodson (1933), insightfully notes: “When you control a [person’s] thinking, you do not have to worry about [their] actions” (p. 21). Woodson’s critique of the education system in the U.S. is grounded in the argument that people of color are (mis)educated to adopt Eurocentric values and customs as the standard of success and therefore uphold this system of belief even if it is not in their own self-interest. For this reason, this paper will draw from a critical pedagogy to make sense of the experiences of students involved in this youth participatory action research project.
This study will address the following questions: What can be done to engage students more deeply in asserting agency over their own educational experiences, particularly in contexts that they experience as oppressive? What happens when students are introduced to frameworks that allow them to critically analyze the educational opportunities offered to them under the guise of “reform”? How might “out of school” spaces be used to facilitate this critical conscious raising?


The after school YPAR project was held weekly after school at a high school in partnership with a university. The eight high school students attended Paper City High School and were from across grade levels. Members from the research team facilitated the 90 minute after school meeting once per week, October 2014-June 2015. Data for this project was collected through ethnographic approaches such as participant observations (Erickson, 1996; Schensul, Schensul, & LeCompte, 1999; Carspecken, 1996), especially from the area of critical ethnography (Carspecken, 1996; Creswell, 2012; Wolcott, 1987). To provide a detailed account of the site we relied on observational field notes as one of the primary research instruments for data collection. While we took short notes during the meeting, we regularly produced more in-depth descriptions of the happenings shortly after leaving the setting. Over 45 hours of audio was recorded in order to capture the nuances of students’ dialogue and a review of digital media artifacts such as powerpoints and videos produced by youth were coded and analyzed.


Drawing from data collected as part of a qualitative study of students engaged in a critical-consciousness-raising project aimed at supporting students develop the skills they need to have a voice in shaping their personal educational trajectories and those of future generations of students in their district. More specifically, it highlights the potential of YPAR as a vehicle for critical consciousness raising and the development of political and civic engagement.

Authors

• Jason G. Irizarry, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Dani O'Brien, University of Massachusetts - Amherst