Youth Participatory Action Research as Policy Production: Youth Building Relationships With Home, School, and Community for Change

• In Event: Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities: Possibilities for the Public Good

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how youth participatory action research (YPAR) enables young people to collectively mobilize change in education policy with and for their families and communities while strengthening relationships between schools, families, and communities. It presents findings from Proyecto Latino, a multi-phased study that examined the impact of YPAR on Latinx students the Toronto District School Board (TDSB).

Theoretically grounded in CPA, the paper views policy as both text (Ball, 2015) and strategic practice. This conceptualization of policy follows Bacchi and Goodwin’s (2016) post-structuralist notion of policy as a generative process that extends beyond the identification of problems and their roots and into a consideration of the knowledge and power relations that are produced in the process.

YPAR is the youth-centered form of participatory action research (PAR), an applied research methodology centred on the knowledge and experiences of marginalized groups (Cahill, 2007). PAR comprises research conducted by and for the subject researchers, who actively share in designing and implementing the research questions, methodologies, and action plans (Torre, 2009). This paper reports findings from Phase 2 of Proyecto Latino. In this phase, 20 students earned a high school credit through a course involving YPAR. The course was housed at a high school identified by the TDSB as a high-needs school serving a large population of Latinx students. Four fully bilingual adult facilitators designed and implemented the course in collaboration with the youth. The students learned about social science research, identified a central research question which addressed the levels of happiness among Latinx immigrants in Canada, and conducted interviews with Latinx community members. Data about the impact of YPAR on the youth participants was collected through video recordings of class meetings, documentation of student work, focus groups with the students, and conversations with students up to 2 years after the course ended. This data was analyzed using thematic analysis.

The research found that the class discussions and the youth’s interactions with various guest speakers from Toronto’s Latinx community provided students’ with new understanding about Latinx immigrants’ challenges and their own lived experiences. In addition, involvement in the students’ research strengthened relationships between students, Latinx community members, and the school board. The students’ own research findings pointed to the need for further research and work with, by, and for the Latinx community in Toronto and across Canada. Finally, the YPAR process helped the youth build their own repertoire of skills related to relationship building, research, and self-advocacy, skills that were integral to how they viewed themselves as critical researchers and advocates of change (Fox et al., 2010; Tuck et al., 2008).

The study demonstrates that YPAR offers vast possibilities for the centering of youth knowledges and the scaffolding of experiential learning. Furthermore, it shows that YPAR is not only a vehicle for mobilizing policy change and increasing students’ sense of agency, it is also a strategy for building meaningful and reciprocal relationships between marginalized families, schools, and their communities.

Author

• Cristina Alexandra Guerrero, University of Toronto