Advancing Epistemic Rights and Interracial Solidarity Through Community-Based Research

• In Event: Youth Research, Civic Engagement, and Learning for Community Change

Abstract

*Research Framing: Normative definitions of civic engagement and the crisis discourse around youth involvement in civic life (Mirra & Garcia, 2017) obscure the ways that “civics” is circumscribed by structural inequalities and border policies (Walia, 2021) that constrain who is seen as part of the nation-state. Our work draws inspiration from how Black, Brown, and Immigrant communities are civically engaged agents who advocate for better lives and educational opportunities (DaSilva Iddings, Combs, & Moll, 2013; Mangual Figueroa, 2012) and organize for social change (Rusoja, 2022). This presentation focuses on collaborative inquiry into educational equity and immigrant rights as part of an ongoing partnership with youth, families, and community organizations in a large Northeastern City. In particular, we are interested in understanding and fostering the conditions for collaborative research across difference towards education as a public good.

*Methods: Through Community-Based Research (CBR), our partnership seeks to co-create educational and research spaces that value community knowledge and are driven by community priorities. CBR shares a family resemblance with other collaborative approaches to educational research that seek to democratize knowledge production, including (Youth) Participatory Action Research (Camarota & Fine, 2008; Caraballo et al., 2020), Research-Practice Partnerships (Coburn & Penuel, 2016), and Communities of Inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). Our collaboration has entailed a series of research foci developed with community members, including an intergenerational educational access inquiry group and a youth group investigating civic engagement. Data sources consisted of: recorded sessions and notes from inquiry sessions (2020-2022), artifacts (e.g. planning documents, work produced in inquiry groups, written communications), and researcher reflective memos. Data were analyzed thematically (Charmaz & Belgrave, 2019) and collaboratively as part of inquiry group meetings.

*Findings and Significance: This presentation spotlights two instances of youth research into civic issues impacting their lives as examples to think through the potential interconnections of particular experiences to the broader sociopolitical histories that link communities. In our first set of examples, we analyze moments from youth’s inquiries about racial violence and activism. The youth in the group, who self-identify as Asian American, Black, and Latinx, grappled with disconnects and overlaps in their experiences of racial violence, contesting and deepening each others’ understandings and taking initiative to co-plan inquiry sessions that fostered racial solidarity against systemic oppression. The second example focuses on youth’s presentations of their research on educational inequality as part of a broader teach-in connecting housing and education justice, which shed light on the relationships between racialized violence, housing displacement, and the underfunding of schools. Taken together, these moments illustrate the coalitional inquiry process internal to the partnership as well as the ways insights from youth’s research can be part of coalitions for change. Our research contributes to understanding how people work together across their ostensibly insular social spaces to advocate for change in order to inform conceptual and methodological directions in the field.

Authors

• Maria Paula Ghiso, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• Gerald Campano, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author