Building our seat at the table: YPAR for human rights in public schools

• In Event: Innovative research methods in educating for peace and human rights

Proposal

This Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project engages graduating high school seniors in co-creating a human rights–based evaluation of their school. Rooted in Human Rights Education (HRE), punk rock, and critical praxis, the work treats students not as subjects but as co-researchers whose lived experiences drive the inquiry. Through spring and summer sessions, students built “homemade theories” of education, studied foundational rights documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and developed research questions to evaluate how their school community upholds student rights and dignity.

The project unfolds in stages: community building through cultural “mixtape” shares; study of rights frameworks; iterative question development; and data collection through peer/administrator interviews, focus groups, and autoethnography. Students have also analyzed quantitative school data like attendance, course enrollment, and D/F lists, revealing racial and socioeconomic disparities in advanced coursework and discipline. Inspired by international nongovernmental organizations and activist groups, the group aims to produce a “shadow” or counter-report to formal WASC accreditation reviews, positioning their work as both critique and contribution.

In an era of a degraded Department of Education, this project highlights the possibilities of community-based school reform grounded in human rights and peace education. Despite challenges of uneven participation and competing responsibilities, student leaders have surfaced themes of access, belonging, and representation, alongside structural limits of teacher support. As the group compiles findings into a counter-report for the school board, it models how youth can act as organic intellectuals, advancing educational equity and peace through participatory inquiry.

Author

• David Andrew Tow, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO