Skip to main content

Youth Participatory Action Research as Classroom Pedagogy

Item

Title

Youth Participatory Action Research as Classroom Pedagogy

Abstract/Description

This study engaged 25 youth from Gateway to College, a continuation high school program, in a yearlong arts-based youth participatory action research (YPAR) course aimed at enhancing their understanding of themselves as humans with enormous potential and allowing them to see how they already have the capacity and knowledge to act as artists, researchers, and even teachers. A major outcome of this study was to allow the youth in the course to be seen, by their peers, by staff, in their own communities, and by the larger public in ways that that will empower them to remain engaged in their own learning with unbound potential. This study employs a case study methodology. In this particular case study the researcher acts as a participant observer in the community, co-constructing knowledge alongside participants. This is an instrumental case study (Glaser, 2008; Stake, 2010); the phenomena investigated were an arts-based research course and its impact in a school-based setting. In the key findings of this research around developing agency in youth, it is also surfaced that systems should build a space for teachers to develop in similar ways. While we spend a lot of time in education theory speaking to the agency development of students and strategies to support it, this study also has implications for asking teachers to be reflective on their own pathway and development. The instructional strategies created in this study, were created alongside students, and their effectiveness in new settings, is directly beholden to the original students that worked to refine them. This study provides evidence that quality curriculum needs to be in a constant state of praxis; one must first implement their idea, take note of what happened, reflect on the impact, and adjust their curriculum in order to become more effective the next time.

Author/creator

Date

Institution

Mills College

Committee

Donahue, David M.
Bode, Patricia
Nava, Pedro
Galguera, Tomas

Resource type

Research/Scholarly Media

Resource status/form

Thesis/Dissertation

Scholarship genre

Empirical

Open access/full-text available

No

Peer reviewed

No

ISBN

9798678181244

Citation

Fenner, D. J. (2020). Youth Participatory Action Research as Classroom Pedagogy [Ed.D., Mills College]. https://www.proquest.com/dissertations/docview/2456453054/abstract/B8F006AC8B446CBPQ/44

Num pages

194

Rights

Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.

Comments

No comment yet! Be the first to add one!

Contribute

Login or click your token link to edit this record.

Export