Activating student voice through Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR): policy-making that strengthens urban education reform

Abstract

CC Vision – an urban education reform effort launched to strengthen the cradle-to-career education pipeline in Central City – provides the impetus for our use of youth participatory action research (YPAR) to gather and activate student voice in the fight for education justice. Student voice can significantly enhance the quality of policy designed to expand access to education opportunity for poor and/or youth of color attending urban schools. Fifteen youth from seven different high schools in the Central City metropolitan area spent 18 weeks participating in the Central City Youth Co-Researcher Project as co-researchers. We aim to demonstrate the tensions of facilitating YPAR projects with diverse youth, and the benefits of YPAR as a student voice initiative intended to bolster justice-oriented education research. The influence of their scholarship vis-à-vis YPAR on wide-scale education policy-making, and education reform, in Central City is discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• YPAR
• urban education
• reform
• education policy
• student voice

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by W.K. Kellogg Foundation, [R2946-01].

Notes

1 Use of ‘justice-oriented’ throughout this paper signifies research aimed at exposing, and ultimately ameliorating, multiple forms of oppression associated with one’s social identity (i.e. race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality, religion, etc.).

2 All individual person, organization, and school names in this article are pseudonyms.

3 The request for proposals (RFP) was circulated via multiple social networks. The RFP was never posted publicly.

4 Opportunity gaps represent deficits or ‘inequalities’ in opportunity made available to young people, that over time, give way to achievement gaps. Opportunity gaps can best be characterized as any factors in a schooling context that threaten the capacity of youth to demonstrate their full academic potential (see Carter & Welner, 2013 for an expansive discussion of the opportunity gaps framework).

5 Academic self-efficacy in this paper refers to the confidence or belief an individual has in her or his ability to effectively negotiate academic challenges and accomplish goals to ultimately achieve academic success.

6 Community engagement in this paper refers to the degree to which students feel invested and committed to participate in community improvement, broadly defined.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chezare A. Warren

Dr. Chezare A. Warren is Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education. He holds faculty appointments in African American and African Studies, Mathematics Education, and the Center for Gender in Global Context at Michigan State University. Dr. Warren has almost ten years of professional experience as an urban educator. His research interests include urban (teacher) education, culturally responsive teaching, and critical race theory in education. Dr. Warren?s research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals including Urban Education, Teachers College Record, Journal of Teacher Education, Race, Ethnicity and Education, The Urban Review, and Journal of Negro Education. For more information, visit www.chezarewarren.com.

Joanne E. Marciano

Dr. Joanne E. Marciano is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Michigan State University, and a former high school English teacher of 13 years in New York City. Her research engages qualitative participatory methodologies to highlight opportunities for supporting youth?s literacy learning across contexts of urban education, secondary English education, college access, and teacher education. She is co-author (with Michelle G. Knight-Manuel) of College Ready: Preparing Black and Latina/o Youth for Higher Education-A Culturally Relevant Approach (Teachers College Press, 2013). She has also published research findings in Urban Education, English Journal, The Urban Review, and Literacy.