We would like to thank the editorial board and reviewers of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education for providing us the space to publish the findings of an entire youth participatory action research (YPAR) project. Rarely do we have the opportunity to share with our colleagues what is being presented in this unprecedented special issue. The research highlighted in this volume, “Youth Participatory Action Research on Puerto Rican University Students' Experiences with Hurricane Maria: Shifting from Resilience to Resistance” includes not only senior researchers’ documentation of the YPAR process but most importantly, the original research conducted and written up by undergraduate student researchers from the University of Puerto Rico, Cayey. The students' significant accomplishments should be duly noted given the challenging circumstances that they had to overcome to produce the knowledge offered in this issue. As you will read, the students had to contend with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and its disruption to their lives, families and communities in Puerto Rico and the diaspora. Furthermore, the students persisted with their education and work on this YPAR project for 3 years (2019–2022) despite the consistent defunding of public education created by the fiscal crisis that has had a devasting impact on Puerto Rico. Some students were involved in activism to prevent budget cuts to their university and continue to work to preserve funding for affordable higher education, since it is one of the key avenues for economic and social mobility. Finally, they related all these experiences in the articles presented here, written in their second language – English. None of the students who participated in the YPAR project imagined themselves as published academic researchers. Their experience allowed them to incorporate these new research skills and knowledge into their identities in a way that was not expected on their part. We are extremely proud of the students and their tenacity to overcome the numerous obstacles they encountered in becoming published authors.
With much gratitude from the diaspora,
Julio Cammarota and Regina Deil Amen
The University of Arizona
[email protected]
Gina Perez
Oberlin College
Correction Statement
This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2023.2274695).