Writing together for academic publication as a youth-adult PAR team: moving from distance and distaste towards transformative engagement

Abstract

While participatory action research’s (PAR) democratic and social justice principles promote team member involvement across the research, collaborative team writing for publication is not standard practice. Peer-reviewed publications are predominately written by academic team member(s), and may include varied but often limited, co-authorship from youth, teachers and/or community team members. Drawing from narrative approaches, this paper narrates a youth-adult PAR team’s movement from a sense of distance and distaste towards academic writing to experiencing writing for publication as a process of transformative team engagement. In doing so, this account offers a story of possibility and agency for teams considering this facet of democratic youth-adult PAR team work.

Keywords:

• Youth participatory action research (YPAR)
• Youth–adult partnership
• participatory action research (PAR)
• collaborative writing
• team writing
• democracy

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank my teammates for reading and providing feedback on the final manuscript. Thank you Allie Young, Ann McCann, Carol Myles, Elizabeth Young and Linda Brown.