Productive Tensions in Youth Participatory Action Research

Youth participatory action research (YPAR) brings young people together with adult researchers to identify, study, and act on relevant social problems (Cammarota & Fine, 2008). In this chapter, I draw on examples from a recent YPAR project, called Tracing Transitions, whose aim was to study the impact of school closure on students. After defining YPAR in terms of its principles and intellectual roots, I analyze two productive tensions that emerged in Tracing Transitions. First, I call attention to tensions in “youth voice” initiatives between attending to power differences between adults and youth and reifying essentialist assumptions about youth. Second, I write about tensions between local and general implications of research and the importance of articulating an expanded notion of generalization in YPAR research. Reflection on these dilemmas helps to illustrate YPAR’s contribution to a human sciences approach to studying and improving learning.

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