Do You Know What YPAR Is? You Should—It is Evidence-Based to Increase Student Engagement!

In this session, participants will learn the value of Youth-Led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as a youth development program model to effectively increase student engagement and build a safe school climate. Recent research on student leadership classes utilizing YPAR as their program model revealed significant evidence that attendance and academic rates each increased when students engaged in YPAR activities. So, what is YPAR? Simply put, “Stop doing the research on the kids and let the kids do the research on themselves!

A Mixed Method Feasibility Assessment of a Youth Participatory Action Research Program to Promote Physical Activity: Evaluating Implementation within two Pre-existing Aftercare Programs Serving Middle School Youth

Obesity interventions to date have had small effects, which may be due to youth disengagement. In youth participatory action research (YPAR), youth become involved in research to make changes that impact their lives. Thus, integrating YPAR into a physical activity intervention, like we do in the current study, is a novel strategy to engage youth and increase empowerment for health behavior change. YPAR is typically implemented with high school youth, standalone, and within elective classrooms or focused after school programs; yet, YPAR can benefit all youth, so we expanded its reach into pre-existing aftercare programs. Participating youth were predominantly minority, low SES middle schoolers in two aftercare programs in the southeastern United States. Youth participated in a health focused YPAR curriculum with trained adult partners. A concurrent, mixed method triangulation design was used to analyze quantitative (youth empowerment survey, adult partner survey, observational tool) and qualitative (youth qualitative surveys, adult partner and youth journals) data to explore feasibility of implementation of YPAR. Convergence of data showed feasibility for the implementation of YPAR standalone in a pre-existing aftercare program and paired with a physical activity intervention with similar theoretical underpinnings. Trained raters successfully observed the essential elements in all sessions. Implementation in the YPAR + PA program achieved higher fidelity than the YPAR only program, and youth self-reported increases in empowerment, a critical mechanism for health behavior change. We hope to increase the impact of obesity interventions in future work

The Internal Power of Chican@/Latin@ Youth

This is a qualitative study conducted by two researchers who engaged with Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR). Researchers worked together to illuminate the process youth went through as they engaged in YPAR. Researchers uncovered that youth went through an external process (community awareness, discoveries, and creation) and internal process (internal conflict, discoveries, motivation) as they engaged in YPAR. This study documents how youth empower them-selves by engaging in YPAR through the sharing of their testimonio, accessing/acknowledging a nepantlá state, and finding their internal power through conocimiento and reaching a holistic healing space

Helping Homeless Youth: Epistemological Implications of Power in a YPAR Project

Text from Nasma: 'I’ve started moving my things out of the house. I’m putting it in your office for now.' Thus began the story of how one of the youth I had worked with for four years on various YPAR projects became homeless and turned to me for help. Entering this crisis with Nasma took time and an emotional toll, and it affected the power dynamics of our relationship when finishing our YPAR project. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) works to rebalance power in inequitable relationships based on roles, age, race, gender, etc. Providing care to Nasma as she confronted the traumatic situation of homelessness affected our collaborative relationship as she became dependent on me for basic economic resources. Through this process, the inequities in age and material resources between Nasma and me were centred, displacing the more equitable interactions that we had constructed through YPAR projects. This article employs critical autoethnography to examine the epistemological ‘risks of care’ and argues that the calls for ‘care-full’ scholarship still need to contend with the pitfalls of differential power dynamics in YPAR

The Effect of YPAR on Student Self-efficacy and Engagement in a Suburban Junior High School

abstract: Educators often struggle to effectively engage all students. Part of the reason for this is adherence to behavioral principles which curtail student autonomy and diminish student self-efficacy. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) can counter this problem; it was designed to increase autonomy for minority youth in urban high schools. I conducted a study to add to the growing conversation about YPAR in settings beyond urban high schools and to look at how YPAR can influence students’ self-efficacy. Drawing on results from surveys, interviews, and field observation, I found that students who participated in a YPAR program showed improved self-efficacy in contexts closely related to their work in YPAR among peers and for a peer audience, but they did not show improved self-efficacy in their relationships with community adults or with their school. Students’ improved self-efficacy stemmed from their social learning experiences and their perception of the community relevance, or authenticity, of their work. Schools seeking to improve engagement among students of any background should consider adopting approaches like YPAR which increase student autonomy and foment self-efficacy with authentic community-linked research.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis English 201

Youth Science Learning as/for Community Participation: Examples from Youth Participatory Action Research

Youth development programs often provide young people with science learning experiences. We argue for reframing youth science learning from a focus on individual scientific literacy to an emphasis on collective scientific literacy—community science—to support young people in using science to address issues in their lives and communities. We provide examples from youth participatory action research (YPAR), one community science pedagogical approach. The YPAR model supports youth in deciding upon an environmental, economic, or social issue; designing and implementing research; and using their research findings to improve their community. We implemented YPAR with eight cohorts of youth over three years at five schools in Northern California. Using data generated from educator interviews and youth focus groups and analyzed with inductive thematic analysis, we explored what youth and educators reported about science engagement and learning. While YPAR projects offered opportunities for youth to strengthen scientific literacy, youth did not join a YPAR program because it was science education. Instead, as youth selected a personally meaningful topic, they began to see how they might affect community change. Engaging learners in relevant educational experiences situated in authentic community issues may improve motivation for deeper and sustained participation in science learning. Our YPAR example demonstrated an approach to learning STEM in youth development programs by ensuring relevancy and connection to community

Incorporating funds of knowledge in school gardens

Master's Project (M.Ed.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017Incorporating "funds of knowledge" with schoolyard gardening enriches a child's experience by interacting with their families, local community organizations, school faculty, and other children. A garden community is a social setting and the relationships established by working together cultivate a long-lasting commitment to education. Children are excited to learn, willing to participate, and take ownership of acquiring life skills that are fundamental to pass on from generation to generation. Incorporating "funds of knowledge" provides a venue for those inherited skill sets to be incorporated into the mainstream curriculum of the classroom. The small, yet emblematic, group of children that participated in this project at Leupp Public School were able to gain an appreciation for planting and growing a garden by being Youth Participant Action Researchers. Conducting home visits to some of the family homes also brought an invitation for increased participation in the school garden. The children incorporated their culture of gardening by learning from elders, community gardeners and their families