Education and Advocacy: Improving Teaching and Learning Through Student Participatory Action Research

Youth PAR has demonstrated success with marginalized urban high school and middle school students, in after school settings. To be successful, however, the approach must address significant gaps in literacy, science and math skills resulting from inadequate schooling and institutionalized educational and other structural disparities. One way to address this and at the same time to achieve the dual goals of scaling up the approach and transforming urban educational instructional practices, is to engage middle and high school teachers in a partnership that introduces Youth PAR in their classrooms. This article describes the process of integrating PAR into school curriculum using data from a pilot project introduced in four urban Connecticut middle schools. As a case example, it illustrates the approach, highlights some of the lessons learned and addresses some of the challenges faced in introducing the approach in middle school settings.