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Researching in Community: Intergenerational Participatory Action Research for Educational Justice
EDU S501Y

Course Information

Description

Critical participatory action research (CPAR) is a form of critical, collective inquiry that provides youth and adults with opportunities to identify concerns that impact their lives, to gather and analyze data about these issues, and to take collective action to create more just communities. Described by Michele Fine & María Elena Torre (2019) as, “research rooted in politics, power, participation, and a deep appreciation of knowledge, created in conditions of oppression and mobilized for social action,” CPAR projects are rooted in the teachings of popular education, democratic participation, and critical/feminist theories. Coming together around a common concern, CPAR researchers strive to name and explore the different ways in which positionality, context, and power impact their findings. There is a growing body of evidence that schools, community-based organizations, educators, and adolescents themselves are nurtured by benefit from this form of inquiry.

This course will provide students with an introduction to CPAR in school and community settings by immersing students in the process itself. We will begin by looking at theoretical and empirical arguments about the importance of critical, collective, intergenerational inquiry, as well as different frameworks for engaging in this work. We will then explore three broad contexts in which intergenerational collective inquiry often occurs: (1) school-based reform initiatives; (2) arts-based social justice initiatives; and (3) community-based intergenerational organizing. Finally, we will engage in the CPAR process, partnering with community-based folx to design and implement a critically oriented research study. The course will provide students with hands-on experience in study design, research, and youth development.

S501Y must be taken along with S502Y as an 8-credit, yearlong course. All students will partner with a group of young people in a school or community-based organization to complete a critical participatory action research project. This class prioritizes rigorous self-reflection as a pedagogical practice; students should expect to explore their own identities and ways of knowing both individually and in community. Similarly, this course centers on critically oriented, community-based research methods; students should be interested in explicitly engaging a power analysis in their work. 

Permission of instructor required. Enrollment is limited to 30. Students enrolled at HGSE given preference. All interested students should attend course previews and/or contact the instructor to obtain an application for the course. The application will ask you to share information about your prior work with children/adolescents (e.g. teaching/youthwork) and your prior experience with research (although research experience is not required). It will also ask you to reflect on prior cross-cultural experiences and the ways in which your own identity may impact your work in communities. (All students who apply to take the course will be notified about their enrollment status 24 hours after the application deadline.)

Students who enroll in the course will be expected to engage in a yearlong research project in collaboration with community- or school-based youth and/or adult partners who are interested in studying an aspect of equity/inequity within their community. This work will require local travel to school or community sites. Projects will be pre-identified (by the teaching team) and community-based partners will become semi-regular members of our classroom community.

School Graduate School of Education
Credits 4
Cross Reg

Available for Harvard Cross Registration

Department Education
Course Component Regular Course
Instruction Mode In Person
Subject Education
Grading Basis HGSE Letter Graded
Learning Goals Students will understand what critically oriented participatory action research is, what assumptions it holds, and how these assumptions overlap and/or sit in tension with other types of research. Students will be able to articulate multiple points in the research process when questions of power, positionality, and structural inequity interact with purpose and participation to shape the project experience/flow. Students will be able to describe the research cycle, including some key aspects of study design, protocol development, piloting, data collection, analysis, and research products. In addition to these research-based skills, students will develop pedagogical skills and an understanding of positive youth development, through their direct work with adolescents. Students will fully integrate the knowledge that they are never done learning, that who they are has everything to do with what knowledge they can and will produce, and that we should be working to analyze data/generate knowledge in community. Students will gain new insights into root causes of inequality in their/a local context.
Career Focus This course is designed for students who want to engage in youth-adult partnerships (including, but not limited to critical, participatory action research) as a part of their future work, either from the stance of “researcher” or from the stance of “practitioner.” In other words, students in this course will learn fundamental critical research methods—including elements of study design, recruitment, protocol writing, piloting, data collection, analysis and producing research products—that can be used in both academic and community/school settings. Simultaneously, students will have a chance to work with youth weekly, fostering their youth development skills. The focus of this class will be study design, partnership, collective analysis, and action; students will dip into multiple methods, but are likely to go deep into only one method.