The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of empowerment, reframing it in critical terms and in a precise and useful way. I approach this exploration through two participatory action research studies. "Why are our teachers racist?" took place over an 18-month period from 2012 to 2014 at a mid-sized high school in a rural…

This article sets forth the process through which I, an educator of over 20 years, my research mentor, and my 52 Latino/a students answered questions that were important to us through participatory action research. I start the process by asking if and how I am empowering my students, and they start their own parallel process by asking about their…

In this article, we build on conversations about linguistic diversity in writing studies, proposing a framework by which instructors and administrators can promote the empowerment of multilingual writers. Our framework, which we call "teaching for agency," recognizes the resources that linguistically diverse students bring to our writing…