The purpose of this paper is to present a conversation about how impact has been seen and felt by youth and adult co-researchers in a long-term, school-based youth participatory action research (YPAR) project, "Courageous Conversations." To stay true to the epistemological commitments of YPAR, and in an effort to speak back to…

YPAR seeks to position youth as experts on their worlds, investigating issues that affect their lives and then taking action to create solutions. As such, one of the key epistemological principles underpinning YPAR is the robust participation of youth throughout the knowledge creation process. A growing body of literature examines what youth…

The authors examined how youth from the Northern Virginia region communicated their thoughts on significant social issues, school-level policies, and individual stresses through collaboratively authored spoken word poetry. This poetry was written during a day of out-of-school arts-based inquiry workshops planned by an intergenerational youth…

Participatory action research (PAR) is an embodied form of inquiry that engages those most affected by an issue or problem in creating knowledge and developing solutions. PAR epistemology intersects with the critical approach to adult education, particularly the belief that programs, methods, and content must be relevant to learner needs and…

As university-based educational researchers who have engaged in participatory methods with marginalized populations, we have rising concerns about how interpersonal and institutional power dynamics affect co-researchers from racial and ethnic minority groups. In this manuscript, we use critical race and critical whiteness theory and…

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, we explore the perceived roles of action research networks during times of crisis and then consider our own experiences grappling with our responsibilities as members of the Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA) in highlighting and building solidarity through its Knowledge Democracy…

Photovoice, which falls under the methodological umbrella of participatory action research (PAR), is a method of inquiry used to visually document and honor the knowledge(s), voices, and experiences of community members about particular issues affecting their lives. By privileging these voices, photovoice seeks to investigate, disrupt, and…

In this article, we interrogate the concept of methodological 'failures' as they arise during fieldwork, in the process of collecting empirical data. We highlight how the techniques of validity horizon matrices and power analysis can be used as methodological tools to illustrate moments in the fieldwork process where these 'failures' occur and to…

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…

This article explores how and why a group of Latino/a high school students identify and explain racism differently over the course of an 18-month participatory action research (PAR) project. To do this we examine what recent scholarship has termed racial microaggressions in what is thought of as the Post-Racial America public school system.…