Introduction

Disenfranchisement is framed here as a shared fervent concern, defined by Mayes and Holdsworth (2020) as an intensely emotional matter of vital concern that affects multiple stakeholders. In this case, the concern is shared by young people, for whom correlations between disenfranchisement with schooling, poor academic achievement and reduced life chances are well documented (Mills & McGregor, 2014) and teachers, whose diminishing self-efficacy directly affects their own outcomes as well as those of their students (Collie et al., 2020). This lack of self-efficacy, or the feeling of being unable to effect change in adverse circumstances has been shown to generate feelings of apprehension, apathy and despair (Bandura, 1995) which perpetuate cycles of poor student–teacher relationships and nonattendance, often leading to eventual student dropout and teachers’ early exit from the profession (Birioukov, 2016; Bland, 2008; Janzen & Phelan, 2015). Educational researchers have also been grappling with the issue of improving engagement to address inequitable learning outcomes, with research on the topic proliferating since the 1990s (See for example, Newmann et al., 1992; Skinner & Pitzer, 2012).

While it is outside the scope of this paper to discuss other stakeholders in more detail, it should be noted that student disenfranchisement is also a significant issue for school leaders, who must resolve issues of the financial and other costs associated with rising teacher attrition (Sass et al., 2011); parents, whose experiences comprise a significant gap in the current research literature but report high levels of anxiety relating to their children’s futures through organisations such as Headspace (Headspace.org.au); and policy makers, who are tasked with addressing the societal and economic costs of inequitable learning outcomes for a substantial portion of the population (OECD, 2012).

The paper takes as its point of departure the ways in which the voices of students and teachers in marginalised and/or high poverty schools have been silenced as they experience the ‘wrong’ feelings of insecurity, anxiety and fear within a society that overtly rejects such negative affect (Zembylas, 2022). Furlong’s (1991) suggestion that fervent emotion affords a starting point for research then leads to a discussion of these negative emotions as more likely to stem from uncertainty than a sense of hopelessness. This presents a crucial turning point because the notion of hope is inherently grounded in uncertainty, argued by Freire (1970/2000) to provide the basis for investigations through the integration of reason and emotion. Together, these ideas afford a means to harness rather than reject negative emotions to enact meaningful and sustainable change.

The paper then turns to consider the guiding concept of youth-adult partnership (YAP), recognised within the literature as a means for young people and adults to collaboratively develop solutions to their shared concerns. Then, based on Mitra’s (2009) argument that these partnerships need to be realised in terms of practice, the paper provides a brief overview of youth participatory action research (YPAR). This methodology embodies a ‘radical commitment to inquiry based action’ (Fine, 2009, p. 2; original emphasis) through youth-led research projects. YAP and YPAR are then drawn together to generate a new methodology of youth-adult participatory action research (YAPAR). Through YAPAR, students, teachers and researchers form an explicit three-way partnership to simultaneously become co-investigators and co-learners within a community of praxis, as together they conduct critical inquiries in ways that ‘are both inwardly focused on healing … and outwardly focused on social change’ (Ginwright, 2016, p. 2).

Teachers, students, affect and contemporary education

Teachers’ work, already recognised as emotionally demanding (Helsing, 2007; Ingersoll, 2009), is positioned within a policy context characterised by persistent cycles of declining student achievement, as narrowly determined by standardised test scores, and political demands for their work to be scrutinised (Hickey et al., 2022). However, decades of deteriorating academic performance and classroom discipline, coupled with escalating student disengagement and dropout (Cothran & Ennis, 2000; Thomson et al., 2017; Willms, 2003), has not realised the re-establishment of trust in teachers’ professionalism (Hickey et al., 2022). On the contrary, Hickey et al. note that current policy mandates continue to hinder teachers’ ability to teach in ways that account for the inherently contextualised nature of learning. As they remain compelled to relinquish their professional autonomy while remaining accountable for their students’ academic achievement (Birmingham, 2009; Nordin, 2016), teachers struggle to resolve significant tensions between top-down policy directives and their professional convictions (Ball, 2003; Duarte, 2019). Many teachers consequently feel unable to address their students’ often complex needs, resulting in high anxiety, low morale and self-efficacy, and for some, a sense of despair (Birmingham, 2009; Janzen & Phelan, 2015; Nolan & Stitzlein, 2011). Reflecting the shift in discourse from stress and burnout to demoralisation (Janzen & Phelan, 2015), teachers are disengaging from and leaving the profession at alarming rates in Australia and across the globe (Collie et al., 2020; Quaglia & Lande, 2016; Wong et al., 2017).

For disenfranchised students, established correlations between disengagement, poor academic achievement and diminished life chances have resulted in the ‘disengaged’ and ‘at risk’ policy tags, which have become cemented in education policy discourse despite robust critique of their deficit positioning of these young people (Mills & McGregor, 2014; Te Riele, 2006; Zyngier, 2008, 2011). For them, challenging circumstances coalesce with poor academic achievement and a meaningless education that is devoid of a relational pedagogy, as their rich funds of knowledge and issues that are important to them are dismissed (Hickey et al., 2022). As a result, they experience ‘angst with [the education] system and requirements of that system’ (Mills et al., 2013, p. 15) as they are pathologised and positioned as problems to be solved (Lawson & Lawson, 2020; Te Riele, 2006; Zyngier, 2008). This positioning simultaneously produces and is produced by feelings of disconnect, resentfulness and demoralisation (Metzger, 2015; Skinner & Pitzer, 2012) which over time erode hope (Ginwright, 2016) and manifest a gradual process of disengagement that may ultimately result in rejecting schooling altogether (Bridgeland et al., 2006). While young people are typically ‘represented as naïve, malleable and easily stirred by “feelings” beyond reason and rationality’ (Mayes & Holdsworth, 2020, p. 99), those who reject school ‘are most vulnerable to those who would write off their responses as evidence of emotional maladjustment’ (Furlong, 1991, p. 305). Furlong argues further that this serves only to amplify these young people’s complex experiences of being devalued and excluded from schooling.

Researchers have been grappling with the complex issue of improving substantive engagement in meaningful learning within an education policy context of standardisation and accountability through ‘policy as numbers’ (Lingard, 2011) for decades. On the one hand, a considerable body of research has demonstrated compelling links between substantive engagement, which actuates the cognitive and affective domains, and improvements in academic achievement (See for example, Newmann et al., 1992; Skinner & Pitzer, 2012; Willms, 2003). On the other hand, the current policy context cultivates a fixation on procedural conceptualisations of engagement that are easily observable and quantifiable, such as attendance and compliance with school rules, resulting in simplistic understandings of a linear and causal relationship between engagement and academic achievement.

Uncertainty versus hopelessness

Furlong (1991) suggests that negative emotions, typically avoided in a society where unwavering optimism is considered an indicator of success while despair remains taboo (Macy, 2007) and an unsayable way of being (Chowdhury, 2022, emphasis added), should be utilised as a starting point for a sociological analysis. Macy (2007) similarly argues that pain can be utilised in powerful ways to envision and enable new possibilities (cited by Mayes & Holdsworth, 2020). In the present discussion, this point of departure is a multi-layered one. First and most apparent is the negative emotion experienced by disenfranchised students and teachers, particularly those in marginalised and/or high poverty schools where both parties are attempting to work in difficult and often complex conditions (Duarte, 2019). However, beneath this surface layer is research which suggests that these negative feelings are more likely to be associated with uncertainty about the future than a sense of hopelessness (Bolland et al., 2001; Helsing, 2007).

These findings present a profound step forward because the notion of hope, broadly defined as ‘an attitude, a belief in a definite something more for the future’ (Demetropoulos Valencia et al., 2021, p. 1131; original emphasis) is inherently ‘grounded in uncertainty’ (Bury et al., 2016, p. 589). Typically caused by a lack of accurate information, uncertainty may be rectified through critical inquiries that explicitly aim to envisage new possibilities (Birmingham, 2009). Thus, while both hope and hopelessness revolve around any number of possible outcomes inherent within an unknown future (Demetropoulos Valencia et al., 2021), the difference between them transcends positive and negative expectations (Huen et al., 2015). Rather, their fundamental distinction lies in an individual’s sense of agency, or belief that they can influence the outcome of their situation (Bury et al., 2016; Huen et al., 2015). Achieved through engagement with one’s environment rather than something a person simply has or does (Biesta & Tedder, 2007), agency also distinguishes a naïve hope or ‘blind optimism’ (Zembylas et al., 2014) from a critical hope that enables the action needed to transform uncertainty (Ginwright, 2016).

Youth-adult partnership and youth participatory action research

The idea of enabling critical action to facilitate change supports Freire’s (1970/2000) contention that there can be no transformation without action. However, Freire also emphasised that while words without action become idle chatter, action for its own sake counteracts true praxis, understood here as the ‘moral disposition to act wisely in the interests of the wellbeing of humanity’ (Groundwater-Smith, 2017, p. 18), thus making dialogue impossible. The word dialogue refers here to an encounter that Freire reasoned cannot exist ‘between those who deny others the right to speak … and those who’s right to speak has been denied them’ (1970/2000, p. 88).

Attempting to include students in meaningful dialogue about their education remains a formidable challenge, despite a growing body of evidence which consistently demonstrates that if schools are to make a positive difference, they must collaborate with the young people in them (Mills & McGregor, 2014). In a similar vein, Quaglia and Lande (2016) argue that the notion of teacher voice must go beyond simply providing spaces for teachers to vocalise ideas, to effectively utilising their perspectives ‘for the benefit of … the school as a whole’ (p. 2; original emphasis). Further, the notions of student voice and teacher voice not only share similarities but are inherently connected in three significant ways (pp. 8–12). First, both students and teachers can provide an ‘insiders’ account of what is and is not working. Second, approaches to student and teacher voice are typically tokenistic, with few opportunities to be heard in the kinds of meaningful ways that successfully enact positive and sustainable change. Finally, both student and teacher voice can be fostered through the three guiding principles of self-worth, or a sense of feeling accepted and valued for the contributions they make; engagement, which is equally important for students and teachers; and purpose, involving inherently distinct yet often overlapping school and personal goals.

An answer to the question of how to engage students and teachers in meaningful intergenerational dialogue about education is found in the idea of youth-adult partnership (YAP). Defined by Jones and Perkins (2005) as the balance point on a continuum of youth-adult relationships ranging from wholly adult- to youth-centred leadership, YAP is increasingly being used as a key strategy for a ‘radical collegiality’ (Bragg & Fielding, 2005) between adults and young people. This idea emanates from an emerging ontological conceptualisation of young people and adults as constitutionally unfinished fellow human beings (Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008) who, Deleuze would argue, are collectively in a ‘constant state of learning and differentiation’ (Colebrook, 2002, p. 28).

This positioning of adults and young people as equally competent and valid co-producers of knowledge (Bragg & Fielding, 2005) engenders an approach of collective action and the creation of environments that enhance individual development while working towards the common good (Zeldin et al., 2005). Characterised by opportunities for building capacity, and mutuality in teaching and learning, decision making, and respect, these partnerships are facilitated through shared responsibility and meaningful roles for all members in some aspect of their collective endeavour (Camino, 2005; Jones & Perkins, 2005; Mitra, 2009). A nuanced understanding of participation is therefore needed to cater for differences among individual participants according to their needs and interests, which may change over time and is therefore not an ‘all or nothing’ phenomenon (Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008).

Current research on the benefits of YAP focuses primarily on the positive outcomes for young people, including measures of agency, empowerment, confidence and positive identity formation as they observe the outcomes of their contributions (Ramey et al., 2016; Wong et al., 2010; Zeldin et al., 2014). This perspective is based on the premise that young people are most in need of assistance and therefore the primary beneficiaries of these partnerships (Kennedy, 2018; Shaw-Raudoy & McGregor, 2013). However, this assumption ‘undermines the value and benefits that action through partnership can bring to adults’ (Camino, 2005, p. 83). Through their experiences of partnership research, teachers have reported a renewed sense of professional commitment and transformations in their professional practice (Kennedy, 2018; Zeldin et al., 2005), including modified agendas, improved inclusivity and a sense of collective identity, reflected in a language shift from ‘they’ to ‘we’ (Donnell, 2007). This in turn has led to increased motivation, engagement and confidence, as well as feelings of satisfaction arising from passing knowledge onto the younger generation (Kennedy, 2018; Zeldin et al., 2005).

While the literature comprises an abundance of research on the effects of partnership research on students and albeit to a lesser degree, teachers, few studies consider the effects of these partnerships on academics, and the improvement of their practice (Staley, 2017). Available research suggests that these partnerships afford unique opportunities for researchers’ learning through gaining local knowledge (Lykes & Hershberg, 2012). They also facilitate an iterative process of trial and error, involving continuous cycles of enhancing knowledge, communication with lay audiences and developing new avenues of inquiry to enhance academics’ research practice and efficacy (Ko et al., 2022). Improved individual students’, teachers’ and researchers’ self-efficacy is also a critical factor in developing their collective efficacy, or a group’s ‘belief in their joint capabilities … a sense that they can solve the problems they face … through unified effort’ (Bandura, 1995, p. 35). However, Mitra (2009) emphasises the importance of recognising YAP as a guiding concept which needs to be realised in terms of practice for transformation to take place.

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is founded on Participatory Action Research (PAR), a recursive process typically linked to Freire’s understanding of critical consciousness, or conscientização, to solve everyday problems through mutually dependent collaborations which aim to ‘transform potentially paralysing uncertainty … into manageable complexity’ (Lawson, 2015, p. 24). Within shared spaces where those with and without formal research experience and qualifications are equally recognised as having essential expertise (Lawson, 2015; Lykes & Hershberg, 2012), PAR provides opportunities for all participants to reflect on where they started, what they have learned and the knowledge they have jointly produced (Lawson, 2015). Drawing from Dewey’s reasoning that teachers should themselves be students of learning, Groundwater-Smith and Mockler (2009) frame PAR as a powerful context for teachers to undertake professional learning as they conduct systematic inquiries into improving their professional practice within a community of practice (CoP).

Far from being synonymous with simply belonging to a group or organisation, in this case a school, Wenger (1998) emphasises that CoPs are bounded by the structural attributes of (1) Mutual engagement, which refers to the ways in which the members of a CoP interact with each other to achieve their goals; (2) The collective process of joint enterprise, which involves a negotiated response to a common concern and (3) Shared repertoires, which include the ‘routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories … actions or concepts that the community has produced or adopted in the course of its existence, and which have become part of its practice’ (p. 83). These social configurations are characterised by the process of legitimate peripheral participation. This sociocultural phenomenon comprises an evolving form of membership that propels ‘newcomers’ on an inbound trajectory towards their full participation as ‘old timers’ through a process of deep, situated learning that transforms who they are and what they can do (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). While PAR is not a research panacea, given its methodological, conceptual and operational pluralism (Lawson, 2015), it arguably constitutes a more effective approach to teachers’ professional development than top-down directives which continue to dominate current initiatives despite widespread criticism of their relative ineffectiveness (Lefstein et al., 2020; Mercieca, 2017).

Youth participatory action research, or YPAR, creates CoPs for young people through the explicitly pedagogical practice of mentoring them to become social science researchers, resulting in the facilitation of youth-led research initiatives (Mirra et al., 2016). This process simultaneously cultivates young people’s leadership skills and recognises that ‘setting [them] off on a research project without access to … resources, knowledge and relationships … denies [them] the necessary tools to reap the full benefits of the process’ (Mirra et al., 2016, p. 39). While the YPAR literature is still emerging, with most studies published after 2009 (Anyon et al., 2018), available research suggests that as young people investigate their daily lives to develop realistic and context-specific solutions to their shared problems, a twofold process of transformation occurs. While an internal transformation occurs through young people’s experiences of reflection and efficacy, an external transformation results from coming to understand their capabilities as they initiate the change needed to transform their realities (Domínguez & Cammarota, 2021).

Current research also suggests that each phase of the research process provides significantly different experiences and outcomes for young people. For example, Foster-Fishman et al. (2010) found that problem identification is likely to promote knowledge development, while both problem identification and data analysis provide opportunities for young people to develop critical awareness of the issues being investigated. Despite these findings, few YPAR projects involve young people in the entire research process. This reluctance appears to be due to perceived limitations of young people’s skills and cognitive abilities (Coad & Evans, 2008) and concerns about their lack of research skills, commitment, confidentiality, sensitivity and ability to re-examine their own preconceptions (Nind, 2011). However, Nind argues that these issues ‘do not belong to people as much as to the interactive spaces between them’ (p. 353).

Creating agentic, hopeful spaces through youth-adult participatory action research

To create interactive, intellectually challenging and engaging spaces in which students, teachers and researchers are equally recognised as possessing essential expertise, the guiding concept of youth-adult partnership (YAP) can be dovetailed with youth participatory action research (YPAR), creating a methodology of youth-adult participatory action research, or YAPAR. Framed as a critical practice of engagement that explicitly aspires to make a difference (Barad, 2007) in the lives of marginalised young people and their teachers, YAPAR seeks to foster student and teacher agency by integrating the intergenerational dialogue inherent within YAP with YPAR’s pedagogical approach (See Fig. 1). This forms an explicit three-way research and learning partnership between students, teachers and researchers that seeks to enact meaningful and sustainable change in two fundamental ways.

Fig. 1
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Youth-adult participatory action research (YAPAR)

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First, YAPAR extends YPAR’s focus on pedagogy by concurrently mentoring students and teachers through the entire process of conducting research, while the researcher refines their own practice through interactions with, and feedback from, the teachers and students. This approach is informed by McMahon and Portelli’s (2004) proposal for a critical-democratic conceptualisation of engagement that is founded on Dewey’s (1958) notion of democracy as a way of life; a continual reconstructive process that is ‘associated with equity, community, creativity, and taking difference seriously’ (Portelli & Solomon, 2001, p. 17).

This conceptualisation of engagement resonates with productive pedagogies; classroom practices that address inequitable learning outcomes, particularly in marginalised and/or high poverty schools. Developed through the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS), which involved extensively mapping teachers’ practices in 1000 primary and secondary schools, the productive pedagogies framework comprises the four dimensions of intellectual quality, connectedness, supportive classroom environment, and working with and valuing difference (Hayes et al., 2005). Through a ‘curriculum of life’ (McMahon & Portelli, 2004) that is ‘anchored in present realities and shared concerns’ (Mayes & Holdsworth, 2020, p. 101), YAPAR purposefully creates intellectually challenging learning environments for students, teachers and researchers alike through mutual learning that connects the classroom to the real world. Its mentoring approach also recognises that a supportive learning environment extends beyond positive relationships to encompass the creation of a safe space in which academic risk taking can occur without fear of failure. Finally, it works with and values difference by accounting for the multiple world views and perspectives of a diverse range of social actors, including young people who are typically dismissed as disengaged underachievers. Above all, this critical-democratic perspective is consistent with the notions of praxis and critical hope through its articulation of a ‘political and educational stance which recognises existing inequities and believes in the possibilities of rectifying them’ (McMahon & Portelli, 2004, p. 73).

Second, the issue of not only who is permitted to participate in these inquiry-based partnerships, but on what terms, is addressed by Fraser’s (2008, 2010) principle of participatory parity, which recognises each member of the CoP as being of equal worth and therefore requires ‘social arrangements that permit all to participate as peers in social life’ (Fraser, 2008, p. 16). According to Fraser, this can be achieved by dismantling the institutional obstacles of maldistribution of resources, cultural misrecognition, and political misrepresentation (2008; 2010). She argues further that these obstacles need to be resolved transformatively ‘by restructuring the underlying generative framework’ (Fraser, 2005, p. 73), to enable a shift from an individual’s theoretical right to equitable participation to possessing both the ‘capability and opportunity to do so’ (Rosa, 2017, p. 159; citing Fraser, 2008).

YAPAR seeks to address the obstacle of maldistribution by providing the physical materials required by the members of the newly formed CoPs to conduct their research effectively through the funding provided by research grants. Its explicitly pedagogical approach to mentorship additionally affords marginalised students and their teachers the knowledge and skills they need to carry out their investigations. Providing these physical and knowledge-based resources is intended to contribute to eradicating economic injustice by disrupting enduring cycles of intergenerational poverty through achieving more equitable outcomes for marginalised students and their teachers.

The cultural obstacle of misrecognition is addressed through the notion of CoPs, which comprise rich and diverse fields of social actors who are afforded equivalent social status as they collaborate in every aspect of their research. However, achieving this requires more than valuing and recognising the devalued, misrecognised, and thus typically disrespected identities (Fraser, 1995) of CoP members who come from diverse cultural backgrounds. Rather, it requires varied ontological and epistemological understandings, which in turn require a broader sense of research methods (Law, 2004). For example, drawing from Martin’s (2008) theorisation of relatedness and its connection to Aboriginal ontology and epistemology, Shay (2019) raises concerns about Indigenous young people’s involvement in traditional Western research methods such as interviews and focus groups. Arguing that these methods may compromise Indigenous young people’s ability to choose what they want recorded and the potential loss of valuable contextual information, she calls instead for legitimising ‘Indigenous knowledge and ways of being, knowing and doing’ (p. 5), thus challenging the continued dominance of Western views.

Finally, Fraser’s most complex obstacle of political misrepresentation refers to denying some people the possibility of participating on par with others. Within YAPAR, this is addressed by providing students, teachers and researchers with roughly equal political voice and thus equivalent democratic representation (Fraser, 2008). This is because CoPs inherently preclude arrangements that deprive any member of the community of their fair chance to contribute equitably to the solutions that will affect them. However, this is difficult to achieve within hierarchical school systems which characteristically deny young people and adults equivalent power relations and representation, with students’ views typically excluded from considerations of their education. Amid the at times injudicious enthusiasm for participatory methodologies, Mayes (2016) also prompts researchers not to ‘romanticise participatory processes or suggest that, in collaboratively creating concepts with participants, [researchers] have somehow transcended power relations between adults and young people or between young people themselves’ (p. 117).

The dilemma of inequitable power distribution and political representation cannot therefore be completely avoided, particularly in a society which views young people as needing to progress through normative stages of development before being recognised as able to speak on their own behalf (See for example, Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008). However, power is understood here as an intangible process that exists only when actioned, as opposed to a commodity to be traded in a zero sum transaction (Foucault, 1983, 2003) in which adults who ‘have’ power ‘give’ it to young people (Gallagher, 2008). This suggests a need to focus on the ways in which power is enacted though dialogue within divergent networks of differential relations (Gallagher, 2008).

Following Freire, YAPAR recognises that far from idle conversation, rigorous educational dialogue requires full and respectful consideration of the dignity and autonomy of diverse and at times conflicting voices, which requires humility and recognition that no party is entirely ignorant or knowledgeable (1970/2000). This comes from an acceptance of all participants as incomplete fellow human beings who grow in their understandings by carefully and consciously facing rather than evading their differences through dialogue rather than debate, which simply promotes conflict. This is not to imply a promise of intergenerational engagements that are free of any discord (Wenger, 1998). Rather, an explicit focus on integrating this plurality of perspectives into the processes of negotiation and representation enables the community to be propelled forward by promoting intergenerational understandings and thus overall cohesion (Groundwater-Smith et al., 2015; Roulier, 2000).

Entwining the experiences and expertise of students, teachers and researchers to jointly create the new practices of emergent CoPs, YAPAR involves a synergistic approach to mutual learning and action through a co-created curriculum of critical hope. This approach is not without controversy, as it is argued that participants’ right to play a significant role in research potentially ‘[denies] the researcher’s right to intellectual and academic freedom and to an oversimplification of theoretical construct that can potentially emerge from the research’ (Barnikis et al., 2019, p. 8; citing Karnieli-Miller et al., 2009, p. 285). Drawing from Barnikis et al. (2019), YAPAR proffers a view of participatory research as projects in which young people and teachers are equally equipped to conduct research that seeks to develop context-specific solutions to their shared problems through joint analysis, as well as understanding the researcher’s analysis.

Conclusion

Attempting to create interactive and supportive yet intellectually challenging spaces in which disenfranchised students and teachers can mobilise their collective power and agency presents a formidable challenge in fundamentally hierarchical education systems ‘plagued by deficit-oriented perspectives’ (Vaughn, 2020, p. 110) and characterised by numbers-driven, top-down policy directives. However, Miceli and Castelfranchi (2010) argue that ‘an outcome is possible once it departs from impossibility and becomes probable as it passes the threshold of chance’ (p. 590; original emphasis). Utilising social arrangements that emphasise mutual learning and intergenerational partnership through careful yet critical dialogue, YAPAR enables disenfranchised students and teachers to work in equal partnership with researchers to implement context specific, meaningful and sustainable change.

This does not suggest that YAPAR is a neatly packaged, failsafe intervention, given the extensive range of individual schools’ contexts. Cook-Sather (2002) draws attention to evidence which demonstrates that co-investigators in one context cannot provide the answers to problems beyond their unique situation because their answers ‘are neither universal nor monolithic’ (p. 7). Rather, research apparatuses ‘must be tuned to the particularities of the entanglements at hand’ (Barad, 2007, p. 74), which include complex intersections of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race and gender, as well as individual school and personal factors, such as school climate and academic self-concept, respectively. YAPAR is therefore not purported to be a recipe, quick fix, or ‘silver bullet’ for the complex concerns shared by students and teachers in marginalised and/or high poverty schools, particularly given its methodological and conceptual pluralism and the emergent nature of this type of research. Neither is it suggested as a substitute for, or improvement on, other participatory methodologies, as the literature consistently emphasises the importance of methodological approaches that suit the participants involved and the questions under investigation. Rather, YAPAR adds to a suite of existing methodologies that take up the challenge to transform uncertainty into a critical hope through the creation of ‘a shared vision of what could be, with a shared vision to make it a reality’ (Ginwright, 2016, p. 21). While in and of itself, YAPAR cannot resolve enduring and complex issues of intergenerational poverty and systemic injustice, it embodies a steadfast commitment to making a difference through differences that matter (Barad, 2007) to disenfranchised young people and teachers in marginalised and/or high poverty communities.