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“Bounded” Empowerment: Analyzing Tensions in the Practice of Youth-Led Participatory Research in Urban Public Schools

  • Original Article
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American Journal of Community Psychology

Abstract

This multi-method study examines tensions in the practice of youth-led participatory research (YPAR) in urban high schools among 15 semester-cohorts. Student participants in the present study were 77 ethnically diverse youth from four high schools in a major metropolitan school district. Data were gathered using systematic classroom observations, interviews with teachers and students involved in the projects, and participant observation. The two most commonly-constrained phases of the YPAR project were issue selection and action steps. A central tension in the issue selection phase for projects enacted across multiple semester cohorts was the tension between original inquiry and “traction:” Sticking with the same topic enabled sustained building of strategic alliances and expertise for making change, but limited the incoming cohort’s power to define the problem to be addressed. In further analyses, we identified processes that promoted student power despite continuity-related constraints—teachers’ framing and buy-in strategies, “micro-power” compensation, and alignment of students’ interests with the prior cohort—as well as constraints in other phases of the projects. This study’s findings regarding the promotion of youth power in the face of constraints advance the integration of theory and practice in youth-led research and have implications for participatory research more broadly.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a William T. Grant Scholars’ Award to the first author. The authors express deep appreciation to Gary Cruz, Adee Horn, Morgan Wallace, Brian Stanley, and the participating students for their long-term collaboration with the project; LaWanda Mohammed, Richard Duber, Andrew Ishibashi, Barnaby Payne, Norm Ferrer, Janet Schulze, and the teachers and counselors of the participating schools for collaboration with the research; Thomas Cook, Meredith Minkler, and Lawrence Green for their consultation; Yolanda Anyon, Dana Wright, Kathryn Steckler, Teresa Igaz, Eric Koo, Isaac Acosta, Becky Lee, and Christina Law for their assistance in data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UC-Berkeley School of Public Health, 50 University Hall #7360, Berkeley, CA, 94720-7360, USA

    Emily J. Ozer, Sami Newlan & Laura Douglas

  2. San Francisco Peer Resources, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Elizabeth Hubbard

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  1. Emily J. Ozer
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  2. Sami Newlan
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  3. Laura Douglas
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  4. Elizabeth Hubbard
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Correspondence to Emily J. Ozer.

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Ozer, E.J., Newlan, S., Douglas, L. et al. “Bounded” Empowerment: Analyzing Tensions in the Practice of Youth-Led Participatory Research in Urban Public Schools. Am J Community Psychol 52, 13–26 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-013-9573-7

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