“Why Don’t They Just Move Closer?”: Adolescent Critical Consciousness Development in YPAR About Food Security

2021 ◽  
pp. 074355842110653
Author(s):  
Amy J. Anderson ◽  
Hannah Carson Baggett ◽  
Carey E. Andrzejewski ◽  
Sean A. Forbes

The aim of this paper is to explore high school students’ critical consciousness development in the context of youth participatory action research (YPAR) focused on food security at an alternative school in Alabama. The YPAR project took place in an elective agriscience class with 10 students (Seven Black, two white, one Latino) who were in the 10th to 12th grades. Utilizing data from researcher notes, classroom observations, and archival classroom documents, we present students’ YPAR project outcomes to share their research-driven solutions to food insecurity in their community. Vignettes of classroom dialogue are also constructed to illustrate moments of reflection in the YPAR context about food security. We present three “critical moments,” or instances of social analysis, to illustrate how students’ individual-level attributions occurred alongside teacher dialogue and student-led investigation of structural inequities in the community. Findings illustrate how students’ nonlinear critical consciousness development consisted of reliance on individual-level attributions in classroom dialogue co-occurring with systems-thinking activities and other YPAR project outcomes. This paper has implications for research on the imperfect and wavering nature of adolescent critical consciousness development in YPAR.

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-253
Author(s):  
Sean Wiebe

In this paper I explore the connection between a/r/tography and poetic inquiry, and how together they cultivate multiple ways of understanding. I further claim that classroom situations are most provocative of thoughtfulness and critical consciousness when each student participates in the classroom conversation from his or her lived situations. While difficult, teachers who can facilitate rich interchanges of dialogue within a plurality of voices are genuinely creating communities of difference and thus imagining real possibilities for social change.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Storm ◽  
Karis Jones

Purpose This paper aims to describe the critical literacies of high school students engaged in a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project focused on a roleplaying game, Dungeons and Dragons, in a queer-led afterschool space. The paper illustrates how youth critique and resist unjust societal norms while simultaneously envisioning queer utopian futures. Using a queer theory framework, the authors consider how youth performed disidentifications and queer futurity. Design/methodology/approach This study is a discourse analysis of approximately 85 hours of audio collected over one year. Findings Youth engaged in deconstructive critique, disidentifications and queer futurity in powerful enactments of critical literacies that involved simultaneous resistance, subversion, imagination and hope as youth envisioned queer utopian world-building through their fantasy storytelling. Youth acknowledged the injustice of the present while radically envisioning a utopian future. Originality/value This study offers an empirical grounding for critical literacies centered in queer theory and explores how youth engage with critical literacies in collaboratively co-authored texts. The authors argue that queering critical literacies potentially moves beyond deconstructive critique while simultaneously opening spaces for resistance, imagination and utopian world-making through linguistic and narrative-based tools.


2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 1609-1613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assieh Mohammadzadeh ◽  
Ahmadreza Dorosty ◽  
Mohammadreza Eshraghian

AbstractObjectiveThe present study was designed to determine household food security status and factors associated with food insecurity among high-school students in Esfahan, Iran.DesignCross-sectional surveys.SettingThe present study was conducted in autumn 2008 in Esfahan, Iran. The samples were selected using systematic cluster sampling. Socio-economic questionnaires, food security questionnaires and FFQ were filled out during face-to-face interviews. In addition, data on participants’ weights and heights were collected.SubjectsA total of 580 students (261 boys and 319 girls) aged 14–17 years from forty high schools in Esfahan, Iran, were selected.ResultsThe prevalence of household food insecurity according to the US Department of Agriculture food security questionnaire was 36·6 % (95 % CI 0·33, 0·40). Food insecurity was positively associated with number of members in the household (P < 0·05) and negatively associated with parental education level and job status and household economic status (P < 0·05). Moreover, students living in food-insecure households more frequently consumed bread, macaroni, potato and egg (P < 0·05), while they less frequently consumed rice, red meat, sausage and hamburger, poultry, fish, green vegetables, root and bulb (coloured) vegetables, melons, apples and oranges, milk and yoghurt (P < 0·05).ConclusionsFood insecurity was prevalent among households in Esfahan, Iran, and food security status was associated with socio-economic factors. Students who belonged to food-secure households more frequently consumed healthy foods (except sausage and hamburger), whereas those living in food-insecure households more frequently consumed cheap foods containing high energy per kilogram. The present study suggests that intervention programmes be designed and carried out.


Author(s):  
Meagan Call-Cummings ◽  
Sylvia Martinez

Photovoice is typically used in community and participatory research to allow people to document and interpret their everyday lived experiences. However, often photovoice is used as a research method without deep reflection on its underlying goals and epistemological commitments to critically empower its participants and spark reflective dialogue within a community. This article showcases selections from a photovoice exhibit and its accompanying survey of exhibit attendees to explore possible negative unintended consequences of this action-oriented approach to research if researchers are not appropriately reflexive in how photovoice is used. Drawing on a long-term participatory action research (PAR) project with a research collective consisting of this article’s first author (a White, female university-based researcher), 25 Latino/a high school students and their White teacher, and through rigorous qualitative analysis of the stories that accompanied the photography as well as of the survey responses, the authors conclude that researchers and research collectives that use a photovoice approach to motivating social change and working for consciousness-raising must be careful to not unintentionally perpetuate status quo understandings of an issue or even unconsciously allow for a deeper entrenching of subtly oppressive treatment of historically marginalized populations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minyoung Lee ◽  
Soohyun Cho ◽  
Sang Min Lee

AbstractDevelopment of academic hatred was examined at four time points across 7 months among 1,015 South Korean high school students. A multilevel growth model showed that the baseline of, and change in, academic hatred varied across individuals and classrooms. At the individual level, gender, parents’ academic pressure, depression, and test anxiety were related to the initial level of academic hatred; gender and test anxiety were associated with a decrease in academic hatred over time. At the class level, lower socio-economic status and higher teachers’ autonomy support were associated with a lower baseline of academic hatred, and higher teachers’ autonomy support decreased academic hatred. Influence mechanisms of protective and risk factors on students’ academic hatred can be considered for strategic and policy interventions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 608-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Hawley McWhirter ◽  
Bryan O. Rojas-Araúz ◽  
Robert Ortega ◽  
Darien Combs ◽  
Christina Cendejas ◽  
...  

This article describes the rationale, development, delivery, and evaluation strategy of a pilot career intervention program for immigrant Latina/o high school students: Advocating for Latina/o Achievement in School. This innovative intervention aims to prevent dropout and to promote academic success and college and career readiness through a combination of academic support and enhancing critical consciousness. Shorter term goals include increasing school-related self-efficacy expectations, school connectedness, school engagement, and critical consciousness. We describe the theoretical and empirical basis for the intervention components, and how they attend to dimensions of immigrant Latina/o students’ career development. We describe program logistics, outcomes, strengths, challenges, and lessons learned from delivering the intervention. We highlight unique features of the program and suggest its relevance to career education efforts in other school and national contexts in which immigrant students face racism and inequities.


Author(s):  
Rachael Wendler ◽  
Aria Altuna ◽  
Timothy Crain ◽  
Oksana Perez ◽  
Savannah Sanchez ◽  
...  

This case study, collaboratively authored by a university researcher and five high school students, presents a model for assessing community partnerships that employs Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate participatory evaluations. A research team of high school students undertook an evaluation of a service-learning partnership titled Wildcat Writers that sponsors online writing exchanges between high school and college English courses. The evaluation project used a participatory action research (PAR) approach, which involves (1) including community members as equal co-researchers, (2) respecting experiential knowledge, and (3) working toward mutually-conceived positive change. This case study demonstrates how Web 2.0 tools that allow participants to collaboratively create documents provide an architecture of participation that supports a PAR approach to assessing and improving community partnerships.


2021 ◽  
pp. 152-179
Author(s):  
Mark R. Warren

Chapter 6 examines the campaign by Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) to pass SB100, the strongest state law at the time designed to combat the school-to-prison pipeline. It highlights the role of high school students in leading a struggle for their own liberation. It identifies key elements of VOYCE’s organizing strategy—elements that groups used across the country: personal storytelling to bring a human face and moral force to policy campaigns; participatory action research to demonstrate the systemic nature of racial inequities; and alliance building to provide greater resources to organizing efforts led by those most impacted. It also shows how the SB100 campaign emerged through an interaction between authentic, bottom-up concerns of VOYCE youth of color and national-level learning from the experiences of organizing groups across the country.


2022 ◽  
pp. 105382592110688
Author(s):  
Spirit D. Brooks ◽  
Steven M. Braun ◽  
Dan Prince

Background: Research highlights how high school near-peer mentors (HSNPMs) in outdoor school settings enhance younger students’ programing experiences. Through this engagement, HSNPMs’ critical consciousness (CC) of equity in outdoor and experiential education (OEEE) expands. Purpose: This article explores how HSNPMs develop CC of environmental and social justice in OEEE. Methodology/Approach: We used critical ethnography to understand how near-peer mentoring programing associated with equity, diversity, access, and inclusion (EDAI) develop CC, in OEEE. Findings/Conclusion: Intentionally developed training and curricula rooted in social justice education facilitate CC development. This training includes staff's facilitation of equity discussions and support of high school students’ EDAI-related awareness, skills, and behaviors. Implications/Recommendations: HSNPMs contribute to EDAI in OEEE programs. We recommend including HSNPMs in staff training, program improvements, and planning activities.


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