Using Youth Participatory Action Research to Support BIPOC, Working Class, and Working Poor Elementary School Students' Conscientización

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/irtp.v2i1.142507

Keywords:

working class children, schools, conscientización, empowerment, youth, participatory action research

Abstract

This talk draws together two decades of research designed to center BIPOC children as they discuss and continue to develop what a productive school culture means to them. All studies are presented to address a framework to better understand the process of change/conscientización as a theoretical guide. I engage two research questions: What are the characteristics of liked school places, and how do they differ from disliked places? and How does the developmental process of conscientización unfold (prospectively)? The first reserch question, based on a long-term collaboration at one elementary school, sets the stage for another long-term youth participatory action research project at another elementary school. The second research question is addressed through a series of studies where children decide how they want to make decisions as a group, how they discern a problem to focus on, and how this affects their relational empowerment in the school. Children’s critical consciousness and actions are highlighted across these studies.

Author Biography

Regina Day Langhout, University of California Santa Cruz

Regina Day Langhout is a Professor of Psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz. Her commitment to issues and concerns of social justice has informed her study of empowerment in educational and neighborhood settings. Her primary research takes place in elementary schools and neighborhoods that serve working class and working poor Black, Latinx, and White students. She uses participatory action research to critically examine schools and neighborhoods.

Downloads

Published

2023-12-23

How to Cite

Langhout, R. (2023). Using Youth Participatory Action Research to Support BIPOC, Working Class, and Working Poor Elementary School Students’ Conscientización. International Review of Theoretical Psychologies, 2(1), 6–26. https://doi.org/10.7146/irtp.v2i1.142507

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2023): Building Community: Theoretical Psychology in the Service of Social Issues

Section

Keynote Addresses

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Regina Day Langhout

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

IRTP operates based on a non-exclusive publishing agreement, according to which the journal retains the right of first publication, but authors are free to subsequently publish their work. The copyright of all work rests with the author(s). 

All content published in IRTP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This license allows authors and readers to share and adapt content for non-commercial purposes, provided that they abide by the following terms: 

- Give credit to the original author(s)/creator(s) and attribution parties (i.e., IRTP);

- Provide a link to the original source, to the extent practicable;

- Include the copyright notice and/or indicate the corresponding Creative Commons license;

- Indicate what, if any, adaptations were made to the original; and

- Share adapted content under the same license as the original.

Authors are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the various Creative Commons licenses. Readers are advised to consult the licensing information embedded in each published work to ensure that they are familiar with the terms of use that apply.