Articles by Our Research-Teacher Team
Explore Three Recent Articles by Our Researcher–Teacher Team
Discover recent publications co-authored by our team of educators and researchers. Each article is summarized below with key takeaways—click the links to dive deeper into the full texts.
1. Rahill et al. (2025)
Title: Art-Based Autobiographical Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) in an Urban School
Published In: LEARNing Landscapes, Spring 2025
Summary:
This article documents a year-long classroom-based YPAR implementation that integrates art-based and autobiographical methods into a 9th-grade English curriculum. Over 100 students engaged in reflective assignments such as collage, poetry, and narrative writing, culminating in research posters presented at a youth conference. The study highlights how creative expression acted as both data and action, emphasizing reflection as a developmental entry point into participatory research. This project, part of CSU’s Project HighKEY, offers a developmentally responsive and justice-oriented model for embedding YPAR in school, especially for early high school students.
Key Contributions:
Demonstrates how artistic storytelling fosters identity development and agency.
Offers pedagogical scaffolds and teacher insights for classroom YPAR.
Positions reflection as a foundational phase of the YPAR cycle.
Extends the field by centering teacher-led YPAR with an arts-based lens.
2. Godínez et al. (2025)
Title: Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) to Promote Educational Equity
Published In: Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community
Summary:
This article provides a conceptual and empirical argument for YPAR as a strategy to advance educational equity. Drawing on qualitative data from student and teacher interviews across two major Ohio initiatives—Project HighKEYand the First Ring Student Leadership Institute (FRSLI)—the authors identify three key mechanisms through which YPAR promotes equity:
Direct changes to school practices and policies
Transformation of school culture and adult-student relationships
Student growth and development as leaders and researchers
The paper uses Doreen Massey’s concept of “plurality of space” to analyze how YPAR disrupts and reimagines school environments. It also outlines strategies for sustaining YPAR through school-university partnerships, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and teacher-adult allyship.
Key Contributions:
Theorizes YPAR as an equity intervention grounded in relational space.
Provides evidence from dozens of YPAR teams and teacher-student collaborations.
Highlights the importance of adult allies and school culture in sustaining student-led change.
3. Buckley-Marudas et al. (2024)
Title: Why Teachers Integrate YPAR in Their Teaching: Cultivating Youth Well-Being, Student Voice, and Social Justice
Published In: LEARNing Landscapes, Spring 2024
Summary:
This conceptual article draws on narrative reflections from six high school educators who have integrated YPAR into their teaching. Teachers describe their personal motivations for engaging with YPAR and the ways it aligns with their social justice commitments, desire to cultivate youth voice, and interest in building relational classrooms. Each teacher’s approach is different—ranging from embedding YPAR in core classes like Math, English, Spanish, and Public Health to after-school and cross-curricular implementations.
Key Contributions:
Surfaces teacher perspectives as central to understanding YPAR’s potential.
Highlights YPAR as a source of professional renewal and resistance to burnout.
Emphasizes the relational and emotional dimensions of YPAR teaching.
Collective Significance
Together, the three articles illuminate the transformative power of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as a pathway toward equity, healing, and justice in schools. Each article approaches YPAR from a unique vantage point—art-based classroom practices, systemic school reform, and teacher reflection—offering a rich, layered view of what’s possible when youth inquiry and adult allyship come together.
They demonstrate how YPAR is not just a research method, but a dynamic tool for cultivating student voice, reimagining teacher-student relationships, and challenging systems of inequity. Across the pieces, we see how educators play a crucial role in sustaining this work by designing culturally responsive pedagogy, creating space for student storytelling, and confronting adultism in schools.
Whether embedded in an English classroom through poetry and collage, implemented district-wide through student-led research on equity, or reflected on through the voices of teachers themselves, these studies collectively contribute to a growing movement. They push the boundaries of what education can look like when young people are recognized as researchers, change agents, and theorists of their own lives.
This body of work expands the field’s understanding of how YPAR can be implemented and sustained in K–12 settings—offering practical, emotional, and political blueprints for creating more just and inclusive schools.