What Is Research? What Does Research Look Like in YPAR?
When people hear research, they often think it means proving a point or finding the “right” answer. In schools, student research projects can easily turn into opinion pieces or arguments about what’s wrong.
That’s not how research works in SchYPAR.
What Is Research?
At its core, research is about understanding before acting. It is a learned practice that helps students:
Ask meaningful, open-ended questions
Learn from people’s lived experiences
Look for patterns and relationships
Interpret data thoughtfully
Connect personal experiences to larger systems
Good research is not neutral—but it is honest, reflective, and responsible. It names perspective, slows down assumptions, and prioritizes learning over being right.
What Is Research in YPAR?
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is research with young people, not on them. In YPAR, students are researchers, knowledge producers, and leaders who study issues they care about and use evidence to work toward improvement.
YPAR research is:
Guided by meaningful questions
Centered on youth voice and lived experience
Collaborative and collective
Critical of systems and power—not people
Oriented toward action grounded in evidence
Rooted in wellness, care, and safety
A Classroom Example
In many schools, students choose research topics they experience daily—mental health, school belonging and spirit, student–teacher relationships, school conditions, or safety.
In traditional projects, students might be encouraged to argue that something is “bad” or to prove a problem exists.
YPAR takes a different approach.
Instead of starting with blame, students ask:
Why is this happening in our school?
How do different students experience this issue?
What patterns do we notice across spaces or groups?
What conditions or systems might be shaping these experiences?
Students collect and interpret data—surveys, interviews, observations—and work together to make sense of what they find. The goal is not to point fingers, but to understand complexity so improvement becomes possible.
In YPAR, students don’t research to prove something is wrong—they research to understand why it’s happening and how it can be improved.
Teacher Callout: Supporting This Shift
When students raise concerns, your role is not to shut them down—but to slow the conversation and deepen it.
Guide students from:
“This is bad” → Why might this be happening?
“Someone is at fault” → What conditions shape this experience?
“Nothing will change” → What evidence can help us improve it?
YPAR is not about blaming individuals or defending systems. It’s about learning together, using research to imagine more supportive conditions for students and educators alike.