TITLE: Engaging Students in Critical Issues, Research, and Action: Implementing a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Curriculum

DATE: August 22, 2012, 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM

LOCATION: MSU, University Hall ADP Center, Room 1143

FACILITATED BY: Dr. Mayida Zaal and YPAR Curriculum Team

Description of Workshop:

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) serves as a means for young people to identify and study problems that directly affect their lives, and ultimately, to act upon these issues with the aim of transforming their immediate present. 

During the professional development sessions, the process of engaging in YPAR projects will be described along with examples from several different contexts. Workshop participants will gain access to an online curriculum and work through a curriculum map to integrate YPAR into an existing course or unit of study. 

Through the YPAR-oriented curriculum, teachers are trained to facilitate students’ inquiry. YPAR teachers give students the tools to perform tasks such as identifying and selecting a “problem,” conducting authentic research, and taking action that helps address the problem. Although students are given the responsibility of choosing the “problem” worth solving, teachers need not be experts of content, so much as they need be facilitators of the process of research that lies at the heart of the YPAR curriculum. 

 YPAR professional development sessions are geared to orient teachers toward this new relationship with their students, and to give them the pedagogical tools necessary for leading students through successful issue-based projects.

 A YPAR curriculum can be implemented in a number of contexts, such as classrooms and after-school programs, and is applicable across disciplines and grade levels.  Its benefits to students are invaluable, as it teaches self-directed learning, critical thinking and civic action, and collaboration. By engaging in YPAR projects, students have the opportunity to develop significant research skills while engaging civically in issues they care about. Through this experience teachers have the opportunity to learn from the actions and findings of the young people in their classrooms.

 To register for this course, click here: