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YPAR and powerful partnerships for change: reconceptualisations of youth-led participatory action research and catalytic validity

MARTIN CUMMINGS

Educational Action Research, Volume: 33, Issue: 2, Pages: 290 - 312

Swansea University Author: MARTIN CUMMINGS

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DOI (Published version): 10.1080/09650792.2023.2299311

Abstract

Youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) empowers children and young people to platform their capability to create knowledge based on their lived experiences. It is this insider knowledge of childhood, which adult researchers lack, that enables the young to make significant contributions to ed...

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Published in: Educational Action Research
ISSN: 0965-0792 1747-5074
Published: Informa UK Limited 2024
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa66555
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last_indexed 2025-04-30T04:31:13Z
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spelling 2025-04-29T14:45:24.3153365 v2 66555 2024-05-31 YPAR and powerful partnerships for change: reconceptualisations of youth-led participatory action research and catalytic validity 732c731ff100663ae0b1f07134e3888f MARTIN CUMMINGS MARTIN CUMMINGS true false 2024-05-31 Youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) empowers children and young people to platform their capability to create knowledge based on their lived experiences. It is this insider knowledge of childhood, which adult researchers lack, that enables the young to make significant contributions to educational research and to secure positive change. This article reports and reflects on YPAR in a secondary school in Thailand. Pupil researchers alongside the author, an adult ally, sought to establish if and to what extent the wider school population shared their dissatisfaction with the need for learners to take paid-for classes in addition to their regular school lessons. Through pupils taking photographs that captured their lived reality in regard to supplementary paid-for classes, the sharing of these images with the school leadership team, and the generation of data from a wider survey, the young people argued for, crafted, and secured positive change to their school lives and, potentially, beyond. YPAR enabled educational leadership to make evidence-informed decisions. However, the traditional YPAR concepts of confrontation and dialogue between young people and adults as equals were found to be contextually inappropriate, suggesting that, within power-rigid contexts, ‘powerful partnerships’ with adult allies are more comprehensible to those who live within those contexts, and, thus, more effective in securing positive change. The paper therefore suggests that strategies cognisant and sympathetic to established power hierarchies are needed if positive change to the lived realities of children is to be achieved. Considering this finding, reconceptualisations of YPAR and its catalytic research validity are offered alongside the results and discussion of the YPAR itself. Journal Article Educational Action Research 33 2 290 312 Informa UK Limited 0965-0792 1747-5074 YPAR; action research validity; catalytic validity; learner voice; supplementary paid-for education; photovoice 3 1 2024 2024-01-03 10.1080/09650792.2023.2299311 COLLEGE NANME COLLEGE CODE Swansea University SU Library paid the OA fee (TA Institutional Deal) Swansea University 2025-04-29T14:45:24.3153365 2024-05-31T16:55:20.6513629 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Social Sciences - Education and Childhood Studies MARTIN CUMMINGS 1 66555__30507__63ab7dbae3d24fb6b0f7c2f6e05aca2c.pdf 66555.VoR.pdf 2024-05-31T16:59:28.9975727 Output 7771449 application/pdf Version of Record true © 2024 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License. true eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
title YPAR and powerful partnerships for change: reconceptualisations of youth-led participatory action research and catalytic validity
spellingShingle YPAR and powerful partnerships for change: reconceptualisations of youth-led participatory action research and catalytic validity
MARTIN CUMMINGS
title_short YPAR and powerful partnerships for change: reconceptualisations of youth-led participatory action research and catalytic validity
title_full YPAR and powerful partnerships for change: reconceptualisations of youth-led participatory action research and catalytic validity
title_fullStr YPAR and powerful partnerships for change: reconceptualisations of youth-led participatory action research and catalytic validity
title_full_unstemmed YPAR and powerful partnerships for change: reconceptualisations of youth-led participatory action research and catalytic validity
title_sort YPAR and powerful partnerships for change: reconceptualisations of youth-led participatory action research and catalytic validity
author_id_str_mv 732c731ff100663ae0b1f07134e3888f
author_id_fullname_str_mv 732c731ff100663ae0b1f07134e3888f_***_MARTIN CUMMINGS
author MARTIN CUMMINGS
author2 MARTIN CUMMINGS
format Journal article
container_title Educational Action Research
container_volume 33
container_issue 2
container_start_page 290
publishDate 2024
institution Swansea University
issn 0965-0792
1747-5074
doi_str_mv 10.1080/09650792.2023.2299311
publisher Informa UK Limited
college_str Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
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hierarchy_top_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
department_str School of Social Sciences - Education and Childhood Studies{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Social Sciences - Education and Childhood Studies
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description Youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) empowers children and young people to platform their capability to create knowledge based on their lived experiences. It is this insider knowledge of childhood, which adult researchers lack, that enables the young to make significant contributions to educational research and to secure positive change. This article reports and reflects on YPAR in a secondary school in Thailand. Pupil researchers alongside the author, an adult ally, sought to establish if and to what extent the wider school population shared their dissatisfaction with the need for learners to take paid-for classes in addition to their regular school lessons. Through pupils taking photographs that captured their lived reality in regard to supplementary paid-for classes, the sharing of these images with the school leadership team, and the generation of data from a wider survey, the young people argued for, crafted, and secured positive change to their school lives and, potentially, beyond. YPAR enabled educational leadership to make evidence-informed decisions. However, the traditional YPAR concepts of confrontation and dialogue between young people and adults as equals were found to be contextually inappropriate, suggesting that, within power-rigid contexts, ‘powerful partnerships’ with adult allies are more comprehensible to those who live within those contexts, and, thus, more effective in securing positive change. The paper therefore suggests that strategies cognisant and sympathetic to established power hierarchies are needed if positive change to the lived realities of children is to be achieved. Considering this finding, reconceptualisations of YPAR and its catalytic research validity are offered alongside the results and discussion of the YPAR itself.
published_date 2024-01-03T05:21:03Z
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