Mental health struggles, body image issues, incidents of bullying—these are just some of the topics that groups of high school students in Champaign-Urbana and Danville, Ill., are currently exploring as their collective research interest. As early as next week, each group will select one topic and then, with adult guidance, create solutions for their chosen problem and draft policy applications.
This process is known as youth participatory action research, or YPAR, which positions young people as co-researchers alongside adults like teachers, health educators, church elders or out-of-school time volunteers. YPAR begins from the premise that young people are experts in their own experience and marshals this conviction to stimulate engagement by youth in their local communities.
With the support of recent grants from the University of Illinois Extension and the Institute for Government and Public Affairs (IGPA), Collaboratory members at the Family Resiliency Center (FRC) are partnering with specialists, investigators and educators from the Illinois Extension and the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) to pilot YPAR programs in the region. Both awards will run YPAR programs over the course of the year and create culturally relevant toolboxes for implementing YPAR in different contexts and local settings.
The awardees hope to increase inclusion of youth voices in policy development.
“We want to build capacity in local communities to execute YPAR again and again,” said Jacinda Dariotis, a professor of human development and family studies, Health Innovation Professor in the Carle-Illinois College of Medicine, and director of the FRC, “That’s why one toolbox is geared toward facilitating YPAR and another develops YPAR instructors and mentors. It’s ‘both-and’: we will train youth in research and advocacy and also train the trainers who run YPAR.”
Empowering youth voice
The IGPA-funded project, “Building the Next Generation of Engaged Researchers: Utilizing Youth Participatory Action Research to Engage Teens in Community Policy Change,” recruits young people to develop youth-led projects whose goal is to infuse youth voice into local school or government decision-making. The members of the two youth groups are 13-to-18-year-old students who might benefit from increased engagement with and representation in local policy. These young people frequently hail from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, are members of historically marginalized racial groups and have experienced trauma.
Spearheaded by Dariotis and Amy Leman, an assistant professor in the Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication Program and FRC Collaboratory member, the IGPA-funded project includes Zach Kennedy, an Extension specialist in community and economic development; Mynda Tracy, an Extension educator, Aisha Griffith, an assistant professor of educational psychology at UIC; Rachel Jackson-Gordon, a postdoctoral research associate at the FRC; and UIUC graduate research assistants Kate Suchodolski and Daniela Markazi as well as UIC graduate research assistants Lauren Elrod and Emma Leff.
“YPAR shares fundamental principles with positive youth development,” said Leman, “Back in the 1980s, the emphasis was on preventing youth from making bad choices, like abusing substances. Then in the 1990s, the emphasis changed—instead of telling kids to ‘just say no,’ we began equipping young people with the skills and capacities to make positive decisions in all situations, to be successful and thrive. A good way for youth to learn critical thinking skills is to start with content of their choosing, on subject matter that is already of interest.”
In addressing the issues that affect their communities, YPAR builds capacity among young people by giving them the occasion to generate solutions, the confidence to communicate about these problems, and opportunities to apply solutions at the policy-level.
One of Leman’s recent success stories began with YPAR members who met with researchers who had published work on sense of belonging. The youth investigated the extent to which they feel they have a “place” in their FFA (formerly Future Farmers of America) group. After learning interviewing methods and developing questions, the group collected data and presented their findings to the state governing board. The results were fruitful: all statewide event participants must now sign a form acknowledging expected behavior, and there will be a counselor hired to attend all statewide events.
“The work that students have done in Illinois at the state-level has even been adopted by the national FFA,” said Leman.
Training the trainers
Sustainability is the focus of the project funded by a recent Extension Collaboration Grant, “Designing the Youth Participatory Action Research Playbook for Working with Youth as Partners.” The project trains the adults who work with young people in community-based and participatory research and helps them maintain engagement with youth as authentic partners.
“Many YPAR programs could use further development to bring youth into every aspect of the process,” said Dariotis. “This toolbox addresses a lack of resources for training adults as facilitators and partners in YPAR work.”
The project includes Leman, Dariotis, Kennedy and Tracy as well as Extension educators Ben Steele, Kristi Stout and Valerie Belusko.
Growing YPAR as a sustainable practice among Extension field staff requires creating a toolbox that is contextually sensitive and meets adult facilitators where they are. As a result, the project’s 10-unit training will be modular, allowing trainers to take the entire course or focus on independent lessons that are relevant to their specific environments and implementation practices. Extension field staff can take the multi-phase adaptive training synchronously, asynchronously or as a mix of each.
Although YPAR often leads to beneficial community change due to the influence of youth voice on policy, it can also be transformative for adult trainers. The experience of the program for facilitators can change their perceptions of the contributions that youth bring and share power such that they engage in truly youth-led programs.
This allocation of power—the way that YPAR both centers youth voice and equips adults to redistribute authority—across participants is what makes YPAR such a potent force against “wicked problems.”