The Good,the Bad,and the Ugly: An Autoethnographic Journey on Doing Participatory Action Research as a Graduate Student

Abstract

The lead author documents the promises and pitfalls of doing critical participatory action research (PAR) as a graduate student within traditional institutions. This autoethnographic essay captures the vulnerabilities of the first author as she reflects on the human work that draws her to PAR, details the tensions that surfaced in the daily practices of doing PAR with youth, and addresses unforeseen hurdles that emerged from the ethics review board and the university–school partnership. The piece concludes with an epilogue from Dr. Michelle Fine, a senior scholar in the field of critical PAR, as she responds to the concerns raised in this essay.

Keywords

participatory action research autoethnography graduate education research methods activism minoritized students

Introduction

The inspiration for this article emerged from a conversation I had with Dr. Michelle Fine over lunch after a talk she gave at my university. I had met Michelle once before at an invited Urban Research-Based Action Network (URBAN) conference the year prior. During our initial meeting, I shared with Michelle my ideas and plan for a participatory action research (PAR) project with youth for my dissertation that upcoming year. Perhaps Michelle picked up on my mixed cocktail of enthusiasm, naïveté, and borderline romanticism of PAR at the time; a year later, as I sat across from Michelle, I was consumed with a very different set of emotions over my experiences with PAR. Subconsciously perhaps I sought Michelle, a respected senior scholar in the field of critical PAR research, to seek forgiveness or repentance for my missteps and mistakes in my current PAR project. After elaborating for 15 minutes about the challenges I confronted as a graduate student attempting PAR for my dissertation, Michelle looked up from her garden salad, casually glanced at me and said, “You need to stop feeling guilty about all this. Maybe you should write about it.”

This article explores the challenges I experienced as a graduate student attempting to do PAR with young people. As I sift through the scenes, the emotions, the hurdles during our PAR project that have left an indelible mark in my memory, I employ autoethnographic writing to think deeply about my experiences as a PAR facilitator. In Ellis’s (2013) piece, she illustrates the power of autoethnographic life review, detailing pivotal life events and its impact on her. She concludes the following:

Writing to inquire into the meanings of experience requires revision after revision, until the author has examined events, feelings, and thoughts in as deep and thorough a way as possible. The result of multiple revisions is an evocative literary story, the crafting of which leads to more insight and possibilities for incorporating these events into living, communicates these experiences evocatively to readers, and leaves open the possibility that they might consider and reconsider their own lives in light of what they have read. (pp. 43-44)

In divulging my vulnerabilities as a PAR researcher, I utilize writing as a form of inquiry to unearth the tensions, wrestle with the challenges, and embrace the possibilities of doing PAR. In addition, I write this autoethnographic piece to invite other PAR scholars to bond with me over our common experiences while also commiserating over the particularities of our stories, perhaps surfacing deeper reflections, insights, and critiques that could shape how we approach this work.

Sectioned off into three parts, I write about the “good” parts of PAR, specifically working with youth, noting students’ sociopolitical development and the ways I grew because of this work I did with young people. For the second portion, I focus on the “bad” I encountered, such as the tensions that surfaced in my daily practices working alongside secondary students as their facilitator and teacher. The last portion of my reflection highlights the “ugly” parts of conducting PAR within a traditional institution, specifically, how issues regarding participation and autonomy affected the context of my work. Michelle closes this article with an epilogue as a senior scholar reflecting on the challenges I have disclosed as an emerging scholar entering the field of PAR.

What Is PAR?

PAR has gained traction in recent years within the field of education (Irizarry, 2011; Kirshner, Strobel, & Fernández, 2003; Ozer & Douglas, 2013; Tuck, 2012; Yang, 2009a); however, practitioners and activists utilizing PAR in fields such as sociology (Hall, 1992; Stoecker, 2003), psychology (Lewin, 1951), and development (Rahnema, 1990) span decades of research all over the globe (Fals-Borda, 1987; Fals-Borda & Rahman, 1991; Freire, 1970; Gaventa & Horton, 1981). Misperceived as a methodology or series of methods, PAR can encompass a range of qualitative and/or quantitative methods, depending on the research needs of a given context (Cammarota & Fine, 2010; Hall, 1992).

PAR represents an epistemology concerned with democratizing knowledge and yielding power to ordinary people as they seek justice regarding social issues that directly affect their lives. In traditional research paradigms, the university researcher represents the expert who enters oppressed communities to mine for data and research on oppressed groups; however, within a PAR paradigm, rather than being the objects of research, members of marginalized groups research with university researchers, community organizers, or educators, often steering the direction at every stage of the research project (Fine, Torre, Burns, & Payne, 2007). In PAR, researchers engage in a critical inquiry cycle where participant researchers identify an issue, collect data on the issue, and then implement collective action (McTaggart, 1997).

Various iterations of PAR have surfaced since the onset of its application. In teacher education programs and among classroom practitioners, teacher action research represents a form of research that honors the lived experiences of educators engaged in critical inquiry into their own practice (Bates & Pardo, 2010; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2009; Pine, 2008). Community-based action research involves local community–based organizations or organizing groups working alongside concerned citizens and university researchers to address pervasive social issues in the community (Stoecker, 2003; Warren & Mapp, 2011). PAR projects can represent the intergenerational work between individuals who cut across race, ethnicity, gender, class, or sexual identity (Fine et al., 2004; Torre, 2005); however, a body of research exists dedicated to youth participatory action research projects (YPAR) where youth take center stage in leading the research project (Cammarota, 2008; Kirshner & Pozzoboni, 2011). PAR comprises a set of guiding principles that shape how scholars and activists approach research alongside oppressed communities. Although PAR entails a range in guiding principles, Kirshner (2010) offers a few key principles that guided his work with youth: (a) young people participate in every step of the research process, from identifying the issue, developing the research tools, to implementing an action plan; (b) students identify social issues that directly affect their own lives, from school closures to racialized tracking in schools; and (c) youth researchers develop critical perspectives and learn to denaturalize the conditions that shape their oppression.

Background on Teachers for Tomorrow (TFT)

As a doctoral candidate, I joined a steering committee to diversify the teacher workforce in a neighboring metropolitan school district called Pine Grove School District (PGSD) located on the west coast. In partnership with the local university, PGSD sought to close a disparate opportunity gap between Black and White students through a multipronged approach; one lever of this initiative focused on promoting the teaching profession among students of color in the district called TFT. In the spring of 2014, the steering committee for TFT invited all freshmen in PGSD who fit most of the following requirements to apply for the program: (a) come from a low-income background, (b) represent a historically marginalized group, (c) have at least a 2.7 grade point average based on the first semester of their freshmen year. Fifteen students applied and 11 students were selected for TFT’s first cohort. Students entering TFT also participated in a college access program that offered summer enrichment opportunities and tutoring support year round. A TFT scholarship fund was created with the intent of financially supporting students who matriculated to the state’s flagship university.

I worked for TFT as the curriculum developer, research facilitator, and teacher while still in graduate school. I envisioned running this program while also conducting a PAR project as a part of my dissertation. As a programming requirement for TFT, students participated in a 3-week institute for 3 hr each day during the summer. I developed a curriculum adopting a critical race pedagogy (Lynn, 1999, 2004) that involved students studying how race and class shape the opportunity gap in PGSD. During the school year, students engaged in a PAR project studying highly effective teachers in racially diverse classrooms. Students across three high schools identified an effective teacher at their school, observed the teacher for roughly 7 weeks, interviewed the teacher, and conducted a classroom survey for the class observed. The culminating event for the PAR project entailed a presentation to school and community leaders at the end of the school year.

In the next section, I delve into the good, the bad, and the ugly of this work and address the following questions: Why am I drawn to PAR? What are the tensions that surfaced for me while engaging in PAR with youth in daily practices? What role did traditional institutions play in constraining our PAR work?

The Good: Learning From Young People

My journey as a PAR facilitator and scholar started a long time ago before I became a graduate student. As a Southeast Asian student from a working-class, immigrant family attending Oakland public schools, I experienced firsthand the savage inequalities pervasive in underresourced and dispossessed communities (Kozol, 2012). Keenly aware of educational inequities as a senior in high school, I committed to dedicating my life’s work to equity and social justice. Prior to graduate school, I worked for 8 years as a high school English teacher in Richmond, California, a low-income community compounded by economic blight and negligent public policies. The surrounding environment proved a mismatch for the tenacious, brilliant, and determined students I met during my tenure; my students truly were roses growing in concrete (Shakur, 2009). Stifled by accountability measures and high stakes testing, I left the classroom and entered graduate school to pursue a PhD in education, hoping to make a difference in other capacities. Graduate school alone proved a hollow existence at times. Insulated in my academic bubble, I yearned for opportunities to connect with young people again. When the opportunity arose to work with a group of minoritized high school students and conduct a PAR project, I seized the chance to have my research converge with my continued desire to work with youth.

Documented in the literature, scholars highlight the potential sociopolitical development that youth researchers experience through YPAR projects (Cammarota, 2008; Morrell, 2004; Rogers, Morrell, & Enyedy, 2007; Sánchez, 2009). Based on anonymous feedback from students and their own testimonies, I found tremendous personal fulfillment knowing how our work had affected them. As a class, we engaged in intense work studying how race and class shapes educational outcomes in Pine Grove; students wrestled with the notion of institutionalized racism and the role our government has played throughout history in shaping policies that systematically subjugate the rights and opportunities for people of color, even to this day (Lac, 2017). I relied heavily on a dialogical approach to teaching, giving students opportunities to process ideas, and talk through their thinking (Freire, 1970). The curriculum I developed alone could not guide my students toward a path of praxis; a mosaic of dialogue, exposure to critical texts, and students’ self-reflections were the cornerstones of this PAR project.

Toward the end of our first year together, as students and I discussed the action steps of our research project, several youth researchers mentioned, unsolicited, the ways their participation in PAR deeply influenced and shaped the ways they thought about social justice issues. Students appeared eager to share their newfound knowledge with teachers, parents, and peers through the development of various products, such as a website, videos, and workshops. One student mentioned how she wanted to share with the world what she has learned in this program. Witnessing my students’ eagerness and excitement to take action based on our research project and what they had learned brought me immense joy. A student chimed in and said, “It’s all because of you, Ms. Lac. I had no idea about these issues before but you really brought this to my attention.” Comments such as this happened few and far between during our year together; however, they funneled warmth and meaning into the core of why I do this work.

I am drawn to PAR because my work with youth anchored me in the pragmatic realities of life for young people in a way that empirical studies and academic texts in graduate courses could not. On our seventh day together, I had a warm-up activity called Roots and Leaves, an activity designed for students to learn more about one another. The activity involved students diagramming a tree and labeling the leaves with their interests and hobbies; deep in the roots, students could share their dreams, background, or anything that was not obvious to people. I shared my leaves about enjoying running, yoga and poetry, and then I talked about my roots, such as my dreams of becoming a professor one day. I asked every student to share only content they were comfortable disclosing. I noticed that with each student who presented, the description of their roots and leaves became more personal, intimate, and vulnerable; some students started talking about deeply personal problems related to family and traumatic experiences tied to poverty. Every student had been moved to tears by the end of the activity. Humbled to be in this space, the narratives I heard in class reminded me that young people harbor different lived experiences and realities. Admittedly, the fact that I assumed that high-achieving, self-motivated youth in TFT from Pine Grove were somehow immune to trauma represented a misstep in my thinking. I walked away from class that day humbled at the courage, humility, and rawness I witnessed, reminded of why I appreciate working with young people. That particular class session reaffirmed for me that teaching and learning, even in an YPAR context, requires authentic and critical care (De Jesús & Antrop-González, 2006; Roberts, 2010; Valenzuela, 1999). Above all, this session reaffirmed for me that transformative educational experiences represent acts of love and that young people yearn for opportunities to talk about their lived experiences in nurturing and caring environments (Freire, 1970).

The Bad: Tensions That Surface From Daily Practices

Considering my lack of experience facilitating PAR coupled with my consumption of radical, creative, and impactful PAR studies, I entered this project with a naïve and unrealistic set of expectations for my students and myself (Fine et al., 2004; Fine et al., 2007; Poon & Cohen, 2012; Torre, 2005; Tuck, 2012). The cornerstone of PAR work rests on exercising reflexivity for all parties involved, the youth and the adult (Hawkins, 2015; Langhout, 2006). Sparse in the literature, university researchers rarely write and make public the day-to-day challenges of conducting PAR with young people (Cahill, 2007; Nygreen, 2009; Van Sluys, 2010). In my research memos throughout our PAR project, a few key tensions surfaced: negotiating student autonomy in daily practices and what counts as quality research with youth.

Student voice and autonomy

My experiences as a high school English teacher teetered between being both helpful and harmful during this PAR project. As a classroom teacher, I exercised a firm but fair approach to teaching and classroom management, setting high expectations for all my students while engendering a critical care in my classroom (De Jesús & Antrop-González, 2006; Roberts, 2010; Valenzuela, 1999). In my tenure in Richmond, I rarely sent students out of class. I adopted an authoritative rather than authoritarian approach to my pedagogy; students appeared receptive and responsive to my structured classroom.

This skill set that I developed as a teacher proved a disadvantage, at times, for me during the course of this PAR project. Young people seek to exercise autonomy by having choice in their learning experiences; however, schools often represent a mismatch between what students need and the opportunities they actually receive (Eccles et al., 1993). PAR projects enable students to have increased levels of autonomy and influence over certain facets of their learning; for example, often in PAR, students play a central role in determining the direction and course of the research project (Ozer & Douglas, 2013; Ozer, Newlan, Douglas, & Hubbard, 2013; Ozer & Wright, 2012). Youth appreciate that these PAR projects offer contrastingly different experiences compared with regular school (Cahill, 2007; Sánchez, 2009; Van Sluys, 2010). University researchers appear cognizant not to assert their power and authority, so that student voice and autonomy can flourish, a model distinct from traditional teacher-and-student relationships in schools (Kirshner, 2010; Nygreen, 2009).

Mindful of the tensions that have surfaced for PAR practitioners in the extant literature, I sought to engender an environment that honored the voices and experiences of students while trying to manage some of my teacher instincts that might impinge on this process (Cahill, 2007; Nygreen, 2009; Van Sluys, 2010). In our weekly sessions after school, I quickly recognized that my students needed opportunities to learn in active and creative ways after a long day of sitting in classes at their respective high schools. I intentionally set up an environment where there were multiple opportunities to interact in pairs, small groups, and as a whole class. However, there were a few class meetings where I had a lot of information to pass onto students, and the only way to communicate this information efficiently would be a direct lecture. During one such class session, I covered theoretical frameworks with students and relied heavily on a lengthy lecture to do so. I had too many items on the agenda and wanted class to operate with expediency. As we only had 2 hours and would not be meeting again for several weeks, I felt pressed for time. Ten minutes into the lecture, I noted a low energy in the room punctuated by several students with their heads down looking disinterested. Rather than acknowledging this moment, I entered into a trite secondary lecture about a person’s body language and the importance of this work. In short, it was not my proudest moment as a PAR facilitator, perhaps even altering somewhat my relationship with a few students for having seemed more preoccupied with fulfilling my agenda rather than reflecting on why students appeared indifferent to the lesson. Upon reflection later that evening, I recognized that completing the items on the agenda at the expense of my students’ experiences in the PAR project was selfish on my part in the grand scheme of the project.

In seeking a democratized classroom, my work with young people fluctuated between students shaping classroom norms and expectations to my role as the teacher intervening at important junctures. The individual youth researchers in our cohort of 11 quickly grew into a tight-knit family soon after our summer institute. Consequently, a casual and comfortable vibe became the norm for our weekly research team meetings. At the start of the spring semester, we began analyzing our data, occupying the computer lab on the university campus. With a large conference room for us to congregate, we began to refer to this space as our “kitchen table.” During several consecutive meetings, I noticed students on their cell phones while we talked about important matters at the table. In other instances, even during check-in as classmates shared about their day or an idea that arose during data analysis, I noticed multiple side conversations from students, particularly from two young men who were buddies and often chose to sit next to one another. If these two students were in my classes in Richmond, I would have nipped it in the bud right away and made them switch seats. However, as a PAR facilitator, I toiled with this scenario, wondering how to approach this conundrum. Clearly, I did not want to repeat a lecture from Ms. Lac about the importance of attentiveness. Instead, I wanted students to recognize that having side conversations or being on cell phones could be counterproductive to our work together. I was particularly sensitive to certain students not feeling heard in this space precisely because of these distractions or distracters.

I decided during our next meeting to bring it up with the whole group, merely sharing with students my observations and highlighting why these issues could pose a problem for our group and dynamic. As an outgrowth of this conversation, the youth researchers set up norms for the ways we interacted and operated in the computer lab, one norm being that no cell phones were allowed at the kitchen table, although students could take them out at their computer stations during breaks. I determined, as the teacher, that the two friends simply should not sit next to each other at the kitchen table, and that resolved most of the issues regarding side conversations. Some might interpret this decision on my part as my infantilized treatment of students; perhaps liberal educators and critical pedagogues might judge this action as being too authoritarian. However, in my mind, establishing a space for democratic practices does not mean the adult facilitator excises their role as the adult responsible for creating a nurturing and supportive environment for all students (Freire, 1970; Yang, 2009b).

Quality research and the lives of young people

As students started the data collection phase of their research project, I often questioned my role in providing technical knowledge to them and whether our work represented high-quality research. PAR scholars emphasize that participant researchers should be equipped with the technical knowledge to conduct research alongside university researchers; facilitators of PAR spend weeks and months training students on research skills to safeguard against uneven power dynamics (Fine et al., 2004; Morrell, 2004; Torre, 2005). In my work with students, I struggled to determine the appropriate depth and degree of training I should provide in preparation for our research project (Schutz, 2007).

Despite 3 years of intense graduate course work on qualitative research methods, I still felt much like an apprentice researcher when I started this PAR project with students. I did not have the luxury of a team of graduate students nor university faculty to co-teach this program with me. To buffer against my own misgivings and gaps in my knowledge about research, I leaned heavily on a supportive network of professors and colleagues who conduct qualitative research doing PAR in the field. Questions continually surfaced for me as I tried to bridge the pedagogy of teaching research methods to a group of high school students. For instance, how could I explain theoretical frameworks in an accessible way without undermining my students’ capabilities? In terms of resources, I could not use the research texts I encountered in my graduate courses and pass them along to my students, especially considering the density and depth of the readings. I often found myself toiling for days or weeks on how to convey to students particular research concepts in palatable ways. Doing PAR can serve as a double-edged sword at times: as PAR insists that researchers account for the context-specific nature of the work, PAR scholars denounce proscriptive approaches to curriculum or guides (Cammarota & Fine, 2010). As a result, I had to piecemeal how to approach research with youth based on the scant literature available, such as addressing bias in the data analysis stage (Kirshner, Pozzoboni, & Jones, 2011) and the degree of technical knowledge required for students to adequately conduct research (Schutz, 2007).¹

I also found myself recognizing how my position as a dissertator contrasted in distinct ways from the responsibilities my youth researchers had as high school students, surfacing tensions on how research responsibilities in our project would be fulfilled. As a graduate student, my full-time job entailed training and preparing to become a university researcher and professor. The daily routines of my high school students consisted of attending classes, completing projects and assignments, and more than half of my cohort participated in time-consuming extracurricular activities such as sports and music. For their YPAR project, students determined that two researchers at each high school would observe the identified effective teacher once a week; through class observations, students were expected to generate field notes. I talked to students about classroom observations in addition to the form and function of field notes; students practiced how to take field notes (Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 2011). I suggested that students write up their field notes the day of a classroom observation. Students immediately expressed concerns because some students did not have access to the Internet at home; we then agreed on submitting field notes the following day at school.

Stoudt (2007) writes about having flexible protocols in his research work with young people, mindful that rigidity can silence student voice or undermine the quality of data collected. I wondered at which point does this flexibility compromise the integrity or authenticity of the research? In the span of our 3-month observation on effective teachers, I rarely received field notes within 24 hours of a classroom observation. Most classroom observations took place on a Wednesday and field notes were typed up over the weekend. I had a few field notes submitted several weeks late. I found myself, at times, texting students reminding them to submit field notes. My role as a PAR facilitator with youth quickly became a bounty hunter of field notes as well. As I feverishly texted multiple students about their field notes, I wondered, “Is this what other PAR facilitators have done, too? Am I the only one? If not, why hasn’t anyone acknowledged the unglamorous part of PAR work with youth?”

Being well-versed in PAR literature served to inspire me at times while it concomitantly set up unrealistic expectations for my own work with youth. In Morrell’s (2004) book, he documents a multiyear experience working with high school students on PAR; the author notes the amount of time students dedicated to their research work outside of school transcribing data, producing short films, or building their PowerPoint presentations. Compared with Morrell’s work, the question crossed my mind, perhaps unfairly, “What were we doing that made things so different?” With the exception of a long workday strategically held over spring break, most of our work and research took place during our weekly seminars with limited time spent outside of school. We never burned the midnight oil. If anything, I sought to make this research project as manageable as possible for students, even transcribing teacher interviews myself because I knew this would be a time-consuming task. I recognized that my time with students was scarce and wanted to maximize class time on intellectual and analytical work rather than transcribing.

Juggling the tensions of this work in theory and practice, I discerned early on in the YPAR project that engaging youth holistically—acknowledging their lives and experiences outside of TFT as well—was my number one priority. A handful of my students struggled with personal issues. Several experienced unforeseen deaths in their families during the course of our first year together; many also took on part-time jobs to help support their families financially. I determined within weeks of starting our research project that my role, first and foremost, should be to support students in the different facets of their lives, not just in terms of research. One of my priorities as a PAR facilitator was ensuring my students felt supported and cared for as human beings. The research remained secondary: I could not in good conscience fixate on missing research deadlines at the expense of their well-being.

The Ugly: Constraints of Working Within Traditional Institutions

Working as a PAR facilitator and researcher within a traditional institution surfaced immense friction and stress at times. Particularly, the institutional review board (IRB) posed several challenges that limited the degree and nature of my students’ participation in our research project. Concurrently, the university–school district partnership that oversaw the operations of our program also participated in unforeseen ways that shaped the direction of our research project. Unbeknownst to me entering this project, I did not envision these entities functioning as a veiled hand in molding the trajectory of our research project and the degree of participation of my students.

Issues with the IRB

Youth researchers presenting at national conferences and coauthoring publishable articles represent a common occurrence in the PAR literature (Cammarota & Fine, 2010; Irizarry, 2011; Morrell, 2004; Oakes, Rogers, & Lipton, 2006). I entered the project assuming that I would strive to co-author some writing with my students and share our work at research conferences as well. However, the school district and university ethics review board imposed major hurdles in the degree my students could share their own research to academic communities. Boser (2007) writes about the lack of understanding or misconceptions some IRBs have about PAR. She details the incongruence, at times, between the positivistic epistemology IRB tends to adopt, viewing and measuring objectivity in terms of the distance between the researcher and participants.

After submitting an IRB application through my institution, staff members at IRB raised concerns about the nature of our research, and I requested to meet with them. During our meeting, IRB representatives informed me that I am prohibited from using any data collected by minors because their work represents a liability. The ethics review board, in other words, cannot trust data that minors collect. The IRB representative, at one point, mentioned that I could not use the data that I had minors collecting for me. This statement made me sound like an opportunistic researcher, sending out my youth researchers to collect data for my research project. Resoundingly, this representative seemed unaware about the nature of PAR, namely, that my students and I were working collaboratively to develop this research project. Our YPAR study did not represent my project but my work alongside young people. Furthermore, with the “unreliable data” collected by youth researchers, IRB informed me that I was barred from writing alone or with my youth researchers on our research project. The school district’s ethics review board made similar mandates, albeit while sounding a bit more innocuous. They sought to protect the identity of youth researchers as minors, and having them write or publish their work could put students in a vulnerable position, especially considering the sensitive nature of studying teachers in our school district. Hence, it was the school district’s view that their participation in the project as writers and producers of knowledge on the research project would pose greater harm than good.

YPAR in a university–school district partnership

PAR projects can be situated in highly contentious spaces, studying issues that have direct recourse on youth researchers and participants. Oakes et al. (2006) document the backlash students received in conducting PAR at their schools, raising concerns about how racialized tracking impinges on the opportunities for students of color at their high school. As PAR seeks to disrupt the status quo and the social issues directly affecting oppressed populations, the nature of this work necessarily includes degrees of tension and conflict. However, I did not expect the root of resistance in our PAR work to stem from the partnership that supported our program.

My students and I spent our summer institute studying the PGSD; we sifted through countless pages of statistical reports on attendance, behavior, graduation rates, and standardized test scores. I shared with students a nonprofit report recently released that detailed disparate data across multiple well-being measures for Black and White residents in the community of Pine Grove, including rates of incarceration and poverty levels. PGSD implemented a new approach to behavior across the school district, in the 2014 to 2015 school year, steering away from zero tolerance policies and toward more restorative practices and interventions in response to misbehavior. We reviewed multiple news articles that surfaced the same year in Pine Grove highlighting how the new behavior policy, when implemented in practice, created major concerns from teachers and staff. At the end of our summer institute, students determined that they wanted to investigate the new plan for behavior in our school district. Notably absent from the discourse on the discipline gap in PGSD at this time were the voices and perspectives of students. My youth researchers wanted to use the PAR project to capture the experiences of their peers in the school district as the new behavior plan determined adult responses in their classrooms, hallways, and cafeterias.

I assumed, naively, that documenting the perspectives and experiences of students in PGSD would represent an informative research project with a utility that could shape how teachers and staff approach issues related to discipline in school. Within the first few weeks of meeting in the fall semester, the direction of our research project came to a screeching halt. After multiple meetings with individuals from the university and the school district side, I confronted a growing narrative of overall resistance to our research project. Pine Grove, as a city, consists of multiple stakeholders who have a strong presence in city government and influence in the school district; these entities include a powerful teachers’ union, a vocal and empowered middle-class consisting mainly of White parents, and a contentious school board. With the implementation of a new behavior program, PGSD operated under a microscope in the community; various stakeholders seized on every opportunity to critique any missteps the school district might make. Given the high profile nature of TFT, individuals from both institutions warned me about the potential implications of this research project, the fear being it might unearth unsavory findings about PGSD, and in turn, provide fodder for local stakeholders to use against the school district. I also heard from both sides of the partnership that studying discipline would be nearly impossible given the political nature of the topic in the community. Consequently, the school district’s ethics review board would never approve a research project of this kind.

Initially, I was baffled by the backlash in response to our research topic, the resounding message being to protect the image of PGSD. I wondered what PAR scholars such as Michelle Fine, Ben Kirshner, or Ernest Morrell would do in my situation. As I was not an esteemed tenured professor who could wield power and influence in this moment, I had to assess my situation. I was a graduate student positioned near the bottom of the hierarchy who relied on funding from this partnership to pay my bills and subsist. Would this context be the best space to put up a fight? I also recognized that this was not a decision to make on my own; my students would be involved and implicated if we somehow moved on with this research project. I thought about the possibility that our research could tarnish their opportunities as students in TFT, positioning them as pariahs in the Pine Grove community or making enemies out of our current advocates. I found myself resenting being in a context that made me second-guess my work and decisions. PAR scholars note the importance of accounting for context in a given research project; however, I did not expect the context to curtail the research agenda for my students.

After consulting several PAR scholars, I concluded that I should be candid with my students regarding our scenario. I understood that I had a moral responsibility to students to be upfront about our given context; it was not up to me to be the gatekeeper of information. More importantly, this scenario could also serve as a teachable moment to students: the quest for social justice often engenders existing and working in uncomfortable and contentious spaces (Cammarota & Fine, 2010; Duncan-Andrade, 2009; Morrell, 2004; Oakes et al., 2006). Our third class into the semester, I outlined to students the reality of our work given the context, their position as students in TFT, and my own concerns as an employee for the program. Rightly so, students expressed anger and frustration over the response to our research project. They were infuriated that the voices of students regarding discipline or any issue in this school district would be perceived as a threat to the image of PGSD. By the end of our discussion, we determined that we would not pursue discipline explicitly as our research topic; however, we wanted our research to contribute to improving PGSD, especially as it related to the lived realities of Black and Latino/a students in the district.

The following class, I brought in an article titled “Discipline or Punish: Some Suggestions for School Policy and Teacher Practice” (Yang, 2009b) hoping that it could trigger some ideas for our research project. The author contends that there are two types of discipline: Discipline 1 focuses on containing and controlling bodies whereas Discipline 2 represents a rigorous training of a craft that can lead to transformative possibilities, a form of discipline that athletes and musicians endure. Yang (2009b) contends that in the most effective classrooms he has studied teachers nurture Discipline 2 in students. He refers to this space as Classroom X where the teachers strive for constant reflexivity in their own practice to set high expectations for all students, rarely removing students from class, and work with a cross section of students. Classroom X refers to a highly context-specific space, temporally and spatially unique. After reading the article, students seemed intrigued by this classroom and wanted to find if these classrooms existed in their schools.

The partnership imposed limitations on the scope and nature of my students’ YPAR project, forcing us to make compromises. So, students continued to study discipline, but we reframed discipline as praxis (Yang, 2009b) and embarked on a journey to create meaningful research experiences with the intention of sharing findings of Classroom Xs with teachers and administrators in the school district.

Final Thoughts as an Emerging PAR Scholar

Given the challenges I have documented in this piece, I continue to believe in the principles of PAR. My complicated relationship with PAR can only be paralleled to my perspective on motherhood. Beyond labor and delivery, motherhood entails some unglamorous aspects of parenting: second-guessing the decisions you make regarding your child and enduring unrealistic standards imposed upon you by societal norms of good mothering. Dirty diapers, spit up, and sleepless nights aside, I chose to be a mother again and gave birth to my daughter after I completed data collection for my dissertation; similarly, as a scholar, I still choose to continue the line of inquiry centered on PAR. I liken both endeavors to human work or as Maguire (1987) articulates,

From the outset I admit that I was never a detached social scientist. The process of doing participatory research was emotionally engaging and exhausting. I spent time with the project women and their children; I got involved in their lives. I cared about them, laughed with them, cried with them and worried with them. . . In part, participatory research forces us as researchers to question our roles in the world. Participatory researchers must “be with the people.” (p. 9)

In my work this year in PAR, I have entered my students’ lives not just as their facilitator but also their teacher, their friend, and their second mom. They invite me to their recitals, volleyball games, and cultural events. I hurt when they experience loss or suffering; I celebrate when they have reached a milestone. I fully intend to be a part of their lives far beyond this research project and this teacher pipeline program. Perhaps this is the human work that draws me to YPAR and anchors me to the meaningful parts of research, despite the bad and the ugly that also accompanies this work.

My renewed commitment to YPAR is also firmly rooted in witnessing the transformative growth of young people in TFT who engaged in critical youth research. In their study of Classroom X, students learned what it took to be an educator for equity and justice, such as prioritizing building relationships as a classroom teacher and rejecting logics of deficit and merit to explain societal inequities (Lac, 2017). Historically and presently, vulnerable and marginalized communities are continually under siege across this country. I hope that my student researchers have acquired the analytical tools to deconstruct, debunk, and critique the racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic policies and rhetoric that permeate their daily lives. As practitioners, researchers, and scholars seek impactful ways to resist and take action in these scary and uncertain times, I cannot think of a better form of resistance than to work alongside and with young people for social justice and educational equity in the form of YPAR.

Stitched into this autoethnographic journey are my personal triumphs along with the professional indignities of doing PAR with youth in traditional settings. I wrote this piece, perhaps, for self-indulgent reasons as a therapeutic outlet to make sense of my experiences. Circling back to Ellis (2013), the author declares, “Autoethnographic life review makes me think about the principles to which I might rededicate my life” (p. 44). Parallel to Ellis, I penned this autoethnography because I have an obligation to engage in critical praxis (Freire, 1970), a core principle to being a critical PAR scholar. This means sometimes unmasking the hypocrisies of doing PAR within traditional institutions, and at other times, it means admitting my vulnerabilities as a teacher, scholar, and activist in doing this work. Rather than hiding behind a veiled romanticism regarding PAR, I invite readers and PAR scholars alike to examine the raw, unabashed reality of engaging in and with communities in social inquiry. Perhaps to be in constant toil and rumination remains the only way to recenter and rededicate us to our work, particularly as PAR surfaces contradictions and hypocrisies at the same time that it is enmeshed in them.

Epilogue by Michelle Fine

Van has crafted a stunning and entangled research story, one that dives into the responsibilities, reflections, dilemmas, and delights of social inquiry, made only more intimately entwined in PAR. Typically researchers banish these reflections from the journal-bound research stories we tell. By convention, researchers hide beneath a white cloak of objectivity and distance, rarely hanging around long enough to hear what people really think of the work. Some “confess” at the end of their lives, or in a footnote or later admissions but rarely in the moment.

But Van was in deep relation with her students, her co-researchers, the project, and her university. She pursued her work assuming the university’s stated commitment to public scholarship and deep participation to be solid; and she was surprised—tackled I might say—by the IRB refusal to respect her co-researchers as she did. Van speaks truth for all of us struggling to engage deep reflexive inquiry with communities under siege, working from institutions busy branding (and protecting) themselves in times of widening inequality gaps, contentious lawsuits, and neoliberal blues.

Van attributes her stumbles to lack of experience, but I would say no—I attribute her confessed stumbles to her brilliance, reflexivity, care, and profound sense of bearing wit(h)ness. Inquiry is a relational project rooted at the treacherous intersections of power and vulnerability; public schools and public universities are today engaged in a radically defensive and often conservative project of covering their liabilities, promoting narratives of “progress” and “equity” and avoiding conflict. As a consequence, both schools and public universities are simultaneously fetishizing “engagement” and throwing up barriers to deep, reciprocal, and respectful solidarities across our borders; thereby silencing critical scholars and youth/educators/activists with the courage to speak both desire and dissent. PAR is not the only research site in which these contradictions and contestations flare, but it is a site in which our deep desires for critical public scholarship come up against the banal hypocrisies of neoliberal public institutions. PAResearchers, dedicated to critical reflection, embody the obligation to speak these speed bumps aloud.

Although I could engage each of the technical difficulties that Van lifts up, it is probably more sensible to recognize that these land mines can be found at all universities and public schools with local variation and a relentless defensiveness, perhaps even more so at private institutions! They probably must be resolved institution by institution, although we should gather at critical community and professional gatherings (including URBAN, American Educational Research Association [AERA], International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry, and Ethnic Studies) to pry open these dilemmas and generate “good-enough resolutions” written in pencil.

But for now, I would end with a thank you. Carry on, Van, with your gifts and talents—chronicle the stumbles, the barriers, the stunning moments, and fracture points, where participatory research reveals the braiding of structural violence and radical possibilities. This is your gift to your baby, and her generation, who will need lanterns in dark times to light the way toward liberatory practices of teaching, research, organizing, and crafting policy.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Van T. Lac, PhD, University of Wisconsin, Madison, is an assistant professor at the University of Texas -San Antonio in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. Prior to her graduate studies, she taught high school English and coached beginning teachers in Richmond, California. Her research focuses on the intersection of critical youth research and leadership for social justice.

Michelle Fine is a distinguished professor of Critical Psychology, Women’s Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Author of more than 15 books and over 100 articles. Fine is currently involved in “national conversations” with Muslim American youth and a national participatory project designed by and for LGBTQ youth of color – including a subsample of Muslim American youth. In November, her newest book, Just Research in Contentious Times will be published by Teachers College Press.

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