Combining Youth Organizing and Youth Participatory Action Research to Strengthen Student Voice in Education Reform

Community organizing processes seek to address community issues of mutual concern through cycles of relationship development, research, action, and evaluation led by people directly affected by the issues at stake. This chapter examines a community organizing effort in San Bernardino, California, that has built power to address issues in schools and the broader community. This organizing effort, which has involved leadership by hundreds of youth, has achieved numerous changes in programs and policies that have increased educational, recreational, and employment opportunities for young people. In this chapter, we examine the youth organizers’ deepening use of (a) organizing research and (b) youth participatory action research (YPAR). We compare these two types of research in a community organizing context and highlight the ways that each type of research has contributed to successes in collective action.