Description:
This themed section of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning centers Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as a promising approach for building with and extending the interplay of voices, perspectives, and intersectional identities of youth–who we identify as individuals age 15–24, aligning with the United Nations definition–as youth enact contemporary movements toward justice in the ongoing work of and quest for social justice (Marciano & Watson, 2021; Richards-Schuster et al., 2019; Watson & Petrone, 2020). Specifically, we welcomed for inclusion in this special section renderings within and across contexts of service learning that foreground such participatory approaches. Such critical teaching and research stances actively engage young people in creating and developing knowledge about the issues that impact their lives and using their knowledge to take action. Such engagements involve youth-led efforts and youth-adult partnership efforts, among others, and in all cases center the meaningful and authentic role of young people within and across the research and knowledge development endeavor. YPAR challenges positivistic notions of researcher objectivity, instead considering youth as producers of knowledge whose lived experiences and perspectives provide valuable insight for examining issues that matter to them (Aldana & Richards-Schuster, 2021; Caraballo et al., 2017; Malorni et al., 2022; Marciano et al., 2020; Warren & Marciano, 2018; Watson et al., 2020).
Marciano, J. & Watson, V. (2025). Centering Youth in Youth Participatory Action Research. Special issue of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 31(1). 10.3998/mjcsl.7591