Reading, Naming, and Changing the World: Youth Participatory Action Research in a Hawaiʻi School

Abstract

This dissertation documented and analyzed the impact of a Youth Participatory Action Research project on the identity and agency of students and teachers in an urban Honolulu high school. The study was conducted over the course of a school year and included a doctoral student, a high school English Language Arts teacher, and ten students who were English Language Learners (ELL) as the researcher/participants. Results from this analysis were reported in three parts: (1) the impact of YPAR on the identity of the teachers and students; (2) the impact of YPAR on the agency of the teachers and students; (3) the relationship between identity and agency; (4) the impact of YPAR to challenge structures like settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and white supremacy. Recommendations for the teaching of YPAR in an ELL classroom within the unique context of Hawaiʻi and its implications for the impacts of YPAR resulted in the development of a Pedagogy of Solidarity that would allow for radical possibilites in education.