Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is an epistemological stance, rather than specific method, which "deliberate[ly] inver[ts]… who frames and who is framed as the problem" (Fine, 2008, p. 2017). YPAR projects document and make visible how youth engage in language and literacy practices to address social justice issues while uplifting alternative language and literacy practices. As youth exert their power in the research process, they have increased control over what stories are told and how they want to tell them, disrupting dominant problematizations and defining their own visions for the future.
This presentation illuminates a YPAR approach to applied linguistics research in the Dominican Republic. Together, collaborative knowledge production and collective mobilization reframed dominant institutional discourses that problematize youth language and literacy practices in relation to employment opportunities. The YPAR project deconstructs language ideologies that position multilingualism as a straightforward path to economic development, illustrating (1) how the supposed benefits of multilingualism in tourist economies are differentially distributed and (2) how language learning and multilingual practices can be embedded in the ongoing construction of transnational solidarities and social justice rather than the extractive labor market.
Aligned with this symposium's goal to raise awareness, interest, and support for PAR methodologies in applied linguistics, I draw on two strands of literature from YPAR language and literacy activities: (1) participatory projects that study youth language and literacy practices deployed in a variety of settings and for different purposes (e.g., Lyiscott, 2020), and (2) participatory projects that engage youth in activities that develop multilingualism and multiliteracies for social critique and transformation (e.g., Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008). I share the process of developing and implementing a YPAR project with Haitian and Dominican youth in a region marked by the imperial formations of tourism. Collaboratively-designed sessions-inspired by language and social justice frameworks (i.e., Baker-Bell, 2020; Martinez, 2017)-addressed topics such as Afrodescendancy, Racialization and Identity; Migration and Bilingualism in the U.S.; Dominican Spanish; Haitian Creole; and Social Justice, Activism, and Language. Youth-led final projects (addressing racism and discrimination, labor exploitation, food insecurity, and other topics) provide insight into how youth use languages and literacies as situated social practices to act within and transform their social worlds.
Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy.
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Duncan-Andrade, J. M., & Morrell, E. (2008). Youth participatory action research as critical
pedagogy. Counterpoints, 285, 105-131.
Fine, M. (2008). An epilogue, of sorts. In J. Cammarota & M. Fine (Eds.), Revolutionizing
education: Youth participatory action research in motion (pp. 213-234). Routledge.
Lyiscott, J. (2020). The politics of ratchetness: Exploring race, literacies, and social justice with
Black youth. In V. Kinloch, T. Burkhard, & C. Penn (Eds.), Race, justice, and activism in literacy instruction (pp. 131-146). Teachers College Press.
Martinez, D. C. (2017). Imagining a language of solidarity for Black and Latinx youth in English
Language Arts classrooms. English Education, 49(2), 179-196.
