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Centering community: enacting culturally responsive-sustaining YPAR during COVID-19

Joanne E. Marciano (Department of Teacher Education, College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA)
Lee Melvin Peralta (Department of Teacher Education, College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA)
Ji Soo Lee (Department of Teacher Education, College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA)
Hannah Rosemurgy (Department of Teacher Education, College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA)
Lillian Holloway (Pondside Houses Community Center, East Lansing, Michigan, USA)
Justice Bass (Pondside Houses Community Center, East Lansing, Michigan, USA and Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA)

Journal for Multicultural Education

ISSN: 2053-535X

Article publication date: 8 June 2020

Issue publication date: 23 June 2020

988

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to provide insights for educators seeking to enact culturally responsive-sustaining education and research in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic. The authors examine what happened when the community-based Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) initiative they engaged with traditionally marginalized high school students was interrupted as a result of physical distancing necessitated by COVID-19.

Design/methodology/approach

Data for this inquiry were taken from a broader on-going ethnography of youth’s participation in the YPAR project and included audio and video recordings from meetings of the YPAR initiative and messages exchanged between and among authors and youth. Authors used components of culturally responsive-sustaining education and theories related to student voice as an analytic frame through which they considered how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced their work.

Findings

Three findings are examined in this paper. They consider: how youth participants and the authors stayed connected after they were no longer able to meet in person; how youth chose to center the needs of the subsidized housing community where they lived while continuing their work; and how youth and authors navigated the uncertainties they encountered in looking ahead to future possibilities for their study as the pandemic continued.

Originality/value

This study provides urgently needed insights for educators and researchers grappling with how they may enact culturally responsive-sustaining education and research during the COVID-19 global pandemic and beyond.

Keywords

Citation

Marciano, J.E., Peralta, L.M., Lee, J.S., Rosemurgy, H., Holloway, L. and Bass, J. (2020), "Centering community: enacting culturally responsive-sustaining YPAR during COVID-19", Journal for Multicultural Education, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 163-175. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-04-2020-0026

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

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