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This graduate student-driven collaborative will be very different than others of its kind. The implementation of an approach known as Participatory Action Research (PAR) is at the core of this effort, which will give students the chance to take a hands-on and rigorous approach to actually attempt to solve existing social and economic problems within schools and communities. PAR is an iterative process in which a research collaborative focuses the investigation on the social worlds within their own schools and communities to address inequities and bring about social justice. Two decades of research have demonstrated the effectiveness of utilizing PAR for student learning, engagement, and innovative, creative solution-building.

In implementing a PAR-grounded research collaborative at Arizona, our process will be student-driven from start to finish! Graduate students will get the chance to be taught and led through a hands-on process to define their own research problems, including thought experiments based on their experiential knowledge about what social justice means to them and their peers. They will then design their own action plans and research projects, implementing both action and research simultaneously to create the change necessary to ameliorate unjust conditions in schools and communities.

In this course, students will study forms of artistic and expressive culture (i.e. reggaeton, hip hop, poetry, graffiti art) and understand how these forms either promote or do not promote social and economic change. Therefore, this course will enable students to understand theoretical issues involved in artistic and creative culture as an approach to social justice, as well as introduce methodological considerations involving participant observation, interviewing and ethnography. The goal of this course is to expose students to the broad terrain of what is currently referred to as \"participatory action\" research. Participatory action research shares an epistemological assumption that research with people yields richer information and serves the purpose of improving the quality of life for marginalized groups in society.

Graduate students will work under the guidance of faculty and with other graduate students to analyze findings, assess the effectiveness and sustainability of their action plans, and write up their results into academic chapters, reports and articles that share findings to the UA community and leadership.

GRD - Regular Grades A, B, C, D, E

Graduate

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