Abstract
Deep-seated educational discourses have blamed low-income communities for their youth’s lack of high school completion. These deficit discourses reflect top–down knowledge hierarchies and a lack of knowledge democracy in education (de Sousa Santos 2007; Hall & Tandon 2017; Visvanathan 2009), and they are in need of critical and diverse knowledge reckoning by low-income communities themselves. This article relays how a community-university participatory action research (PAR) partnership became a dynamic site of knowledge democracy from which to counter and transform deficit-based knowledge systems imposed on economically disadvantaged communities. Steeped in the generative enactments of PAR, storytelling, ecological metaphor, strength-based approaches and the arts, this article explores a low-income/social housing community’s knowledge practices that are energising and growing its community power to support the success of their youth in school. These seven knowledge practices are narrated through the ecological metaphor of trees, specifically via a co-constructed PAR team narrative called the Tree of Community Knowledge and Engagement.
 In the telling and retelling of this counternarrative-in-the-making, this article embodies knowledge democracy. Here, community members’ energising knowledge practices are recognised as invaluable forms of everyday educational knowing and leadership for their youth. This article further explores three broad ways of knowing that reside within and across community members’ seven knowledge practices: lived knowing, interconnected knowing and participatory/power-in-relation knowing. The three community ways of knowing illustrate how the community is growing its power to support youth’s success via a transformative educational worldview, from which other schools and universities could learn and, indeed, thrive.
Highlights
Deep-seated societal, educational and professional discourses have blamed low-income communities for their youth’s lack of high school completion (Aber & Nieto 2000; Neiuwenhuis, Hooimeijer & Meeus 2015)
This article relays how a community-university participatory action research (PAR) partnership became a dynamic site of knowledge democracy from which to counter and transform deficit-based knowledge systems imposed on economically disadvantaged communities
The team’s identification of knowledge practices ignited the creation of the tree, wall-sized mural, youth skit and pamphlet for the neighbourhood. These representations/disseminations occurred because the research was guided by the energy that the knowledge practices held for the team and the community
Summary
Deep-seated societal, educational and professional discourses have blamed low-income communities for their youth’s lack of high school completion (Aber & Nieto 2000; Neiuwenhuis, Hooimeijer & Meeus 2015). Whether sharing stories of putting their best foot forward (roots), being there for each other (trunk), mutual learning (branches and leaves) or breaking down injustices and their adverse impacts (compost), the community is energised in supporting youth success via lived knowing practices. Through ongoing community knowledge traditions – not one-off, expert interventions – youth learn the community’s wisdom of how collaboration supports shared success Many youth adapt this lived knowing to their own contexts, recounting stories of helping each other with homework (branches/leaves knowledge practice) and supporting one another during tough times at school (roots, trunk). Community support of youth’s school success is rooted in participatory, power-in-relation knowing Across their varied roles/groupings (e.g. staff, youth, gender, ethnicity, dis/ability), members’ energising practices highlight relational power and engagements that are mutually enhancing and co-creating. These knowledge practices are often hard won given the pressures to become more individualistic, rather than community minded, in the context of a neo-liberal, competitive marketplace and increasing government surveillance of social housing communities
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