Youth Participatory Action Research in World Language Classrooms

Abstract

AbstractYouth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) requires students to use language in myriad ways as they define a problem, design and conduct an original research project, disseminate their findings, and take change‐seeking actions in their community. YPAR embeds language development in community‐centered and cross‐disciplinary work and empowers youth as valuable knowledge producers and change agents in their community. In so doing, it offers a unique opportunity to world language teachers, particularly those of heritage speakers, who are looking for ways to address the World‐Readiness Standards (National Standards Collaborative Board, 2015), meaningfully incorporate best practices, and affirmatively engage their students. This article details YPAR's connection to existing world language methods and standards, offers an example of YPAR in practice, and presents the results of a study examining teachers’ and heritage language learners’ observations of learner growth using the NCSSFL‐ACTFL Can‐Do statements as a result of their participation in a course‐embedded YPAR project. Findings demonstrated that students had positive mean gain scores across all categories of communication skill and all but one student finished the semester performing above grade level in at least three of the five communicative domains. The largest gains were for written and spoken presentational communication.