Youth Participatory Action Research in Your Classroom: Teaching and Learning for Active Citizenship
By Dr. Beth C. Rubin
A joint publication of Teachers College Press and the National Council for the Social Studies
YPAR can turn your classroom into a site of meaningful, relevant civic learning—where young people gain a sense of civic empowerment as they discuss, investigate, analyze, and speak with authority on issues that directly affect them and their communities.
Youth Participatory Action Research in Your Classroom: Teaching and Learning for Active Citizenship brings this process to life through stories, examples, and reflections from youth and educators who have participated in these transformative projects.
Rooted in research and theory and organized around the five-stage civic action research cycle, this book offers a step-by-step guide for teachers who want to bring authentic civic learning into their classrooms. Each stage—building community, selecting a topic, doing research, analyzing data, and communicating results and taking action—is illustrated with vivid examples from fifteen years of school-based projects.
Engaging explanations of how YPAR connects to civic learning are paired with concrete lesson ideas and activities for elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. The result is both practical and deeply inspiring—a guide for teachers who want to help students see themselves as powerful civic actors in their schools and communities.
The book also pairs seamlessly with curricular resources developed by the Civically Engaged Districts Project, available at Launch YPAR in Your Classroom page here!
“Youth participatory action research can model and teach the skills and commitments needed for informed decision-making and action in a democratic society. Beth Rubin’s fabulous new book meets a sizable need, providing both the conceptual grounding and the on-the-ground vision needed to realize the full potential of this powerful strategy.”
— Joseph Kahne, Dutton Presidential Chair for Education Policy and Politics, University of California, Riverside
Case Studies from the Field
This book also features four case studies from educators in New Jersey, each illustrating how YPAR can be enacted in diverse educational contexts—
from elementary to high school, from language learning to social studies,
and from individual classrooms to districtwide initiatives:
Unidos Somos Mejores — Engaging Multilingual Learners with Youth Participatory Action Research
Dr. Laura Arredondo, Supervisor of World Languages and ML, Hunterdon Central Regional High School
Unveiling Inequalities — How City Middle School Students Tackled the Dress Code Debate
Brandi Gustafson, Social Studies Teacher, New Brunswick Middle School
Learning to Be a Teacher While Doing Civic Action Research with Elementary School Students
Orion Nolan, Inclusion Teacher, Roosevelt School, Manville
“We Wanted Our Project to Help Those Who Really Needed It” — A Conversation Between a Social Studies Supervisor and His Students
Dr. Tristian Cox, K–12 Social Studies Supervisor, Plainfield School District
About the Author
Dr. Beth C. Rubin
Beth C. Rubin is Professor in the Teaching of Social Studies Program in the Department of Arts and Humanities at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her work explores how young people come to see themselves as citizens and as learners amid the nested contexts of classroom, school, community, and society—with particular attention to how civic identity takes shape within local contexts marked by historical and contemporary inequalities.
She collaborates with educators to design and study curricular and pedagogical innovations that build upon this critical, sociocultural understanding of youth civic learning. Dr. Rubin is also the Principal Investigator of the Civically Engaged Districts (CED) Project.
