Core Elements of Participatory Action Research for Educational Empowerment and Risk Prevention with Urban Youth

Abstract

This paper describes Youth-PAR, a social science and advocacy-based approach to working with young people, an emerging field that cuts across current movements: positive youth development, experiential education, prevention and service learning. Because it is inherently critical, addressing structural as well as individual and group level disparities, it is particularly suitable for working with disenfranchised or marginalized youth to assist them to gain a more central position and greater voice in shaping their own and their communities' socio-political, cultural, educational and public health futures.