Making Sense of Movements 

PI Eve Tuck

Years active

3 (Winter 2018 - Fall 2020) 

Abstract

Making Sense of Movements is a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project that seeks to learn more about how Indigenous and Black youth aged 14-18 living in Toronto make sense of the social movements, schools and communities, and the programs and policies that affect them. More specifically, this study tries to understand how social movements, like No Ban On Stolen Land, Idle No More & Black Lives Matter, impact youth participants’ decision-making and personal-community relationships. Since Winter 2018, there have been four iterations or what we often refer to as waves of this project. Although each wave had different focuses, the overarching goal was to ask young people to share their ideas about social issues, injustice, and social movements by engaging participatory photography techniques (such as, photography). In the first two waves, youth participants spent time thinking about two prominent social movements, Idle No More and Black Lives Matter, especially with regard to their post-secondary school decision making. In the third and fourth wave, youth participants continued to have conversations around significant social movements and thinking more specifically about the impacts of high school pushout on Indigenous and Black youth. At the beginning of the third wave, young people helped to co-design a research study by formulating research objectives, questions, and learning more about qualitative research methods under the guidance of graduate student researcher assistants and Dr. Eve Tuck. In the fourth and final wave, youth co-researchers began carrying out the research by conducting semistructured interviews with Black and Indigenous high school students and by engaging portraiture. Youth co-researchers engaged both research methods to learn more about the impacts of racism in high school push out. 

Methods

Youth Participatory Action Research, Visual Research Methods, Photovoice, Interviews

Ethical Framework

The ethical framework of this study is grounded in collaboration. Collaboration was central to the learning and meaning-making  done in the program between 

Indigenous and Black high school students, Graduate Research Assistants, Dr. Eve Tuck, and other community art-based practitioners. In this project, young people were treated as both participants, and key collaborators to the research project. 

Theories of Change

This research study treats youth as experts of their own lives. This work also understands that young people have a story to tell about how racism functions in their high schools and have key insights about the meaning of significant social movements in their own lives and for future generations. 

Kind of Evidence

Interview data, session recordings, visual data (portraits, surveillance maps, charts), and podcast recordings, comic book art, screen printing 

Knowledge Mobilization 

The knowledge mobilization strategies are as follows: (1) To inform research questions and future research design; (2) share findings and results through conference presentations, publications, and community events; and (3) to share findings and results through websites, social media posts, interviews, and guest blog posts. 

Keywords

Youth Participatory Action Research, Social Movements, High School pushout

Disciplines

Education

Project funded by

William T. Grant Foundation, SSHRC