This forum focuses on the method and theory of engaging in participatory action research (PAR) approaches in educational settings and on the strategies, values, questions, and processes of PAR in education and youth development. Using examples from their experience, panelists offer diverse points of view on designing, implementing, and writing about PAR; the role of the academic researcher in school or community-based inquiry; the skills needed to conduct this type of research; the desired and actual outcomes of their work; and the special dilemmas and resolutions faced by participatory action researchers.
Julio Cammarota is an assistant professor in the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology and the Mexican-American Studies and Research Center at the University of Arizona. He completed a doctoral program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education in May of 2001. He has published papers on family, work, and education among Latinaos and the relationship between culture and academic achievement. He has co-authored a seminal article on applying a social justice approach to youth development practices. Currently, he is the director of the Social Justice Education Project in Tucson, Arizona.
Michelle Fine, distinguished professor of Social Psychology, Women's Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, at City University of New York. Before that she taught at the University of Pennsylvania for more than a decade. Her research focuses on youth in schools, communities and prisons, developed through critical feminist theory and method.
Jessica Madden-Fuoco received BA in History, BS in Secondary Education from Boston University and a MA in the Teaching of Social Studies from the Teachers College. Jessica comes to Teacher's College with a wealth of experience as a young but practiced pedagogue and leader. Having held faculty posts at four different public schools in Massachusetts and New York, she has taught Social Studies, GED courses as well as Reader's and Writer's Workshops. For the past three years Jessica has been a Literacy Coach and now an English Teacher at Brighton High School. At Brighton she has founded and advised three student clubs including: the Student Advocacy Program, the No Place for Hate Anti-Bias Club and the Gay-Straight Alliance.
Donna San Antonio works, studies, writes, and lives in a way that combines multiple fields. Her initial training in sociology and education led to a participant-observation research project on alternative education as it was practiced in 10 schools in eight states. As a community organizer for a 1970s antipoverty program, she became committed to civil rights and economic justice. She spent 10 years in mostly middle-school classrooms teaching social studies, language arts, and health. She returned to school to be trained as a guidance counselor and focused her study in cross-cultural counseling. San Antonio is the founder and executive director of the Appalachian Mountain Teen Project, a rural youth and community development program in central New Hampshire. She currently works in school, community, home, and wilderness settings with youth and families who have experienced economic hardship, trauma, and loss. In this program, she has designed, implemented, and evaluated projects in youth-to-youth mentoring, adventure-based counseling, parent support and education, school-based violence prevention, and projects for girls and women. She finds inspiration and hope in the creativity and courage she witnesses as the teens and families she knows face the adversarial conditions of their lives. San Antonio's practical experience and research interests lie in these areas: rural education, community development, social class and educational equity, qualitative research with adolescents, and experiential education.