Engaging students by enlisting them to study their own schools
- 3 min. read ▪ Published
UC Berkeley School of Public Health has released a toolkit designed to promote K-12 student engagement and prevent chronic absenteeism.
The adapted toolkit, entitled Leveraging Best Practices to Design Youth Participatory Action Research: Student Engagement and Absenteeism Focus, was developed by a multi-university and community partner team and released on the UC-Berkeley Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Hub, a free online resource launched in 2015 with partner San Francisco Peer Resources to support the training of young people to conduct research to improve their lives, communities, and schools.
The toolkit is noted as a resource in the U.S. Department of Education’s Attendance Champion Challenge, which promotes innovative ideas to reduce chronic school absenteeism.
The toolkit’s authors make the case that students are often the best source of insights on why they aren’t present at school, and what it would take to bring them back.
Psychologist Emily J. Ozer, professor of Community Health Sciences, a driving force behind UC Berkeley’s leadership in YPAR to promote youth empowerment and wellbeing, hopes that the toolkit and the YPAR Hub site will raise educators’ awareness about the value of teaching students to research problems at their own schools.
“The goal for this adapted toolkit is that the schools, cities, and states that are grappling with the very challenging problem of students not showing up to school, or not being in classes while at school will understand the role that youth-led research can play in understanding the issues and creating solutions with students,” said Ozer, who is also director of the Institute of Human Development. “Youth-developed evidence should be part of the conversation, and help to inform practice and policy.”
The kit, designed for K-12, includes guidance and case studies that will make it easier to plan and carry out research with student investigators. It was developed by the UC-Berkeley Public Health YPAR team in partnership with the UC Davis Center for Regional Change, SF Peer Resources, Peer Leaders Uniting Students (PLUS), and the San Francisco Unified School District’s Research, Planning, and Assessment Department.
Student-led research to date has found numerous concerns that keep kids from school including stress, safety concerns, bullying, experiences of racism and homophobia, transportation challenges, and mental health problems.
In addition to Emily Ozer, other University of California collaborators are: Ahna Ballonoff Suleiman from UC Davis, who was the lead on the original YPAR toolkit; and Amia Nash and Brian Villa, from UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Additional collaborators include Heather Kennedy (University of Colorado), Michelle Abraczinskas (University of Florida) and Elizabeth Hubbard (San Francisco community partner).
Funding for the original toolkit that was adapted for the Attendance Champion challenge was provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, with additional funding from the UC Berkeley Possibility Lab, William T. Grant Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation, the Adolescent and Young Adult Health Research Network, and the Life Course Intervention Research Network. Funding for the national YPAR network also supporting this effort is from the Bezos Family Foundation.