Voices for Change: A Black Educator Action Project
We are building a network of Black teacher-researchers from across the country who use their expertise and lived experiences to serve all students and support a just education system.
Participatory Action Research for Education Systems Change
Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a collaborative research method that engages community members in the research process. PAR provides a framework for participants to examine, understand, and address social problems through action. Research for Action uses PAR to center the lived experiences of those closest to educational issues collaborating as partners to design and conduct research that challenges inequities and addresses the needs of a particular group—often a historically marginalized group—whose expertise has been excluded from prior research, discourse, and solutions.
Relying on top-down, piecemeal fixes to transform complex education systems does not serve a just education system. Likewise, the academic tradition privileges objectivity and ignores the biases that external “experts” bring when they study a community, rather than working alongside it.
Through PAR and other community-engaged research approaches we will demonstrate how research can be used as an instrument of creating a just education system by centering new ways of knowing and building evidence around community-driven theories of change. Through the PAR approach, we can create new models of knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing. Growing into this vision and transforming traditional research practice takes time, but we’ve already begun this ground-shifting work through our PAR initiative with Black teachers.
PAR with Black Teacher-Researchers
This initiative facilitates the development of Black educators as action researchers and change agents who examine core problems in their profession and define actionable solutions.
When included in research solely as subjects, Black teachers are rarely involved in designing studies or the sensemaking that informs the field’s knowledge production and resulting policy recommendations. While teacher participatory action research is not new, it has typically been used for teacher pedagogical and practice-based inquiry and change. Drawing on a PAR approach with Black teachers nationally to drive systemic and transformational social change is a deeply underused and innovative strategy. We believe that providing Black educators an opportunity to engage with research and data, identify structural barriers, and define more equitable policies and practices will lead to lasting change in our education systems and institutions. The work we have completed, and the existing literature on PAR, prove that this method is effective.
In addition to producing actionable research, this project addresses the need for systems change by building a research, learning, and action community and network of teacher-researchers. Through this work, teacher-researchers:
- Gain new or deepen existing skills in conducting rigorous research through a paid professional learning opportunity.
- Co-design and conduct participatory action research (PAR) studies. The project places Black teachers at the center of a research, truth-telling, and knowledge-generation process. Teacher-researchers examine the unique contribution of Black teachers, the supports and conditions that sustain and retain Black teachers, as well as the factors that push them out of classrooms and schools.
- Engage in advocacy, impact, and action. Through the action phase of this initiative the teacher-researchers leverage their collective sensemaking to envision research-based solutions and impactful strategies for change. So far, these actions have included:
- Shedding light on and envisioning solutions to systemic barriers and discriminatory practices within K-12 education, such as hiring biases, inadequate professional development, and the invisible tax on Black teachers.
- Creation of products including podcasts, blog posts, and a digital archive to amplify the unique contributions of Black teachers and highlight the ongoing legacy of Black educators.
- Visioning and design of strategies to support Black teachers through innovative mentorship and affinity space models.
- Creating safe and supportive networks for Black teachers to imagine and advocate for just systems that would allow them to thrive in their roles.