The Youth Research Lab is a Hub of youth-oriented research with a particular commitment to participatory methods and to working with youth who experience marginalization within schools. Established in 2017, the lab brings together several projects with a focus on school-based youth participatory action research and supporting the work of adult facilitators and allies. Youth participatory action research (yPAR) is a research methodology in which youth engage in collaborative and self-reflective approaches to learn about the research process and carry out their own projects for the purpose of making a positive contribution to their schools and communities. yPAR positions youth as experts of their life experience whose understandings of their world are real and whole. A transformational politics is integral to yPAR. 

Action research helps you to become a more powerful version of yourself, able to engage in and engage others in a process of continual learning and change. This free course, offered by the Center for Collaborative Action Research,  is comprised of 12 Tutorials each with a short video to watch, a set of activities to complete (with linked writing templates for writing activities) and resources to support the completion of the activities. The goal of creating these materials is to "flip the classroom" so that learning about action research is done outside of the collaborative learning space so that valuable collaborative time can be used to support the action research ideas of each person in the group or class.  Feel free to share links that might be useful in our efforts to support action researchers. You can use the form at the bottom of this page or visit, join our Facebook Group.  To learn more about teaching action research, please visit Supporting the Teaching of Action Research (STAR) an action research community of the Action Network of the Americas (ARNA). 

The aim of the Addressing Injustices project is to engage students in critical and creative ways by collaborating with teachers, community members, teacher educators, and researchers. The project aims to develop a social justice-oriented critical literacy curriculum through principles of critical practitioner research and youth participatory action research. The goal is to effect change in and beyond schools, increase opportunities for students and teachers to understand curriculum as a vehicle for change, and involve 80-100 teacher candidates and 150 students in co-creating curriculum to accompany five young adult novels that explore issues of identity, culture, and power.

In the first podcast dedicated solely to Action Research, Adam and Joe do a deep dive into the lives, experiences, philosophies, and - of course - investigations of the most well respected action researchers in the field. Hear about their greatest successes and failures, and learn about what makes Action Research unique. If you are passionate about social change, engage in research, or are a budding scholar then this is the perfect podcast for you. Intended mostly for those interested in research and social change, The Action Research Podcast aims to offer unique and valuable insights for the field through accessible and engaging conversations about the “what” “why” and “how” of Action Research.

Participatory Action Research (PAR), an approach to knowledge creation which intentionally includes research, education, and social action, is nearing its 50th anniversary. To help celebrate, our podcasts showcase the contributions of many of the early Participatory Action Research Feminist Trailblazers and Good Troublemakers. We talk with these trailblazers about their work, struggles, and successes bringing feminist values and ways of being to PAR, as well as discuss their insights for the future of a PAR intentionally informed by intersectional feminisms. PAR has long promoted its liberatory and transformational intentions. Yet, without meaningful and intentional inclusion of intersectional feminisms, what is PAR liberating us from and transforming us into? Reflecting on the past, the trailblazers help us re-vision a more gender transformative or feminist-informed participatory and action research future. Our podcasts help document and amplify the diverse origins, histories, and herstories of PAR. The series is not intended to be an “official” history of one version of PAR. We showcase the diverse origins and impulses of PAR. We use PAR as an inclusive, very wide, umbrella term, including many schools of participatory and action research such as participatory research, participatory action research, action research, research circles, cooperative inquiry, community-based participatory research, participatory research EntreMundos, youth participatory action research, feminist participatory action research, Black emancipatory action research, and educational or teacher action research.

This site was created as part of a university-community participatory action research (PAR) collaboration between Carleton College and community members and institutions in Faribault, MN. The project was funded by a grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). The project involved high school and college students, parents, high school and college teachers, administrators, college civic engagement staff, and many others. It involved working across three languages: English, Spanish, and Somali. While we found many wonderful resources, especially in English and Spanish, we wanted to create a site that would host in one place resources for various constituencies, including youth, teachers, parents, university collaborators, and community organizations. We also wanted to create Somali resources about PAR because we found it difficult to locate such resources. This website has involved the labor, skills, and imaginations of many, many people–please check out our acknowledgements page for a list of some of these people. 

The goal of this site is to provide a shared platform for the people who are using learning circles in their work or classrooms. The learning circle model is described in a general way that encompasses a wide range of applications in many different contexts with different circles of learners. This general framework is described with the goal of making it easier for those who want to support learning in groups to understand and implement this model. The strengths of the model are individual engagement through distributed leadership and group investment in the design of a collaborative effort.

 The Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA) unites college and university students and faculty conducting practitioner inquiry into teaching and learning with fellow action researchers in public schools, private schools, community settings and workplaces throughout the Americas. ARNA members are committed to taking action locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally to promote action research that is conducted with a commitment to honesty, integrity, inclusiveness, multi-vocality, engagement, and achievement within sustainable democratic societies.