Participatory action research with college students to advance social justice in higher education

Bailey B. Smolarek, Matthew Wolfgram, Mai Neng Vang and Chundou Her

Chapter 18 in Handbook of Social Justice in Education, 2026, pp 275-287 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter includes an overview of participatory action research (PAR) and a methodological, ethical, and practical discussion of its use with higher education students through examples grounded in seven years of work with HMoob American undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We explore the exciting ways PAR can study issues in higher education through deep engagement with the students most affected by systemically inequitable structures. We argue that PAR engages minoritized students to take a lead in researching the conditions that impact their education, providing evidence-based policy advocacy that fosters transformative institutional change. We focus our discussion on the creative and powerful action and dissemination our student researchers have led to help process their research experiences, present to the community, and share with one another. We see this non-traditional dissemination work as a means of exposing educational injustice, engaging in culturally sustaining pedagogy, and enacting reparative community healing.

Keywords: Participatory Action Research; Social Justice Education Research; Hmong Education; Higher Education; Action Research; Educational Praxis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035318445
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035318452.00028 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22645_18

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().