Reimagining Tight Spaces: YPAR, Resistance, and Possibility in Public Schools

Abstract

This dissertation explores how Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) functions as a form of resistance and possibility within the tight spaces of public schooling. Drawing from critical ethnography, the study examines how teachers and students navigate, resist, and reimagine educational environments constrained by standardized curricula, surveillance, and political hostility—particularly in Arizona’s deeply contested public school landscape. Working in four YPAR classrooms across three high schools, this research centers the experiences of both students and teachers, positioning them as agents of transformation.Grounded in theories of third space (Soja, 2008; Gutiérrez, 2008), infrapolitics (Scott, 1990), and critical consciousness (Freire, 1970), the study reveals how YPAR cultivates student agency, critical inquiry, and culturally relevant pedagogy. The research identifies how teachers and students create spaces of resistance within schools, challenging dominant narratives and reimagining what education can be. Through interviews, classroom observations, and surveys, findings illustrate how these third spaces become sites of both survival and liberation—where student voice and teacher advocacy coalesce in everyday acts of infrapolitical resistance. Ultimately, this dissertation contributes to scholarship on critical pedagogy, teacher resistance, and youth activism by documenting the complexities and possibilities of embedding YPAR into public school classrooms. It offers a nuanced portrait of how education practitioners and youth work together to transform schools from spaces of constraint into places of collective inquiry and hope.