Struggling with/against the unintentional reproduction of power structures in participatory research: Using reconstructive horizon analysis

Abstract

Shared power and democratic decision making are core epistemological commitments of participatory action research. Scholars who engage in participatory action research with youth seek to share ownership and disrupt adult/child or knower/learner binaries traditional in the Global North, in which adults are the active agents who own and transfer knowledge to children, who remain in a passive role. Yet, we have noticed during several of our projects with youth that, despite our best efforts, these knower/learner binaries can be reproduced with younger coresearchers as we exhibit care in the form of protection and provision of security. In this article, we examine three scenes from our recent youth participatory action research projects using reconstructive horizon analysis to surface and explore backgrounded validity claims that highlight the tensions between our efforts to democratize the research process and our commitment to an ethic of care for those with whom we engage in participatory knowledge production. We suggest that explicit attention to these tensions as part of the inquiry process is important for making participatory research with youth a more equitable endeavor and to build the validity of such work.