Padilla-Lebrón, Yolanda

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    “I am doing better and better”: From critical pedagogy to action research
    (2011) Padilla-Lebrón, Yolanda; Pratt, Ellen; College of Arts and Sciences - Arts; Brusi, Rima; Vicente, Nancy V.; Carroll, Kevin; Department of English; Camayd, Elvia
    The main goal of this Participatory Action Research (PAR) study is to empower students to become aware of, and address issues of inequality and social injustices through literacy practices such as reading and writing instructed by the paradigm “Critical Pedagogy”. This study was implemented in the context of a collaboration between the students of a public school and the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez (UPRM). The participants are students from the program “Centro Universitario para el Acceso” (CUA) from the UPRM and they are middle school students who live in public housing who for years, have been marginalized. The participants analyzed, reflected and wrote about social issues in order to later, create an activity where they let their voices be heard through a booklet. While the students were reading and writing about social justice, they became more interested in learning English and in doing activities which foster community service. Consequently they also created their own action research project where they identified a social problem in their community and tried to solve it. The outcome of the project shows how the paradigms “Action Research” and “Critical Pedagogy” work best when they are implemented together, in a project that should be a collaborative effort between the stakeholders (in this case the students) and the researchers (teacher).