Our Mission

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.

In addition to our work with youth, the YRL is also developing ways for engaging yPAR practitioners and adult allies. We believe that in order to expand our work, it is important to build a community of youth allies and other researchers committed to facilitating this kind of work. We are beginning to do this work by develop a project around the ethics of dissemination.

This project began with a survey, which asked experienced yPAR practitioners how they made decisions about when, how, and with whom to share the knowledge created in yPAR projects.  We are now in the process of conducting live interviews with a group of yPAR practitioners to discuss other ethical dimensions of yPAR research, which we hope will turn into podcasts and published transcripts to be disseminated through open access. As part of our future plans, we are also planning a retreat for expert yPAR practitioners and youth allies, as a kind of knowledge sharing conference that from which we hope to produce materials for others interested in doing this kind of work, and that will inform our work with teachers.

For the last three years, we have also begun to develop a series of Professional development workshops for teachers interested in school-based yPAR, again in collaboration with the TDSB. We hope to continue to develop this work and will also be developing a yPAR course for the CSTD program. We are also beginning to develop a program for incorporating yPAR methods for doing anti-colonial Participatory evaluation projects in the context international development projects with youth. This work seeks to integrate indigenous worldviews and methodologies that reflect the lives of the youth with whom we work.

In addition to all these projects, the YRL is currently seeking other funding opportunities and we are in conversations with other youth researchers in Europe, in Africa, and in Latin America, with whom we hope to continue building our network of youth researchers, so stay tuned!