Living YPAR in Environmental Education: Students Assembled in Leadership and Making Action with Nature, Discovering Environmental Responsibility (SALAMANDER)

The intersecting issues that this study addresses are the lack of engagement in civic opportunities for underserved youth and the environmental injustices that disproportionately impact marginalized populations. To address these issues, the purpose of this youth participatory action research (YPAR) investigated how a high school science teacher implemented YPAR within a high school AP Environmental class in a large Midwestern city. To gather data, the teacher-researcher wrote detailed memos throughout the YPAR project and coded her memos using two layers of codes. The first layer was open coded and found the following themes “building collective, culture, environmental philosophy, teacher hindsight, teacher emotion, engagement, pandemic impacts, student hope, and teacher hope.” The second layer was coded to the four stages (suffering, surviving, challenging, and thriving) within the SALAMANDER Framework. The teacher also created a YPAR curriculum for teachers and curriculum developers that can be integrated into an AP Environmental Science or regular science classroom. Findings will help schools, curriculum developers, and policymakers understand the ways educators can teach environmental science students to use their agency through the civic process to dismantle power imbalances that relate to environmental injustices