Structural and Relational Entanglements in Teacher Education and Participatory Inquiry and Action Involving Youth

This paper examines efforts in participatory inquiry and action with early adolescents, high school students, and teacher candidates. The context was an after-school program in a K-8 public school identified by the district as “underperforming.” The school serves a majority of African American students from economically stressed neighborhoods within an increasingly privatized Midwestern urban district landscape. In the spirit of collective reflexivity, we consider the ways in which the project neared goals of transformation and the ways in which it reproduced social and material relations (Chiu, 2006; Drame & Irby, 2016; Nichols, 2009).