Reading School: Critical Literacies of the Youth Equity Agents

In this article, I focus on the critical literacies of Black and Latinx youth participating in a youth participatory action research project, as well as the pedagogies that engaged those literacies. Critical ethnographic study of the Youth Equity Agents' literacy practices revealed that they enacted a practice of reading school, wherein they investigated and acted on racial injustices in their local school worlds. Although youth had clearly been investigating injustice as a part of their daily navigations of urban schooling, this practice was engaged and extended in the youth participatory action research project. A pedagogical approach that positioned youth as knowledge producers and centered their social interests facilitated this, as did specific teaching practices such as engaging social theory and exploring the material environments of school. Youth applied this learning to produce digital photo counternarratives with the potential to transform inequity in schooling.