Sarah Switzer and Rubén Gaztambide-Fernandez from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto discuss ethical commitments while conducting youth participatory action research (YPAR). They reflect on the importance of relationships while conducting YPAR; the challenges and opportunities faced while conducting YPAR across different settings such as schools and community health centres; participants’ motivations for involvement; and the ethical commitments that guide their work.
Sarah Switzer is a Toronto-based popular educator and community-based participatory researcher. Inspired by fifteen years of working at the intersections of community arts, peer/youth programming, and HIV and Harm Reduction, her larger program of research and teaching explores how to creatively and meaningfully engage communities who experience marginalization in programs, policy change, and collaborative knowledge translation efforts.  Her research interests include critical approaches to participation and engagement (including youth engagement), pedagogy in community-based settings and participatory visual methods.
Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández's research and scholarship are concerned with symbolic boundaries and the dynamics of cultural production and processes of identification in educational contexts. He is the Director of the Youth Research Lab at the Centre for Urban Schooling of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, where he is Principal Investigator of the Youth Solidarities Across Boundaries Project, a participatory action research project with Latinx and Indigenous youth in the city of Toronto. His theoretical work focuses on the relationship between creativity, decolonization, and solidarity.
This episode was hosted and directed by Naima Raza, produced by Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez and Sarah Switzer, and supported by Youth Research Lab Research Assistants, Andrea Vela Alarcon and Madeleine Ross.