Mentoring in Student-Action Research: A Case Study

By: Wendy de los Reyes, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI Tyler Cooney, City of Hialeah Educational Academy, Hialeah, FL Mariah Kornbluh, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR November 27, 2023

Author note: We have written many times on the NMRC website about Participatory Action Research, particularly youth-led forms of this work, which is an excellent strategy for empowering youth voice and for connecting young people to community issues they care most about. The post below offers a brief case study of one youth-led participatory action project that some of the NMRC Research Board members are involved in. We offer this as an example of what this work can look like and hope it inspires other programs to consider similar efforts.

Young people have the capacity to create knowledge. Within collaborative youth-adult partnerships, adults can intentionally share power with young people while also providing training and support. A form of these partnerships is referred to as youth participatory action research (YPAR), in which youth inquire about issues in their local contexts (e.g., communities, schools), and conduct research to inform ways to take action to address these issues (e.g., public presentations). YPAR fosters critical thinking, academic achievement, and civic engagement while expanding youth social capital through fostering new relationships and career opportunities (see resources at the end for more information). At City of Hialeah Educational Academy; Hialeah, Florida (COHEA), students have started to conduct research with the support of graduate student mentors by taking the Advanced Placement (AP) Capstone course, which is a two-year course offered by College Board aimed at developing college preparedness, research writing skills, and higher-order thinking. This project illustrates how a YPAR project can utilize mentoring relationships to get youth more engaged in their community.

COHEA is a medium-sized public charter school (98.2 % Hispanic). As a Title 1 school, the majority of COHEA students qualify for free or reduced lunch (90%) and FAFSA scholarships when they attend college. The impetus for bringing the AP Capstone program to COHEA was the faculty’s desire to capitalize on their students’ potential and give them a greater level of preparation in research and writing, as well as better equipping them for a diversity of colleges/universities after graduation.

Two of the authors, Wendy and Tyler, have been thinking about this process of high school students collaborating with adults to develop their own research. Tyler is the first and only instructor to teach this new course at his school, and Wendy collaborated with him as one of the graduate student mentors and by providing some materials from her undergraduate research methods course.

During the first year course, AP Seminar, the students develop research questions and examine them in teams. At the end of the year, the students submit a portfolio of team and individual papers and presentations and take an end of course exam. In AP Research, the second year course, the students individually develop an original research question that prompts them to conduct an original, replicable research project and write a 4,000 word paper summarizing their literature review, method, results, and analysis, while also conducting a 15-20 minute presentation on their findings.

In the 2022-23 school year, five mentors, all either with or pursuing a graduate degree, agreed to pair with one or two of Tyler’s 11 students to help them navigate their project. Mentor disciplines included Psychology, Latin-American Studies, Religious Studies, Advanced Mathematics, and Biology. Tyler developed a consistent, yet low-stakes structure, where he paired the students and mentors depending on student interests and mentor field(s) and/or discipline(s) of study. The students were instructed to write a professional email requesting the mentorship of each person, asking for a once-a-month meeting schedule that would last through the end of the core piece of project design and execution (October-April). They then had to take notes during their meetings and store them in their class portfolio. Thankfully, all mentor-mentee relationships this first year lasted the entire duration of the course and had positive outcomes both on the students’ projects and their personal journeys through the class.

One thing Tyler noticed about the mentorship component of the course, perhaps more than the College Board envisioned, was that the students’ projects became more specified (which he expected) and localized (which he did not expect) after connecting with mentors. Meeting with their mentors, all of whom either live or have lived in Miami, encouraged them to explore issues in their own communities over more of an emphasis on national or international issues. Examples of student projects included:

  • Special needs funding in Hialeah public schools
  • How academic achievement varied based on Hispanic parent involvement
  • How the eldest child in immigrant families adapted to household responsibilities compared to their siblings
  • How smartphone use in school impacted academic performance

These research topics, which were personal in nature, were developed more thoroughly through their mentor relationships, mostly due to the fact that all of the mentors made a concerted effort to get to know their mentees, spending more than the minimum time commitment to connect with them. All of the mentors also communicated with Tyler throughout the year, bouncing ideas back and forth and discussing some of the issues their mentees brought up. Communication between the mentors and Tyler was mainly informal, over text, phone calls, or brief in-person check-ins. Communication between the mentors and students was documented through notes taken by the students and stored in their online portfolios. This provided a holistic, community-centered aspect to the course that Tyler did not anticipate going into the school year. When the mentors spent time getting to know the students on a deeper level than just their topic of inquiry, the students expressed a comfort level that allowed them to trust the constructive criticism they were receiving. Similarly, when the mentors communicated with Tyler about their mentee’s project, they expressed a deeper understanding of both the rubric and the student’s project that allowed them to give more informed feedback to the student. Some of the students’ experiences with their mentoring relationship are highlighted below:

  • “My AP capstone project required a lot of advanced calculations, which I was not familiar with at the time. Being unsure of what direction to approach or organize my research made my task appear very challenging. However, after meeting my mentor, I was able to understand how exactly I was supposed to get those calculations and what they signified for my study. I felt that my mentor was able to guide me at the moments in my project that I was unsure and provide the needed advice so that I could successfully carry out my study.” –AG
  • “Working with my mentor was an experience where I learned many skills not only with regards to research, but also how to approach a problem in general. When meeting with my mentor, many of the difficulties that I had with my research project were solved by focusing on smaller details during the preparations, which ranged from things like a formula or just identifying basic logistics. I wasn’t one to visit my mentor often however when I did, I would come out feeling like I am 3 steps ahead of where I was when I came in. Overall, this experience and the skills I learned have shaped me to be more cautious and careful in my approaches in college when completing labs and research projects.” –JM
  • “My mentor was a really big help during my research process. He helped me understand how to know what I wanted to look for which has helped me so far as a freshman in college. He not only helped me refine my procedures and my scope but he also made me realize that research at almost any level is essentially the same rough trial and error process, even at advanced levels.” –RV

Opportunities for mentorship connected students to the academic community, while also benefiting scholarship at large by bringing more diverse voices into the fold. This approach to the AP Capstone program gives students at COHEA an opportunity to explore the issues close to them more in depth, which in turn has inspired them to bring their stories and perspectives to the wider academic community. It has also encouraged them to seek attendance at a university outside of their hometown while bringing their localized ideas, experiences, and causes with them.

What’s next? Tyler and Wendy are considering a collaboration in which students and the mentors will be interviewed or surveyed to have a better understanding of the students’ development and how the mentoring component can be strengthened. Additionally, Mariah has been working with teachers in Richland South Carolina with a similar AP Capstone format. Discussions have involved tracking students’ involvement in the program over time and understanding how such experiences impact both academic and social-emotional development.

In sum, this case study highlights some of the benefits of students developing research projects through the support of a mentor. Our takeaways from the case study include the importance of relationship development between the students and the mentors, which helped students narrow their focus to local challenges/solutions, as well as develop skills they were able to implement into their research project. The structure developed by Tyler also allowed students to take lead in the communication with their mentors while also providing accountability that communication was taking place through their portfolio meeting notes. Additionally, Tyler created informal touch points between him and the mentors throughout the year. This format provides a promising model for high school students to develop their own research.

Interested in learning more about YPAR and/or YPAR within mentoring programs? See list of resources below:

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