An Ella Baker Behind-the-Scenes Look at Youth Research and Strategic School Leadership.

This ethnographically-informed study observed a youth research team in collaboration with district leaders and university researchers to inform their school district’s school improvement plans. When creating school change initiatives and educational policies in the United States, community members, including youth, rarely give input (Lac & Mansfield, 2018), even though students are highly knowledgeable about school experiences and are most affected by those initiatives and policies. With an epistemology of culturally responsive leadership and youth participatory action research (YPAR), this school district's Assessment, Research, and Evaluation department initiated a 9-week summer program for high schoolers to research and advocate for their schools and communities. In our study, we focus on the roles and strategies of adults (sometimes big sisters or "aunties") who honored the lived experiences of youth researchers and mentored them throughout a data gathering and analysis process to impact school change. We use Ella Baker's approach to organizing to better understand how group-centered leadership and social justice networking were integral to this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]