Jaspar Khawaja So, my name is Jaspar Khawaja, I’m an Educational Psychologist. We’re going to be talking about our recent research paper, which is exploring how youth participatory action research can be used alongside young people. It was based on a project we did collaboratively called “Breaking the Silence.” Chris, do you want to introduce yourself and tell us how Breaking the Silence came about? Christopher Bagley Hi everyone. Yeah, my name’s Chris Bagley. I’m also an Educational Psychologist and I’m Co-Director of a social enterprise called States of Mind, and it’s from the social enterprise in collaboration with the Institute of Education, University College London, that the Breaking the Silence project came about. And before Jaspar launches in to what the project is and what the principles are, it’s useful to know a little bit of background. So, our role at States of Mind as we perceive it, is to help young people to establish what are the social determinants of mental health and wellbeing, and we work very closely with them, which is often done in a very specific way using a worldview that allows them to co-produce and work together with practitioners, professionals, and peers, to think very carefully about how are social institutions, how are systems impacted upon them as human beings? And then thinking together about what we might do differently in the world to action change, which leads us very nicely into the Breaking the Silence Project, which started in 2019 in response to an Ofsted consultation that was run by the UK Government. And we recognise that government consultations and general policy changes and reforms are almost exclusively done without young people’s consent, without their buy-in and without them participating in any way in any of the ideas that emerge as part of these consultations, and we wanted to try and rectify that or ameliorate it through doing some research. So, probably helpful for Jaspar to take over now and just introduce the Breaking the Silence project as a research project in itself. Jaspar Khawaja Yeah. So, throughout Breaking the Silence, we used youth participatory action research, or YPAR for short, and this differs from typical research in two main ways. So, firstly, it takes the perspective that those experiencing societal issues are best placed to explore them. So, in our case, that was young people and it was our job to involve them throughout the research process. So, allow them to conduct research questions into the things that matter to them and allow them to conduct the, kind of, interviews and focus groups themselves. And secondly, unlike traditional research approaches, they try to be neutral and objective. YPAR starts from a position that social injustice exists, and it’s the purposes of research to find out more about an issue so that action can be taken to try and create change. So, I suppose a brief overview of Breaking the Silence. It’s evolved over several phases now, and each one has looked slightly different and involved a new group of youth researchers that co-produced the project. Broadly speaking, I suppose it’s – every project looks at the relationship between the education system and how that impacts young people’s lives and specifically their mental wellbeing. And the most recent phases have involved youth researchers exploring and then creating their own school evaluation framework. So, an alternative to Ofsted, which is currently used in the UK. So, I guess, we supported them to look at examples from around the world and to talk to different people. So, they interviewed ex-Ofsted Inspectors, other students, and also Teachers. From that information that – they then gathered the results and we analysed them together, and those findings were then used to create their own framework, which they called the “Review for Progress and Development.” So, that was a form of action by providing, I suppose, an alternative to what’s currently being done, and we’re still, kind of, working with different schools and organisations to try and implement that. So, hopefully, that will happen. So, Chris, do you want to talk a bit more about what young people looked at within project and what the outcomes of those projects were? Christopher Bagley Yeah, so, one of the things that came out really strongly from our early work at States of Mind was this focus on school evaluation and school evaluation as conceptualised now by Ofsted, having quite a negative impact on the quality, content and philosophy of education in England. And the young people wanted to delve in to this and they spent a number of years doing it, and this research paper we’re talking about today brings together the worldview that you need to proceed from and the types of approaches you can use to help them to do the things Jaspar explained there, which is ask their own research questions and explore things in their own way, at their own pace, and in ways that are meaningful to them, and outcomes that come from that. When young people feel really at the centre of their work and they experience a sense of autonomy and belongingness within a safe group is really powerful. So, we’ve had young people, as a consequence of this project, and we can see this in the paper that’s presented here, creating documentaries. They’ve spoke to education select committees. They were a very strong part of the Beyond Ofsted campaign recently, which was a reform movement around tilting the purposes of Ofsted. They’ve spoke at numerous conferences, both nationally and internationally, and they know how to speak truth to power and they understand how to critically evaluate the world around them and propose solutions. So, it’s a very different way of conceiving education, and if I was to put it – oh, sorry, conceiving education and research, and if I was to put it in a sentence, what we’re talking about in this paper here is, what can happen if young people are positioned as active subjects rather than passive objects? And the issue with it though is there is some challenges. It’s a fantastic way of working, but I thought it’d be helpful to explain a bit about the challenges. So, do you want to say a bit about that, Jaspar? Jaspar Khawaja Yeah, so, I suppose it’s difficult to find time to do this type of research. It’s very time consuming and it clashes with the education system in a lot of ways. So, for our projects, we were really lucky. So, we were working with groups of Year 12 students in colleges where States of Mind had already built relationships with staff and there was time in the timetable once a week to where they had – students had time for enrichment projects. So, we were able to work with, sort of, a group of 12 young people, over the course of most of the year, and that proceeded for a few years with different groups of students. Now, for most schools, they don’t have this time in their curriculum. It’s very difficult to do if they weren’t in sixth form because they just wouldn’t have that time, and also, I think a lot of schools and colleges would be hesitant to approach some of these issues because it does clash with the practice that they’re doing themselves. So, we were really lucky, weren’t we? To have these relationships with some staff in these schools and colleges who were really open to this approach and really, kind of, let us run with it. One of the other issues then it – that when you get into this practice is how can, I suppose adults as facilitators, meaningfully collaborate with young people? And when we were researching this and looking at it and conducted some interviews after projects with young people, there were times that they said to me, “We knew more than you thought we knew.” And they – and there were times when they thought they should have been leading more than us, more than we allowed them to, which was really interesting for us to hear, and it was great that they could tell us that, ‘cause I feel like this is a, kind of, learning process for us. The other big question I feel like you have to continually be asking yourselves as facilitators during these projects is, are you just, kind of, projecting your views onto young people? And I think there’s no easy way to know whether you are or not other than to continually be reflective yourself and to try and make sure that you’re always framing questions to young people in a broad manner, which they can take in any direction that they want. And I think they did report back to us that they did feel ownership over these projects, which was great, and I think there’s no way, unlike typical research, where you might try and reduce all the, kind of, external factors to make sure it’s, kind of, very clear what the outcome is. Here, I suppose we’re trying to combine research with real world issues to make sure it is addressing them and challenging them in a way that’s meaningful for the people that experience them. So, I suppose to finish off with, Chris, what would you say that you have learned from this process and, kind of, continue to take with you? Christopher Bagley Yeah, it’s a great question, isn’t it? And really pertinent to the purpose of the study and in terms of what people can take away from it. I think what we’ve all learned, including the young people themselves, is that the power of giving away power is incredibly energising. And some of the work that young people did as part of this project by taking ownership of it, was quite profound for them, and I’m sure, Jaspar, would agree, for us as well as practitioners, because by giving them power to co-construct studies in a way that is meaningful to them and feels very authentic, it’s pushing back against what you might argue are the formative structures of education, schooling, and research, whereby young people do not have agency. And I guess, from our perspective and having interviewed the students and followed up with them, as Jaspar just mentioned, what we found was that that’s quite longstanding and far-reaching in terms of the impact it can have on young people, not just in terms of presenting ways of changing society, but also on an individual level. And we have young people who are working with us as young leaders who’ve been part of our organisation at States of Mind for four years. Some of them have now graduated from their undergraduate degrees and are doing other things. Some of them went straight into work, but we’ve got this cohort of young people who are still interested in doing action research and thinking about the world in a way that helps ‘em to promote change, and helps them to reconsider systems and how they’re impacting upon them in a way that gives them agency to exert some control. So, I think from my perspective, those are the main things that we’ve taken away from it, and I think the young people have done, and whilst there are challenges and it’s complex to do the work, I think the value is immense, and it’s not just us saying that. There are other Teachers who we worked with, over the last four years, would also say very similar things, and we’ve really looked forward to hearing some feedback on the paper and seeing what people think. I just wanted to say any other thoughts, Jaspar, and from me, thank you very much, is my last word. Jaspar Khawaja Yeah, the only thing just to build on what you were saying was, I had similar thoughts of how hard it was to know, during the project, whether they were engaged or enjoying it. And that – the moment that we really knew was when we were giving them these optional things. So, they had the chance to do a documentary and then they were volunteering their own time, and like you say, at least, kind of, three or four, from each phase of the project, continue out of their own time, and I was thinking that wasn’t what I was doing when I was 17. I suppose I was never given the option to do some of this stuff, but it really showed us that this was important to them and they’ve, kind of, continued with it. So, that for me, yeah, was definitely the most powerful thing, is seeing how they led and took ownership, and yeah, we’re looking forward to, I suppose, hearing more about how people engage with the work. So, thanks from both of us.