Youth Participatory Science: A Grassroots Curriculum Framework for Secondary Science Education
Conceptualizing Youth Participatory Science (YPS)
Youth Participatory Science (YPS) is introduced by Daniel Morales-Doyle and Alejandra Frausto as a grassroots approach to science education that synthesizes traditions from Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and citizen science. While YPAR is often associated with social science methods, YPS specifically emphasizes the tools and methods of the natural sciences. Furthermore, YPS extends the traditional bounds of citizen science by prioritizing youth agency, pedagogy, and the democratization of participation across every phase of knowledge production. It aims to bridge the gap created by disciplinary boundaries that have historically kept critical pedagogy and YPAR out of science classrooms. The conceptual definition of YPS is organized around its three constituent words: Youth, Participatory, and Science.
The "Youth" in YPS highlights the unique capacity of young people to contribute to intergenerational struggles for social justice. It explicitly challenges adultism and the systemic criminalization of urban youth of color. Under the ideology of racial capitalism, youth are often viewed merely as future economic producers or as potential disruptions to the status quo. This leads to a "learn-to-earn" lens in science education, where resistant students are criminalized or labeled as unmotivated. YPS functions as a form of "street science," a term coined by Corburn in 2005, which values the wisdom and local understandings of communities marginalized by racism and economic dispossession. Unlike informal street science, YPS is specifically designed to provide equitable science learning within the institutional constraints of school settings.
The "Participatory" aspect of YPS demands that youth participate in all phases of scientific inquiry, not just as data collectors or "crowd-sourcers," which is a common limitation in citizen science. It replaces the exclusionary connotations of the word "citizen," which can marginalize undocumented immigrants, with a focus on praxis. This approach draws on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the "organic intellectual," describing pedagogies that cultivate students into transformative intellectuals who build on everyday understandings while systematically studying the world from multiple perspectives. YPS constrains the selection of problems to those that can be addressed via the natural sciences, ensuring students appropriate these specific tools.
The "Science" in YPS acknowledges both the powerful insights and the historical limitations of scientific ways of knowing. It recognizes that hegemonic science has frequently undergirded various forms of oppression, including European and United States imperialism. Consequently, YPS adopts a cross-cultural and decolonizing approach where science is taught as one way of knowing among many. This develops what Paulo Freire termed "epistemological curiosity," a critical perspective on how knowledge is produced and its implications for action. Students learn to use science to address community challenges while simultaneously critiquing and potentially reimagining the enterprise of science itself.
The YPS Curriculum Framework and the Cycle of Praxis
The YPS curriculum framework is designed to help teachers navigate the tensions between authentic community scientific problems and the rigid structures of school science, such as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). While the NGSS often suggests a carefully constructed "storyline" to explain natural phenomena, YPS argues that community-based problems are too unpredictable for such linear planning. Instead, the framework uses a five-phase cycle derived from the 5E instructional model (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate) and the praxis cycles of YPAR. The five phases of the YPS cycle are: (1) Define the Social Justice Science Issue (SJSI), (2) Apply a Scientific Lens, (3) Plan and Conduct an Investigation, (4) Analyze Data and Assess Learning, and (5) Reflect, Disseminate, and Act.
Unlike the 5E model, which prioritizes "conceptual change" (often treating student prior knowledge as misconceptions to be corrected), the YPS framework aligns with the socially transformative goals of critical pedagogy. It recognizes community and critical knowledge as legitimate. The framework acts as a bridge between the conceptual world of science and the life conditions of students. In implementation, teachers often find themselves "doubling back" between middle phases, creating mini-cycles within the larger structure. This iterative process ensures that scientific theories and methods are appropriated as tools to understand the social justice science issues identified by the community.
Defining Social Justice Science Issues (SJSI) and Challenging Binaries
Mainstream science education often organizes around "natural phenomena," which can inadvertently presume a nature-culture binary and push questions of justice to the margins. YPS centers on Social Justice Science Issues (SJSI). These are themes involving both scientific and social components that local communities deem important. By focusing on SJSI, educators can blur the nature-culture binary and utilize critical social theory. An essential part of this phase is foregrounding the brilliance and strength of the community rather than adopting a "damage-centered" perspective, which Tuck (2009) defines as a focus on the pain caused by oppression.
A practical example of defining an SJSI involved heavy metal contamination in Chicago. Various neighborhoods identified different salient issues: lead paint in dilapidated housing, legacy toxins from defunct lead smelters, or manganese contamination from current steel industries. To engage students, teachers used a Photovoice assignment, asking students to photograph four things: something beautiful, something ugly, something clean, and something contaminated. This served as a starting point for discussions on environmental racism. While students might identify issues like graffiti (which might not be a scientific problem), teachers guide the focus toward scientific elements, such as the lead content in the peeling paint on those same structures, thus honoring the student's observation while meeting disciplinary responsibilities.
Applying a Scientific Lens and Metric Conversions
In the second phase, students apply a scientific lens, but this is done with a caveat: science alone cannot solve socio-political complexities. Students are taught to problematize science, considering how chemical engineers or industry-funded research historically ignored the toxicity of lead to protect profits. This cross-cultural approach presents scientific practices as tools for appropriation. For instance, a metric conversion activity was designed around Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards for lead in residential soils () and drinking water (), as well as Centers for Disease Control (CDC) definitions of childhood lead poisoning ( of lead in blood).
This activity highlights that the National Institute for Environmental Health Services states no amount of lead is safe. By teaching metric units through this lens, the base-ten system is historicized as an innovation from India that democratized mathematics, rather than a purely Western invention. Students develop concrete and abstract understandings of conversion factors as necessary tools to protect their communities. This shift requires science teachers to move away from being mere "promoters" of science and instead become facilitators who help students analyze the socio-political origins of scientific problems.
Planning and Conducting Investigations with Community Impact
The third phase of the YPS framework focuses on "doing science for what and for whom?" It encourages investigations that flatten the hierarchy between scientific and local knowledge. For example, following the Flint water crisis, students designed studies on urban heavy metal contamination. They used the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) program and combined it with local knowledge of where residents might be exposed to legacy lead in soil. Students designed sampling plans for public lands, choosing between various levels of methodological rigor and reliability.
Because sophisticated scientific instruments, such as those used for X-ray fluorescence or mass spectrometry, are often unavailable in schools, partnerships with university scientists are utilized. While university staff might operate the high-end machines, the youth remain responsible for understanding the underlying chemistry. Teachers design activities using accessible instruments and chemicals to model the functionality of the university equipment. This allows students to construct scientific explanations of how their data was generated, effectively cycling back to "applying a scientific lens" while conducting the investigation.
Data Analysis, Assessment, and the Lead Ratio Case Study
During the "Analyze Data and Assess Learning" phase, teachers must balance the need to assess canonical science concepts with the unique data generated by the YPS project. Analysis often requires understanding contamination thresholds, historical sources, and mathematical representations. For example, middle school students learning ratios and proportions analyzed lead data from old paint on a neighborhood viaduct. One sixth-grade student researched United States Consumer Product Safety Commission limits and independently calculated a ratio.
She discovered that the peeling paint on the viaduct contained more than the national limit for lead. This finding became the center of a presentation to a city council member. This illustrates how youth-led knowledge production can occur at the intersection of analytical chemistry, mathematics, and public policy. However, this phase also often reveals the limits of science; despite the evidence, the scientific data alone was not always enough to force immediate remediation by the city. Teachers use this to assess academic achievement through lab reports and exams, demonstrating that YPS supports traditional standards while also fulfilling requirements for service learning and civic engagement.
Reflection, Dissemination, and Action
The final phase of the framework involves authentic assessment, where knowledge construction serves a purpose beyond the classroom. Students become "transformative intellectuals" with grassroots credibility. Dissemination methods identified by teachers include presenting at conferences, writing journal articles, creating blogs, children's books, or "artivism." This phase challenges the traditional school model that separates academic success from community tradition. By collaborating with local organizations, students see that their efforts are part of a long history of activism.
YPS recognizes that the relationship between scientific evidence and social action is not always linear. For instance, the burden of proof for environmental harm should not always fall on marginalized communities. However, scientific tools can be strategic in political maneuvering. Teachers encourage classes to see their work as a contribution to a larger, ongoing project that might be picked up by the next year's students. This approach connects science learning to community engagement and supports the agency of young people to "write the world."
Challenges, Supports for Teachers, and Intergenerational Knowledge
Implementing YPS faces significant institutional barriers, including school administrators who prioritize scripted curricula and accountability measures tied to standardized testing. To overcome this, the authors suggest aligning YPS projects with existing district initiatives for culturally relevant teaching, student voice, and civic engagement. In the Chicago Public Schools context, for example, YPS projects helped students meet high school graduation requirements for service learning. The framework provides a structure to help teachers organize planning under these constraints.
Furthermore, YPS emphasizes the need for intergenerational knowledge production. While youth are at the center, the work must involve parents, grandparents, and community elders to be truly transformative. This requires teachers to be proactive and humble learners themselves, building their capacity to critique science and understand environmental justice movements. Moving forward, YPS seeks to create new ways of relating to the world through "slow activism"—everyday forms of caring and resistance—while providing the scientific resources necessary for community self-determination and sustainability.