Participatory Action Research With Teacher Activists: Walking The Spiral And “Making The Invisible Visible”

This dissertation explores a participatory action research (PAR) project, grounded in popular education, that involved the author and five K-12 teacher activists. This project is explored through three article manuscripts. The first manuscript, aimed at a practitioner audience and intended for publication in a practitioner-oriented journal, frames this PAR project as a form of professional development for teacher activists and provides a narrative of the experience from start to finish. The second manuscript, aimed at an academic audience and intended for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, provides an account and analysis of this PAR project and explores the various forms of growth teacher activists experienced from their involvement in this research endeavor. The final manuscript, aimed at an academic audience and intended for publication in another peer-reviewed journal, features an analysis of the challenges and tensions involved in this PAR project. Central implications explored at the close of this dissertation include the notion that teacher activists possess valuable experiential knowledge that should be shared amongst the teaching corps; teacher activism can involve forms of cultural activism and public pedagogy; the teacher activist identity is more expansive than commonlyperceived; and PAR may offer an empowering experience for teacher activists.