What is PPAR?
Parent Participatory Action Research (PPAR) is a process that supports parents' ability to identify, explore, and find solutions to the issues impacting their children in the schools and organizations that serve them.
The purpose of PPAR is to help move parent voice into action, and to enable parents to be leaders. PPAR can:
- Find solutions to issues impacting communities and help prepare parents to address them
- Harness the voices, energy, and assets of diverse and often-marginalized parents
- Gain valuable insights through centering unexplored perspectives
- Support parents to develop and implement their own research project
- Promote parent groups’ ability to work with schools to propose solutions that address parent-identified issues
The PPAR Hub has background information about this novel approach to engaging parents. Use these tools to develop your own PPAR program. These resources are designed for teams. Team experts are parents, and may also include teachers, parent liaisons or other staff from youth serving organizations, and community members. It is helpful to include team members that have some research or evaluation experience and also who have experience facilitating collaborative group work. Finally, including a person who can be an advocate for the parent team within the youth serving organization helps move parent priorities into action.
Next Steps