The educational field, one of the most challenged by the questions related to society exchanges, asks for the strategic discussion of policies and practices that promote the integration of fragile communities characterized by multiple diversities that can origin inequalities (Silva, 2016). These aspects are highly relevant and visible in Intercultural Education.

This proposal grounds in a research part of a Ph.D. project, aiming to understand how teachers and pupils in schools construct collaboratively intercultural competencies. The concept of intercultural competencies has been used as the capacity to successfully address situations that present difficulties or challenges for the individual or together with others (Huber & Reynolds, 2014).

The main goal of this proposal is to specifically discuss the impact of using PAR with young people in schools to understand how these competencies could be developed.

Participatory methodologies are increasingly being used in research with young people. This practice emerges from a desire to reduce problematic distributions of power in research and to construct knowledge with young people rather than for them (Fox, 2013). In this regard, we consider that the concept of voice is relevant as part of our approach. Voice has been used to understand the importance of perspectives and meanings of marginalized and wronged groups and can report social, cultural or educational injustices. The “voice” emerges as a meaning of empowerment and agency and is a heuristic concept to assure and defend a representation and participation policy (Fonseca, 2009). This just makes sense in an ethical and reflexive practice inside a “listening epistemology” (Berger, 2009) that allows the emancipatory change and transformative action. It is within this framework that we developed a research project involving young people in every possible phase of the research. Our vision is that youth can be “knowledge producers” and not simply “sources of data” (Ollner, 2010).  In diversity contexts, it is recognized the importance of different perspectives in the research process. PAR represents a host of relevant opportunities to enhance and strengthen emancipatory research (Ginwright, 2008).

Following the three characteristics of PAR (Schwandt, 2007): “(1) requires collaboration between the researcher and the participants; (2) follows a “democratic impulse”, and (3) it’s main goal is to generate social change through the action (p. 221), we worked with two classes in two different schools. This selection occurred after an exploratory study about all schools in Porto Metropolitan Area, Portugal. After the selection, we presented the project to the schools’ headteachers that lead us to classes where the main teacher was available to work with us (a 7th-grade class – 11 and 12 years old- and an 11th-grade class – 15 and 16 years old-). After this, we presented the project to students that, likely, showed their availability to work with us.

We had two sessions to train “mini-researchers”. After, the young researchers made methodological decisions: create a research question, choose the participants and method to use. After, they put into practice the chosen technique: semi-structured interviews. The interviews occurred in the school space with members of the school community. Each group interviewed one participant. After, they transcript their interviews and made a content analysis of the collected data.

In the beginning, was agreed that the data would be presented on the University to be discussed with the academic community. However, with the pandemic situation caused by Covid-19, that was not possible. So, in agreement with the class teachers, we decided to make a video to disseminate the results and work produced by the students that are available on social media and schools’ websites. With the pandemic the work was stopped abruptly, but the majority was done.

The study contexts were: - School 1: 52 students from foreign countries; education from pre-school to 9th grade; worked with a 7th-grade class with 26 students with an age average of 12, 73; - School 2: 75 students from foreign countries; education from pre-school to 12th grade; worked with a 11th-grade class with 17 students with an age average of 16,76. All the process was accompanied by an impact evaluation: focus group discussions and questionnaires before and after the intervention to evaluate perceptions pre-and post-intervention about ethnic and cultural diversity. It was done one focus group discussion in each school with a group of 5 students (maintaining the same students in the two moments) using a script with questions related to: comments about discrimination and racism images; perceptions about school and their relationships; perceptions about diversity; perceptions about attitudes related to ethnic and cultural diversity; expectations related to the research project. In what concerns the questionnaires, it has been implemented in both schools in the classes where the project took place and in other two classes, with the same characteristics as the others and served as the control groups in order the understand the relevance of the intervention in the young people perspectives that participated in the project. So, in school 1 was implemented 26 questionnaires on the participant class and 21 questionnaires on the control group. In school 2 was implemented 17 questionnaires on the participant class and 16 questionnaires on the control group. The data resulted from focus group discussions were analyzed using content analysis where the participants' meanings gain logic and internal coherency (Ferreira, 2004). The data resulted from questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS software.

In what concerns the questionnaires no significant differences were found, unless in one item in one of the schools. Mann-Whitney U test (p = .045) indicates that statistically significant differences were found in responses to pre- and post-intervention questionnaires in the item “Immigrant people should have special rights because they are discriminated” (pre: M= 2,31; SD= 1,138; post: M= 3,24; SD= 1,033). The items where occurred more agreement were: - School 1: “Every people have the same rights”: 90,9%- strongly agree; “People from other countries deserves my respect”: 100%- strongly agree; The items where occurred more disagreement were: - School 1: “Refugees people only come to our country to took off what it’s ours”: 81,8%- strongly disagree; - School 2: “If I receive a person of a different nationality in my class, I think it will disrupt its functioning”: 88,2%- strongly disagree. The most part of the items already presented positive aspects that were reinforced by the intervention. In what concerns the open questions on the questionnaire related to positive and negative aspects of the intervention. The positive aspects were very consensual: “learn about other cultures”; “make the interviews”; “group work”. In what concerns the negative aspects: “transcript the interviews”; “stay in quarantine and not be able to end the project as expected”. In what concerns the group discussions results, the changes on students’ perspectives are more visible, namely in what concerns their understanding about diversity from a perspective about differences related to the appearance: “it’s differences related to the way we look”, from perspectives related to a more integrative concept of diversity: “for example ethnic and cultural diversity”. This project presented an important opportunity to young people “provide input about what issues are important to study and how such studies should be conducted” (Chabot et al, 2012: 22).

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