Carlos Casanova

Casanova's interdisciplinary research draws from critical frameworks and qualitative methodologies such as youth participatory action research, critical ethnography, and testimonios. His areas of research include social justice education and critical education for sustainable development.

Guiding Research Questions:

• How can youth participatory action research create equitable and empowering opportunities for Latinx students?

• How can liberating pedagogies develop critical consciousness and support wellbeing of Latinx youth who are engages in critical action to challenge inequities in education 

• How can sustainability education better include and represent communities of color?

Current Projects:

One of Casanova's current qualitative research projects draws on critical ethnographic research to understand the multidimensions of wellbeing that Latinx youth experienced when they engaged in critical action toward anti-immigrant politics during the Trump Era. Data revealed that (a) concepts of wellbeing need to be extensively explored for a more nuanced understanding of its characteristics, and (b) when youth engage in critical action, they experience physical and socioemotional wellbeing in distinct ways. This research contributes to the critical consciousness and wellbeing scholarship by (1) adding to the dearth of research on Latinx youth physical wellbeing and critical action, (2) theorizing nuances of physical and socioemotional wellbeing as simultaneously present during critical action, and (3) centering the voices and experiences of Latinx youth, specifically Latina youth, who have historically been omitted from the literature.

In a second project, Casanova used frameworks of Critical Latino Theory (LatCrit theory) and subtractive schooling to explore the educational experiences of two Iowan Latina youth through their expression of written poetry. Poems were created in a grassroots community youth-based after-school program. They shed light on Latina youth experiences of white supremacy and institutional racism embedded in the pedagogy, curricula, and social practices of their public high school. The study also draws attention to the power of poetry to unveil Latina youth agency. This research can be used to inform both researchers and educators about the social injustice the growing Iowa Latinx student populations encounter in school, to both understand their experiences and move towards authentic allyship to engage in collective resistance to dismantle white supremacy and institutional racism in education.

In a third project, Casanova uses agencies of transformational resistance (ATR) as a framework to explore one after-school program’s organizational processes that foster Latinx critical consciousness and social justice activism. The study revealed the (a) curriculum, (b) pedagogy, and (c) co-conspirators are three organizational processes that nurtured Latinx youth critical consciousness. This study contributes to the critical youth development scholarship by highlighting nuances of three program processes of one Latinx youth afterschool program in an urban city in Iowa.