American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In 2020, the Office of Hawaiian Education (OHE) created the Student Research Program, a research internship for high school and college students in Hawai‘i. Student researchers conducted participatory action research (PAR) on educational issues and impact reports on various Hawaiian educational initiatives. Educational equity has remained an important issue for these researchers, as longitudinal educational data continues to report negative “lagging” student indicators (e.g., absenteeism, school suspensions, adolescent arrests and incarceration) for its Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) student populations. Of particular concern is the connectivity among these student data points, school-to-prison pipeline data, and the alarming rates of suicide and suicide attempts among student populations. As the COVID pandemic swept across the Hawai‘ian islands, “loss of learning” became another indicator that disproportionately affected NHPI students. Throughout the hulihia, or seasons of change (COVID, Black Lives Matter, anti-CRT, antiwokeness), OHE’s student researchers sought to understand the conditions and P4 (practices, projects, programs, policies) that strengthened student sense of BREATH (belonging, responsibility, excellence, aloha, total well-being, Hawai‘i). This paper follows the student researchers’ journey of a‘o (teaching and learning) over the last five years as they engaged in PAR to understand how community readiness is being developed beyond a set of standards, indicators, and desired outcomes into a process that develops ontological self-efficacy. The research team sought to answer the following questions during their investigation: How do students articulate or experience community readiness? What conditions and/or P4 strengthen community readiness for students? In what ways do students activate ontological self-efficacy?