SARs (Students as Researchers): What Happens When Students Become Researchers?

• In Event: Supporting Epistemological Diversity and Widening the Struggle for Justice: New Directions in Critical Qualitative Research

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
In the days of NCLB and its standardized curriculum and scripted lessons, students and teachers are increasingly deskilled. Instead of education/schooling as a vehicle towards empowerment for students (and teachers) it is a tool of mystification. This is especially true in urban schools and unfortunately in many teacher education programs. The purpose of this paper is to examine how to implement a researched based program in an urban teacher certification program. The benefits of such a program would both empower students and teachers in the development of their own education.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
In a Students as Researcher (SARs) infused classroom teachers lay the foundation for students to become bricoleurs who learn about research and interpretation throughout their schooling. Students and teachers are introduced to the intellectual power of the bricolage through feminist theory, culturally relevant pedagogy, and critical pedagogy. Instead of the superficial research students do in a traditional classroom curriculum they critically examine the obstacles that block the clarification and attainment of their goals and dreams.

Methods & Evidence
This paper employs a fictional view of what a SARs classroom would look and feel like. Using the theories of feminist pedagogy, culturally relevant pedagogy, and critical pedagogy this paper positions students and teachers in a classroom and takes the reader through a classroom lesson showing not only how a SARs curriculum would look as compared to a traditional curriculum but also what students and teachers ultimately receive based on the curriculum.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
When students become researchers of their reality they learn about the ways world and institutions are constructed by power. They engage in critical reflection on forces that shape the world and importantly they understand what information has been left out of the curriculum that would help them better understand the world. They study untapped subjugated knowledge in the local community. In other words they don't surrender to official truths.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
The goal of SARs in the classroom is significant to teacher education programs because teachers must become expert researchers to engage students in student research. SARs analyze everyday, lived experience. SARs develop a reflective relation with mundane experience-they come to see what is not readily apparent to observation in the lived world. Marginalized SARs study their internalization of the school's attribution of failure. In this context they use their research to devise productive forms of resistance--to develop their imagination of resistance.

Author

• Rochelle Brock, Indiana University - Northwest