Critical Conversations: Privileging Middle School Students’ Perspectives on Social Justice

• In Event: Identity, Agency, and Voice: Immigrant Resilient Practices Across Diverse Contexts

Abstract

Transforming pedagogies for students from non-dominant communities requires a corresponding shift in the narratives of school as well as hearing the voices that are silent or silenced (Bell & Roberts, 2010; Huber, et al., 2013). Creating a social space that privileges youth voices is a powerful way to support youth and educators as they process, challenge, and act to change existing inequities (Storz, 2008). Projects such as “Through Students’ Eyes” (Dutro & Zenkov, 2008) and the Storytelling Project (Bell & Roberts, 2010) support students in questioning and confronting deficit narratives. The present study draws from these models to examine how youth are empowered to generate counter-stories from their perspectives. Students also produced social justice, one of the goals of socially just subject-matter instruction (Moje, 2007). The main research questions are: (1) How do middle school students perceive issues of injustice in their daily lives? (2) How do youth respond resiliently to these challenges? (3) What are pedagogical practices that integrate students’ stories, experiences, and perspectives in ways that disrupt the deficit narrative and craft a new story?
Drawing from Montero and Rossi’s (2012) study with English Language Learners, the project incorporates oral history methods to scaffold student writing. This paper presents data from a month-long study with fourteen middle school students at a low-income, public charter school in an urban area of southeastern United States. Student participants comprised a diverse group: immigrants from Egypt, Iraq, Honduras, English Language Learners, Latinos, and African Americans. Students participated in two or three one-on-one interviews with a researcher and engaged in critical discourse while making connections between a text about Rosa Parks and their own experiences. The researcher transcribed the events, and transcripts were made available to students when they wrote narrative essays about injustice. Students also read their stories aloud during a whole-class, ‘publishing party.’
Data analysis used the constant comparative method (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) and sociolinguistic microanalysis of researcher and student discourse (Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, & Shuart-Faris, 2005) to examine patterns of students’ resilient responses to injustices they identified as key concerns in their social contexts. Findings indicate that although there was variation in issues and responses, students overall exhibited social awareness and agency. The paper will expand on the following themes: (1) Students assumed a critical stance (Heffernan & Lewison, 2009) towards the situations they experienced. (2) Students adopted different voices. (3) Students tried on new identities through narrative and dialogue (Sperling & Appleman, 2011). (4) Students designed creative methods for producing social justice, not only in their schools and communities, but also in their home countries. The study promoted activist literacies (Crisco, 2009) in a community of diverse learners and supported students working to meet new writing standards stipulated by the Common Core State Standards (2010). Researchers, educators, and policymakers must acknowledge and value youth culture, ideas, and contributions as resources (Moje, 2002; Orellana, 2009) in order to implement innovative policies and practices that produce academic and social justice outcomes for youth.

Author

• Mary Ellen Miller, Vanderbilt University - Peabody College