Negotiating a Space for Youth Participatory Action Research and Student Voice in an Era of Curriculum Standardization

• In Event: Rethinking Schools Through Youth Participatory Action Research in an Era of Education Reform: Lessons From Professional Development and Curriculum and Instruction

Abstract

As defined by Carter (2000), No Excuses (NE) schools are high-performing, high-poverty schools that attempt to address the inability of most public schools to educate our nation’s low-income and minority children through an emphasis on testing, discipline, and time on task. Critical Civic Inquiry (CCI), on the other hand, is a youth participatory action research project that seeks to address academic disengagement and gaps in achievement by empowering students to develop academic and critical thinking skills in a context that addresses the historic and social origin of their schools and communities (Zion, Kirshner, & Hipolito-Delgado, 2012). In this paper, I examine how individual teachers and teams of teachers and administrators in a network of NE schools negotiate multiple policy initiatives as they develop curricula that incorporates the principles of CCI and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) while adhering to the Common Core State Standards and maintaining a focus on the development of basic skills.

In this paper, I present a longitudinal study of two separate but related processes of curriculum negotiation and reconciliation. First, I investigate the process of curriculum development undertaken by a sixth grade writing teacher in a NE school, who aimed to embed CCI’s principles of shared power, critical conversations, and student action research into a school and classroom culture that emphasizes behavioral compliance and deference to authority. Next, the scope of analysis is broadened from the individual to the systemic level, as I document the process of negotiation embarked on by a curriculum development team, comprised of teachers and administrators from the same NE school network, as they work to develop a humanities curriculum that accommodates the initiatives put forth by CCI, NE schools, and the Common Core State Standards.

Data are drawn from the third and fourth years of the CCI project, in the form of observations of classroom and curriculum development team meetings and faculty interviews. In addition to using the characteristics of NE schools outlined by Carter (2000) and the principles underlying CCI defined by Zion, Kirshner & Hipolito-Delgado (2012), I will analyze the data using Coburn’s (2001, 2005) collective sensemaking framework, which provides a lens through which to investigate how an individual’s and an institution’s response to multiple approaches is both collective and situated in embedded social and professional contexts.

In this paper, I seek to serve two fundamental purposes: first, I aim to draw attention to the need to integrate and sustain opportunities for student voice and inquiry-driven action research in the current era of curriculum standardization that we find ourselves in. Second, I intend to emphasize the importance of understanding how multiple, and potentially divergent, policy initiatives are negotiated and implemented by teachers and administrators to educational researchers and policymakers alike.

Author

• Emily Claire Price, University of Colorado - Boulder