Tutoría: A Case Study of Microcycles of Layered Learning for Agency in a Social Movement

• In Event: Layers of Learning: Working Toward Mediated Praxis by Positioning Researchers, Practitioners, and Students as Learners

Abstract

Objectives
Tutorial Relationships—commonly known as Tutoría has been argued to be an inside-out, countercultural, and counter-hegemonic practice and social movement (Rincón-Gallardo & Elmore, 2012; Rincón-Gallardo, 2015). Each Tutoría intentionally seeks to “flatten” top-down learning relationships into bidirectional personalized one-to-one tutoring relationships. The tutoring relationship exists within a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1999) where each participant is contract to a fundamental compromisio, a promise, that the tutor will foster the tutee’s agency to learn on their own (Cámara, 1999) and that after mastering a topic, the tutee will then become a tutor to others in the topic they have mastered.

In México, design decisions created microcycles of layered learning within each tutoring dialogue, and decentralized traditional power hierarchies across schools and institutions. At the height of the pedagogy’s expansion in México in 2012, the Tutoría networked community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1999; Meixi, in press) reached over 9000 schools (DGDGIE, 2012). Using the Tutoría practice and network as a case study of a social design experiment (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010), I seek to understand how layers of learning within each microcycle of the Tutoría practice expanded individuals’ agency to build a social movement that supported the growth of the Tutoría. Additionally, I identify occasions where Tutoría’s growth was stunted and discuss design principles that layered learning in a way that expanded the agency of all those involved.

Theoretical framework
This paper sits at the intersection of literature on the creation of layers of learning in learning ecologies through social design experiments (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010; Mendoza, 2014), and social movement theory of innovation and social change (Johnston & Klandermans, 1995; Rochon, 1998). Understanding Tutoría from these two frameworks helps us understand how the Tutoría practice and network’s constant exchange of participant roles engaged multiple layers of learning to create a social movement that constantly distributed expertise and power in the network, and overturned traditional hierarchical power roles across institutions as students often tutor adults and lead this social movement alongside their teachers.

Data sources and methods
To understand the Tutoría practice decentralized yet built power in a networked community of practice, I was a participant observer in two communities in Zacatecas, México for six months. Data was collected in the form of participant observation field notes, observations, and interviews in two telesecundarias (Wolcott, 1978). These interviews were coded using Grounded Theory Analysis (Charmaz & Belgave, 2002) to form understandings of the pillars of the pedagogy and how variations in participant roles created a social movement in Zacatecas.

Scholarly significance
Layers of learning in social design experiments point to the same ends of social equity and decentralization of power as social movement theory. Tutoría uniquely connects the two and this case presents an opportunity to 1) understand microcycles of layered learning and its ability to create individual and collective agency to grow a social movement, and 2) contribute perspectives to design for agency in similar learning ecologies.

Author

• Meixi *, University of Washington - Seattle