Situating/Troubling Constructions of Student Voice in Research and Community and Youth Educational Organizing

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: Youth Voice and Learning

Abstract

As a PAR research team comprised of community, youth and educational activists working to tackle inequities facing marginalized youth in our high schools via community and youth organizing for educational change, we needed to center our change efforts in marginalized youths’ perspectives of student voice. We could not presume student voice theorizations/conceptualizations constructed by adult researchers, institutions and/or from other contexts were representative of their perspectives on having voice in educational change. Via collaborative autoethnographic storytelling, this paper critically examined (explicit and hidden) master- and counter-narratives in our researcher stories of the PAR process to explore how they were shaping/organizing/undermining our conceptions of youth/student voice, and, in turn, enhancing and/or impeding our community and youth organizing for educational change.

Authors

• Morgan Gardner, Memorial University

• Carol Myles, Murphy Center

• Ann McCann, Murphy Center

• LInda Brown, Memorial University of Newfoundland

• Mikaela Clark-Gardner, Concordia University - Montreal

• Elizabeth Young, Healthcare