The Evolution of HOPE

• In Event: Learning From Contact Zones in Public Education: Struggles and Possibilities of Critical Participatory Action Research

Abstract

Objectives. In the spring of 2015, HOPE was formed as a group of education labor union members, unionists, parents, and other public education advocates organizing around the issues of high stakes standardized tests. The group was initiated as a way for labor to work collaboratively, across imaginary borders and fragile contact zones with parents, educators, unionists, and other public education advocates in the fight for educational justice and labor justice. The group morphed into a support group for its members, with a segment of the group wanting the group to do more. What was missing from this initial goal was the intersecting links between the fight for educational justice and labor justice being inextricably linked to the fight for racial justice. The purpose of this study is to explore the critical trajectories of key members of HOPE as they embark on a CPAR project; the dynamics in the group; how their CPAR projects unravel in schools/communities, and how the union takes up this work. How is this informal learning environment impacting the group’s development and the individual participants socio-political development?

Theoretical Framework. This study is framed by transformative (Mezirow, 1991; 1996; 1997; Freire, 1972/1990) and expansive activity (Engestrom, 2000; 2001; 2009) learning theories. Transformative learning theory (Mezirow) is operating within three modes of cycle: dialogue, reflection, and praxis. Furthermore, Engestrom describes expansive activity theory as being “driven by communal motives” (2000, p. 960). Because activity systems have systemic contradictions, that are “manifested in disturbances and mundane innovations” the possibilities for expansive developmental transformations within these system can take form (Engestrom, 2000). The transformation, which happens in cycles of expansive learning, begin with the members interrogating the status quo and standard operating procedures within their system, and analyzing the contradictions that live within the system.

Modes of inquiry. The study will draw on the theoretical, and methodological histories of phenomenological theories in practice with this study. This will be done by highlighting the phenomenological research methods and tools to help extract the experiences from the individuals and group members. The data sources used in this study were individual semi-structured interviews, focus groups, observations, and journal and document analysis.

Findings. The study will examine four levels of analysis: individual transformation of participants, dynamics in the group, individual projects, and the relation of HOPE and the educators labor union as they move forward with their Whose Schools? Our Schools! campaign. Presenting the findings from each of the four levels of analysis, the study will highlight the learning and experiences that are encountered in the fragile contact zones of labor, parent/community, and racial justice.

Significance. This study will answer some important questions regarding the process of learning as participants are engaged in a complex mix of learners. It will help us understanding a fragile contact zone, brought together across traditionally oppositional power lines - parents and educators; urban and suburban; racial and immigrant differences - as a space to inquire, critique, imagine, and take action -- within a labor union structure -- or hinged to it.

Author

• Awo Okaikor M. Aryee-Price, Rutgers University Graduate School of Education