"Students and Teachers United": Transformative Student Voice in Solidarity With Teachers on Strike

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: Engaging Students in Systems Change: Embracing Multiple Research-Practice Partnership Stakeholders in Transformative Student Voice Work

Abstract

Objective
Transformative student voice opportunities, where students are critical actors in school decision-making processes, are not very common in public schools (Mitra, 2008). Historically, students have organized actions like walkouts/protests, but these actions are often not sustainable nor taken seriously by schools. In this paper, we highlight two examples from a research practice partnership with an urban school district where students, who were part of a transformative student voice program, organized in solidarity with the district’s teacher strike. Findings show that student participation in a transformative student voice program was crucial in how students planned and executed their solidarity actions and dealt with challenges based on their participation.

Framework
Several educators have called for a praxis-based approach that leverages a holistic view of the student (Gutierrez & Vossoughi 2010; Moll, 1992; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2012). Critical Civic Inquiry – CCI (Hipolito-Delgado & Zion, 2017) couples that praxis-based mindset with an action civics approach (Levinson, 2012) aimed at sociopolitical empowerment and liberation (Carr, 2003; Watts et. al, 2002). A teacher strike provided a unique and authentic opportunity to leverage a curriculum based on CCI to foster transformative student voice.

Methods
These two case studies draw from data collected in a research practice partnership with a large urban school district, which includes one year of observations, student interviews, and videos.

Findings
In both case studies, students were part of their school’s transformative student voice program through which students engaged in a yearlong CCI youth participatory action research curriculum. In January 2019, deteriorating pay negotiations with the district forced teachers to strike. Two groups of students then posted a video to social media, declaring that they would take action to support their teachers.

At one school, the students organized a sit-in but received pushback from their principal because of the video. The students, however, negotiated permission to hold a peaceful sit-in with an agenda they first presented to the principal. During the event, students chanted, “Teachers and students united will never be divided.” The students used the tools they had learned through CCI and YPAR to negotiate with their principal, organize and execute their sit-in.

At another school, the same video created tension between a student and the new superintendent, who was hired through a process that this student and others deemed rigged. The district threatened disciplinary action but instead the superintendent met with the student, an interaction that left the student feeling targeted and tokenized. The CCI and YPAR frameworks provided this student with tools to organize and also navigate difficult conversations and repercussions from actively supporting the strike.

Significance
The teacher strike provided a unique opportunity for students to put into action the ideas and skills they learned through their CCI-based transformative student voice programs. The CCI and YPAR curriculum increased students’ civic self-efficacy, the belief that they can take action and make change. Therefore, these cases show that students developed critical tools in a transformative student voice space that they used to be active changemakers in their schools and communities.

Authors

• Julissa Ventura, Marquette University

• Dane Stickney, University of Colorado Denver