Teachers and Students Negotiating Space (Online and Otherwise) for Youth Voice

• In Event: Student Sociopolitical Learning, Activism, and Voice During Times of Turmoil

Abstract

Purpose
On a Thursday morning in May, students in Ms. Jones’ civics class ran around, yelling, as they grabbed various items as part of a scavenger hunt. They gleefully shared what they had found, laughing and smiling throughout the process. It should be noted that Ms. Jones and all the students weren’t in the same room; they were all online. Observations of Ms. Jones’ class showed that while attendance was down and the classroom community was fractured, she and her students were able to leverage humanizing rituals and routines from their in-person time together in the fall to create an online space where student voice still flourished in the spring.

Perspective
Though online learning is different from in-person learning in several ways–many of them inferior–the platform can be leveraged as a way to center humanity and build classroom community (Stommel, Friend, & Morris, 2020). A strong step toward this is students and adults sharing power (Kirshner, Zion, Lopez, & Hipolito-Delgado, under review). When this power sharing takes place, as it did in the fall in Ms. Jones’ class, students and teachers co-create class norms and agendas, and students build leadership skills by planning and facilitating parts of the lesson.

Methods & Data Sources
We conducted sixteen classroom observations during April and May 2020, as well several student and teacher interviews, of one high school class. Using constant comparative analysis (Glasser & Strauss, 1967), we completed three rounds of coding (primary, secondary, and core) and arrived at our themes and subthemes. That data is used to create a narrative case study (Stake, 1995), showing how the teacher and students were able to negotiate a shared online space that harkened to past in-person routines and rituals.

Results
Two major wishes or recommendations for online learning emerged from student observations and interviews. First, students lamented a sense of an eroding classroom community. Students described little interaction with friends and teachers, which left them feeling lonely and disconnected. Second, students wanted a voice in the online schooling process. Too often, they said, their schools provided little communication and almost no avenue for feedback or participatory design of school policies. Ms. Jones shared power with her students and allowed them to leverage their voice and agency. In the end, they were able to hold onto a sense of community and social justice they had fostered in the fall.

Significance
Online learning isn’t going away. The COVID-19 virus is a current threat, but future turmoil including climate change and political instability could force more educational disruptions. Some students who flourished online may even demand for permanent online options. Ms. Jones and her students provide an example for how online learning can center humanity and keep critical classroom culture intact.

Author

• Dane Stickney, University of Colorado Denver