Owning Learning: Anytime, Anywhere

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

Abstract

Purpose
We were engaged in a study of student centered learning when the intersection of COVID19 and the racial justice uprising created a context that allowed young people to truly take ownership of their time and focus their efforts on issues that impact their lives. The shift from schooling in buildings to the online environment expanded the amount of contact and time that students in a community based organization had to focus on their concerns about police presence in schools.

Perspective/Theoretical Framework
Our study investigates two areas of student-centered learning: “How students can be supported to take “ownership” of their learning” and “How learning can occur anytime, anywhere.” We do this by studying an approach to student-centered learning that we call Critical Civic Inquiry (CCI). CCI draws on the inquiry cycle in participatory action research (PAR), which includes students identifying a compelling problem or challenge related to equity, studying that problem through original research, and then advancing their ideas by sharing their work with school leaders, policymakers or other public audiences. The goal of CCI is to support student agency and ownership by inviting them to participate in creating more equitable structures in their schools and communities. CCI is based on a combination of equity-centered commitments and evidence showing that students from historically marginalized groups engage in school when they see academic work as relevant to their everyday lives, have opportunities for agency and voice in their classrooms, and participate with adults in making their schools better (Sawyer, 2015; Thiessen & Cook-Sather, 2007).

Methods & Data Sources
We observed and documented chapter meetings several times each month from October through March (in person) and then online from March through June. In addition, we conducted interviews with staff and youth leaders, and have archived social media and other organizing documents, including presentations to the school board, and protest activities.

Results
Our CCI intervention offers a fresh approach to leveraging the strengths of marginalized students for engagement and learning. By enabling students to experience agency in the classroom, talk about their experiences in school, and carry out action research, the CCI intervention offers a paradigm for student-centered learning in which students see how academic skills are relevant to solving everyday-problems and how their contributions matter to the school community.

Significance
Inequities in opportunity to learn have created an education debt to Black and Latinx students that, not surprisingly, has also led to an ongoing gap in a host of outcomes, including in education, health and well-being, and income (Darling-Hammond, 2015; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Crenshaw, 2015). Less emphasized in the research, but of great importance, is that these inequities leave students from marginalized communities with limited opportunities to exercise agency over their futures, which is where stronger student-centered learning comes into play through Critical Civic Inquiry. Critical civic inquiry is an approach to democratic education that embodies student-centered learning (Levine & Kawashima-Ginsberg, 2017), such as making learning relevant, increasing student voice and choice, and making student work public.

Authors

• Yvette Onofre, Rowan University

• Shelley Zion, Rowan University