Building Student Agency Through University-Assisted Community School Partnerships

• In Event: Challenges and Hopes of University-Community Partnerships: Narratives of Community Engagement as Ethical Responsibilities

Abstract

The UCLA Community School, a PK-12 university-assisted community school within the Los Angeles Unified School District, opened in 2009 after a two-year design process that included community members, teachers and researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles. Together, a democratic learning environment was envisioned where the voices of students, families and practitioners would guide and shape the learning process. They also imagined an environment where all students graduate as agentive, self-directed learners who are critical participants in their communities. This presentation focuses on the democratic processes and practices that support students’ agentive participation in shaping their educational trajectories.
Student agency is the extent to which students sense that they have opportunity and self-efficacy to shape their own educational experiences. Adopting a sociocultural perspective, student agency is viewed as an educative process in which students’ actions and decision-making dialogically interact with the social and cultural contexts within which they are situated (Goodman and Eren, 2013). In school contexts, student agency is shaped by teachers, peers, and community members who exercise their own agency to enable students’ participation and understanding of themselves and their surrounding world (Datnow, Hubbard and Mehan, 2002; Goodman and Eren, 2013). Moreover, in a community school context, a shared commitment to collaborative leadership norms and structures further support students’ democratic participation. We approach the study of student agency in a community school context within a framework that attends to structure, culture, and practice.
Findings are derived from a research-practice partnership that explored the relationship between organizational structures and leadership practices and student-level outcomes. Data regarding the organization of the school including decision-making and leadership structures were collected. Data included observational and organizational documentation. Additionally, 22 high school students attending UCLA Community School were interviewed in Spring 2019. Students represented a range of academic achievements (based on course-taking patterns), ethnic/racial background, years at the school, and gender. Interview data were coded and analyzed. Based on these data we identified mechanisms in which organizational structures and practices contributed to students’ perceptions of their own learning, actions, and goals.

Findings suggest that democratic leadership practices can contribute to the development of students’ agency. Collaborative leadership, a pillar of the community school model (Oakes et al., 2017) undergird these processes. In particular, we found three mechanisms in which democratic leadership structures and practices facilitated opportunities for students to direct their own learning: modeling wherein students learn from teachers’ actions and practices; direct action wherein teachers actively work and collectively plan to support student agency; and a strong democratic school culture that values and empowers the voices of all stakeholders.
Importantly, we also identified the contributions of research-practice partnerships to an environment and culture where practitioners and other school stakeholders can investigate issues that influence practice and student-level outcomes. These findings deepen our understanding of how the organizational structures and practices that support university-assisted community schools facilitate a learning environment that can help students attain the critical skills that will prepare them to succeed in and shape our democratic society.

Authors

• Leyda Waleska Garcia, UCLA Community School

• Marisa Saunders, University of California - Los Angeles

• Karen Hunter Quartz, University of California - Los Angeles

• Jody Z. Priselac, University of California - Los Angeles