Students at the Center of Research Design: Promoting Learning, Equity, and Rigor Using Youth Expertise

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Who are we designing research projects for? If we claim we intend to improve learning environments for marginalized students, to what extent is youth expertise integrated into our investigations? In this symposium, participants will explore these questions through an interactive engagement with three distinct but actively collaborating student-centered research teams whose two-year studies concluded in fall 2020. The first investigates lesson study as an instructional reform strategy that begins and ends with accessing student expertise. The second investigation captures the extent to which youth activism/leadership is able to “push in” to school and accelerate equity-focused reforms. And the third project investigates the efforts of a network of schools as it seeks to optimize mastery-based strategies through responsiveness to students’ cultures.

Sub Unit

• Division C - Learning and Instruction / Division C - Section 3a: Learning Environments

Chair

• Eric Toshalis, KnowledgeWorks

Papers

• Becoming Students of Our Students' Thinking: The Impact of Lesson Study as Improvement Strategy - Daisy Sharrock, High Tech High Graduate School of Education; Stacey Caillier, High Tech High Graduate School of Education

• Emergent Tensions and Strategies When Scaling and Sustaining Student-Centered Learning - Ben Kirshner, University of Colorado - Boulder; Carlos Porfirio Hipolito-Delgado, University of Colorado - Denver; Shelley Zion, Rowan University

• Centering Vulnerable Students' Experiences Within Culturally Responsive Mastery-Based Schools to Illuminate Their Perspectives on Equity - Leah Q. Peoples, Transformative Research; David E. Kirkland, New York University