Leveraging Young People's Social Dreams as Education Policy Counternarratives

• In Event: Youth Stories as Counternarrative in Educational Research

Abstract

In the Fall of 2019, community organizer co-researchers and a university-based researcher designed and implemented a qualitative study where we interviewed four Education Justice Organizing (EJO) staff members and 17 EJO youth leaders. Education Justice Organizing is a longstanding grassroots youth advocacy organization in California. Their answers revealed complex individual counternarratives and social dreams to close opportunity gaps in their state. This paper describes a slice of our work, focusing on aspirational capital for transformative change and social dreaming theory. Aspirational capital allows me, as the researcher, to more closely define and describe the individuals who are part of this study. Social dreaming affords a synthesis of participants’ future-oriented thinking into a broader narrative.

Authors

• Matt Garcia, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Justine Santos, Californians for Justice