Policy for Participation and Policy From Participation: Research-Practice Partnership Learning Infrastructures That Connect Policy and Community for Just Educational Transformation

• In Event: Research-Practice Partnerships for Educational Transformation

Abstract

Objectives and Frameworks
By describing two RPPs (Coburn & Penuel, 2016) from two university-assisted community schools in southern California (Quartz et al., 2017) aimed at minoritized stakeholder participation in school design, we highlight how regional, district, and organizational policies served as key infrastructures (Penuel, 2019) for minoritized stakeholder participation in educational design that reflect and amplify their assets (Rios-Aguilar et al., 2006; Yosso, 2005), and how infrastructure building at the local level by RPP partners to facilitate greater participation in school design led to formal school policy change.

Methods and Data
The two university-assisted community schools (Quartz et al., 2017) both served families who were classified as low-income students of color. Within a larger portfolio of RPPs at the school sites, the authors led the facilitation of two RPPs informed by participatory design research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) to recenter minoritized student and family voices in school design. At School 1, 30 high school students, with researchers and educators, conceptualized and co-designed technology-mediated learning at the school, while at School 2, over 30 students, teachers, school administrators, and researchers engaged in efforts to redesign the school-university partnership infrastructure and practices to more explicitly center anti-racist outcomes. The current analysis examined qualitative data from the partnerships (meeting recordings and notes, shared artifacts, and participant interviews) to examine how co-design activities were situated in relation to border organizational and institutional policies.

Results
In the partnership at School 1, existing school-university partnership policies at multiple levels, including joint governance structures, autonomies granted by the district, and specific RPP policies created opportunities to initiate and sustain the RPP with students (Lee, 2019). Students designed and implemented educational practices that centered their community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), including an e-portfolio system that made out-of-school student identities and assets visible, and informed the school’s broader holistic assessment practices. At School 2, over 30 students, teachers, school administrators, and researchers formed a partnership named the Anti-Racist Committee (ARC), and engaged in weekly meetings to design school-university partnership infrastructures that more deeply centered anti-racism in its practices, processes, and outcomes. Recognizing a need to increase parent and student participation in existing RPPs (e.g. building culturally relevant curriculum), ARC successfully reformed the school governance structure for ARC members to have permanent representation on the School Governance Council, and for ARC to guide and frame all RPPs that took place in the school. ARC members viewed this localized policy-making as a model for broader systemic change (Figure 1).


Figure 1. ARC School Governance Proposal

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
The two cases illustrate the ways in which policy contexts support educational change that privileges minoritized school stakeholders and the assets they bring to bear, and how such forms of participation serve as fertile ground for educational policy making. As such, universities and policy makers are encouraged to consider how policy making intersects with RPPs, especially to encourage the participation of minoritized stakeholders in this policy making, and how such intersections may advance justice-focused educational change.

Authors

• Ung-Sang Lee, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Marcus Van, Mann UCLA Community School