"I Think a Song Would Be Good": Grounding Youth Speculative Practices in Theories of Relationality (Poster 2)

• In Event: Designing for Racial Justice Through Speculative Pedagogies: Learning to Build Liberatory Futures

Abstract

Introduction
Alex: I think we should just say something new that we’ve done over the week...
Jasmine: Like a new song or a new book or poem. I don’t know. I think a song would be
good [...] a song that puts us in a good mood.

This exchange between Alex and Jasmine, high school student participants in a multi-year sustained community-based research initiative, took place one month after the community center in their subsidized housing community closed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unable to meet in person, Alex, Jasmine, and their peers paused their place-based attempts to improve conditions in their community, yet they wanted weekly meetings of the initiative to continue online. This paper focuses on youth speculative practices to examine what happened when youth shifted their focus from their YPAR projects, transitioned from in-person to online meetings, and imagined new ways of being and doing in a youth-centered research space.

Conceptualizing the Speculative
This paper explores and is guided by speculative approaches in education (e.g., McGee & White, 2021), which can be used to “explode” traditional understandings of the past, interrogate dominant ways of knowing, and imagine new possibilities (Mirra & Garcia, 2020, p. 316). Drawing on a conceptualization of the speculative grounded in theories of relationality (Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004) and desire (Tuck, 2009), we ask: How might our evolving conceptualization of the speculative inform how we make sense of youth practices in the community-based initiative? How might new ways of making sense of the community-based initiative speak to broader questions about education in a (post)pandemic world?

Music and Maps
In an era of schooling where emphasis is too often placed on issues of “learning loss” (Kuhfeld et al., 2022) and policies that “take the risk out of education” (Biesta, 2016, p. 1), youth participants demonstrated speculative moments pointing to otherwise possibilities for thriving outside the usual constraints of school. In one such moment, we examine the role that music played throughout the community-based initiative. During one online activity, participants curated and shared music in ways that enabled them to make sense of their lived experiences and consider possibilities of connection and hope in the context of a pandemic. In another arts-based activity that was organized and facilitated by youth participants, participants used song playlists to strengthen relational ties and create a shared experience despite the context of social distancing. In addition to music, maps highlighted speculative possibilities within the project. Participants created rich pathmaps that displayed images of their communities, social relations, hobbies and interests, and aspirations for their future. In doing so, they revealed a striving toward utopia grounded in their bonds to family, friends, and other inspirational figures.

Significance
Findings from the initiative provide a snapshot of youth’s experiences at the onset of COVID-19. Such experiences point to how the speculative can be used as an appropriate intervention for seeking the hard reset in education that Ladson-Billings (2021) urges educators to pursue.

Authors

• Lee Melvin M. Peralta, Michigan State University

• Joanne E. Marciano, Michigan State University