Designing Collective Agency for Social Change: Programmatic Promises and Precarities of Ethnic Studies Collaborative Learning

• In Event: Co-Designing Collective Learning for Ethnic Studies Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives
Teacher education scholars have long argued for programmatic arrangements of teacher learning that foster collective agency for social change as part of a broader ecology of interactional, schooling, and structural contexts (Cochran-Smith et.al., 2022). The transdisciplinary and anticolonial roots of Ethnic Studies as a discipline and pedagogical framework (Reyes McGovern & Buenavista, 2016) offer unique opportunities to explore programmatic design for teacher learning with emphases on liberatory education, racial justice, and activism while centering the learning of teachers of Color (Author, 2022). The question guiding this paper is, How does programmatic design of Ethnic Studies collaborative learning across grade levels and disciplinary content areas impact teachers’ agency for social change?

Framework
Premised on an understanding that learning for and about racial justice is a joint activity made possible by alternative relationalities and collective action imbued within interlocking systems of power (Curnow & Jurow, 2021; Philip et.al., 2022; Vakil et.al., 2016; Vossoughi et.al., 2021), I designed and facilitated a yearlong series of Ethnic Studies pedagogy sessions with 20 teachers and teacher educators, alongside 5 undergraduate and graduate student researchers who served as co-designers. Assertions that frame the program design include:
1. People of Color who are centered and valued as knowledge producers
2. Collective learning opportunities to reimagine Ethnic studies education embedded in everydayness of schools and preparation programs (Espinoza & Vossoughi, 2016; Philip et.al., 2022)
3. Commitment to collective wellness through transformative, emergent approach to teacher learning

Methods
Through application and purposeful recruitment, 80% of teachers and co-designers were people of Color and 85% of teacher educators were white. I conducted grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) to develop conceptual codes from focus groups, artifacts from collaborative activities, field observations, and post-observation debriefs. Written analytic memos, exit surveys, and audiorecorded research team meetings were used to triangulate findings and reorganize codes into themes.

Results
Participants expressed discomfort and new relationalities when collaboratively learning with teachers, teacher educators, and researchers, requiring principled re-configurations of groupings and participation structures to sustain co-learning (“I’m always expected to be the ‘expert’ in Ethnic Studies… it was a relief to let my guard down as a learner here”) and pedagogical possibilities (“I thought Ethnic Studies could only happen at certain points in my curriculum, but my co-design partner helped me see that it can happen anytime”). Through collective vulnerability of learning and teaching about “risky” topics, educators reported a sense of self-determination as change agents (“I’m an Ethnic Studies teacher who happens to teach math”), while some teacher educators expressed self-doubts about their roles and responsibilities for supporting teacher learning (“It’s the first time I’ve experienced students sharing so intensely and openly”). Participation reified collective urgency for replenishing agency for liberatory education in the face of unresolved racial harm experienced in schools and in preparation programs, including amongst members in the collaborative.

Scholarly Significance
Bridging cross-cutting frameworks in teacher education and the learning sciences, this design-based study engages shared attention to structural, institutional, and interactional scales of teacher learning and collective agency for Ethnic Studies education.

Author

• Josephine Pham, University of California - Santa Cruz