A Study of the Development of Transformative Agency From Participatory Culture-Specific Interventions

• In Event: Transformative Research With School Communities and Teachers

Abstract

Multi-level learning processes include the learner’s context, though theoretical expansions are needed for educational research to conceptualize the role of racialized social structures in learning processes. The participatory culture-specific intervention model guided a discussion-based intervention with 15 adolescent Black girls. We use the third-generation activity system model to analyze these discussions as interrelated activities and conceptualize outcomes of the discussions in terms of a renewed understanding of managing their physical and emotional safety, women in society, and their experiences with the group and expanded higher order psychological processes and sources of knowledge to support this. These findings provide insight into the ways these girls make sense of these topics/issues and develop transformative agency. Theoretical expansions are clarified.

Author

• Rebekah Pollock, Georgia State University