Read the Room: Engaging Youth Leadership and Intergenerational Collaboration in Professional Development for K-12 Teachers

• In Event: Towards Youth Participatory Teacher Education

Abstract

Purpose
This study examines the intersections between pedagogy, youth literacies, and youth-adult partnership in order to learn how youth can transform classroom teaching through their imaginative capacities. Addressing the absence of the insights and imagination of students and the limits of social justice education when youth are not invited into the process of educational design, this study explores how students partner with pre-service and in-service K-12 teachers to reimagine approaches to pedagogy that center youth identities and cultivate students’ capacities for learning and imagination.

Theoretical Framework
Speculative education offers the intertwining of theory and imagination as integral in the pursuit of social transformation. Mirra and Garcia (2020) called upon educational researchers and practitioners to center youth imagination in the cultivation of young people’s speculative civic literacies which is rooted in the understanding that “literacy is the conduit through which we understand and enact our freedoms” (Garcia & Mirra, 2021, p. 641). Thus, it is through young people’s literacy practices, particularly their creative forms of expression and approaches to imagining a world free of oppression, that we can collectively work towards social transformation. This research draws from theories of critical pedagogy and youth speculative civic literacies in order to investigate how young people activate their collective imaginations, literacy practices, and identities to develop pedagogical approaches for teachers that can transform schools into sites of youth activism and freedom dreaming (Author, 2002).

Methods and Data Sources
Through social design methodology, this study seeks to build models for educational practice that are collaborative, theoretically informed, and revised through practice and reflection (Gutiérrez, 2016). Data collection for this study took place over the course of ten months and included: (a) audio-recordings of the monthly seminars during each stage of the project; (b) the teacher training curriculum and materials created by the youth leaders, including the feedback and revisions documented throughout the development process; (c) 2 focus group interviews and one individual interview with each of the participating teacher attendees of the PD seminar; (d) two focus group interviews and 2 individual interviews with the 6 youth leaders conducted before Stage One and after Stage Four of the project.

Results and Significance
Preliminary analysis of this data reveals that civically-engaged youth and justice-oriented teachers are open to sharing and receiving feedback from one another regarding approaches to teaching and are eager to work in collaboration with one another. An important takeaway for the teachers in this study was the youth collaborators’ emphasis on relationship-building and choice in the classroom. For the teachers, these elements are often overlooked in their daily teaching and curriculum planning in favor of emphasizing content and skills. However, through engaging in activities and dialogue with one another, teachers and students in this study discovered that relationships and trust are core components of students’ classroom learning and are indicators of students’ engagement in school and their development of dreams and goals for their futures.

Author

• Lauren Leigh Kelly, Rutgers University