How education sector empowers the student participation into social movement in Taiwan?

• In Event: Protest, Democracy and Education

Proposal

There are widespread social movements taking place in several continents including Latin America, Middle East and Asia etc. These events have been inspired by the changing social, political, economic and even cultural tensions domestically or internationally. Given their huge impacts and attractions, increasing academic papers and articles paid their attentions to these new phenomena. These emerging studies have focused on the dynamics, mobilization process, participation or even the role of social media of social movement However, the recent wave of social movements across the globe has seen the critical position of youth and students. Their participation into these protests and resistances has caused growingly academic attention as they are not only the followers or passive participants. Instead, these young generations often become the ‘organizer’, ‘coordinator’ or even ‘leader’ in these massive social unrests (Altbach, 2019). Their growingly appearance can be found in Asian contexts such as Sunflower movement in Taiwan, Umbrella movement in Hong Kong or even in Thailand or Myanmar.

All this information indicates that social movement is highly related to the education sector as students are the essential bases of these social events. Therefore, it is reasonable that educational research should devote more attention to this emerging issue. In the educational field, adult education, sociology of education and higher education are the main subjects addressing the social movements (Niesz, Korora, Walkuski & Foot, 2018: 16). However, few studies deal with whether young students are empowered or equipped by the education sector to engage with social movements or not. If yes, how students perceive or understand such learning experiences in schools and universities. These are main questions to be answered by this research.

Taiwan will be an ideal country to examine the unsolved problem for the following reasons. First of all, as a massified higher education system, has expanded education system paved for a favourable condition for social movement? Culturally, as one of typical Confucian ssocieties, young students in Taiwan tend to be regarded as obedient, passive, and even respecting for authority. How these cultural elements shaped their intention and engagement with social movement? Finally, for the past one decade, several major protests had taken place in relation to environmental, political, economic and gender issues. These diverse contexts are scholarly rich bases to be explored in-depth for the perceptions and understanding of young generations.

With these wider contexts, this study will investigate how students perceive and understand the meanings and connotations of social movements. Certainly, their ability or competences participating into social movement will be assessed as well. This article is a relatively quantitative study by administering questionnaire to current students. Critical theory and scholarship will be employed to design the questionnaire and gauge the student’s capacity/skills in terms of social movement in the contexts of schooling. In terms of theoretical framework, Freire and Gramsic’s theories and concepts will be used as fundamental notions guiding our questionnaire and data collection. According to Rule (2011), ‘the dimensions of this learning are multiple, shifting and mutually constitutive, but include learning to be (identity construction), learning to know about issues pertinent to the movement, learning to do (engaging in action through enacting repertoires), learning to organise (finding appropriate ways of being together) and learning to analyse and critique (developing critical consciousness). In other words, these four components are included into our questionnaire items. We sampled 170 students from more than 20 universities around the island, both from general universities and technological universities. These students are leaders from unions, association or clubs within the universities. These student leaders might have better understanding of social movement as they are more sensitive towards wider social issues.
Our initial findings have revealed the following points. Education sector in general plays a rather moderate role after the impact of peers, social media and other informal education channels. However, learning experiences of education sector have been positive in nurturing their understanding and practices of engaging with social movements. Particularly, senior high school is a critical stage in enlightening their interests, reflections and further motivations. According to the survey, these college students relatively have good understanding and practices towards social movement. Regression analysis has shown that learning experiences at senior high school and university level are statistically significant impacting students’ understanding and practices of engaging social movement. Similarly, students with better understanding and perceptions towards social movements also have deeper engagement with major protests statistically compared with others.

Authors

• Sheng-Ju Chan, National Chung Cheng University

• chenwei chang, National Taiwan Normal University

• hsiuhsi liu, National Academy for Educational Research