"You Know Actionist, Rebelist": Tensions and Politics of Youth Naming Practices in Social Justice Work

• In Event: 46.077 - Pushing Beyond the Project: (Re)Defining Justice Through Community Engagement

Abstract

In this paper, presenter #2 will discuss the politics of naming and the tensions that arose from naming participants as “activists” and their Capstone Projects as “activism.” The title, “you know actionist, rebelist”, emerges from a conversation between presenter #2 and three adolescent female students about whether or not they identified themselves as activists. After the students collectively agreed that they did not align with the term “activist”, they continued to grapple with definitions of the word and discussed other terms to describe themselves. The conversation stems from a one-year critical narrative inquiry into a ninth-grade Humanities classroom, where students developed Capstone Projects to investigate a form of injustice (i.e., human sex trafficking, domestic violence, cyberbullying, LGTBQ rights, homelessness, and others) through research and community engagements. The presenter will highlight data from the inquiry where students used texts (i.e., graphic novels and quotes from Holocaust survivors) to discuss their identities alongside social justice issues. Therefore, the presentation will address the following questions: “What types of texts would promote dialogue among youth, educators, researchers, and community members about activism and/or social justice work?” and “In what ways are youth naming practices attentive to issues of power, identity, and social change?”
The researcher uses the theoretical framework of critical multiculturalism for two major purposes: (1) to understand how the students work within and across difference, and (2) to see if/how the students begin to name their social justice work as activism. Although the framework is attentive to difference, diversity, and issues of power as these relate to education (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1997; May & Sleeter, 2010), educational research agendas informed by critical multiculturalism have not been fully attentive to the ways that young people continue to be excluded from co-constructing knowledge alongside teachers, researchers, and community groups. Therefore, presenter #2 will discuss how youth naming practices within this qualitative study pushes for more responsible forms of social justice research.
Since critical narrative inquiry “draws on multiple sources of ethnographic data, employs research as a tool for justice, and uses stories to represent the data, lives, activities, and aspirations of the research” (Rivera Maulucci, 2010, p.844), the researcher uses the methodology to make sense of youth social justice work within and outside of the Humanities’ classroom. In this critical narrative inquiry, the researcher methods include: field notes, participant observations, semi-structured interviews with students, and student artifacts (i.e., digital photographs, PowerPoint slides, audio/video recordings of student presentations).
In an effort to develop and implement research that explores as well as promotes social justice, this paper will offer methodological and practical implications for creating “transformative, action-oriented curriculum” that links “knowledge, social commitment, and action” (Banks, 1996, p.5). Since this presentation is informed by critical multiculturalism’s call for action and co-constructed knowledge, the presenter will also discuss how the theoretical framework can be used to inform future educational research about youth social justice work.

Author

• Tamara T. Butler, Michigan State University