Rigor, Belonging, and the Institutional Production of Intellectual Life

• In Event: Student Forum Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 2: Higher Education

Abstract

Schools are widely understood as the primary institutions where rigorous learning happens. Academic rigor is typically defined through curriculum, instruction, and evaluation, and students’ intellectual ability becomes visible through grades, test scores, and other forms of assessment. Yet young people in this study consistently described their most demanding thinking taking place outside of school, in youth-led spaces they helped sustain. This contradiction raises a sociological puzzle: if rigor reflects sustained intellectual engagement, why did young people locate that engagement in environments not formally recognized as central sites of learning?

This study draws on eighteen months of qualitative and participatory research with youth-led organizations engaged in education justice and youth organizing. Data collection included participant observation, focus groups, and interviews with youth participants and adult allies. Designed with reciprocity at its center, the project followed young people’s thinking as it developed across youth-led spaces and school.

Young people described youth-led spaces as places where they worked together to interpret policies affecting their education, shared experiences, and helped one another make sense of conditions shaping their lives. Knowledge developed through continued engagement, as young people explained ideas and remained accountable to one another’s understanding. These experiences differed from school, where knowledge was closely tied to evaluation and demonstrated through graded work. In youth-led spaces, young people were responsible for building knowledge together, and their thinking remained part of how understanding developed over time.

By examining how young people experienced rigor across these environments, this study shows how learning develops through conditions that shape how young people participate in making sense of their world. At a time of institutional uncertainty, attending to youth-led spaces highlights the intellectual work young people are already doing and underscores the importance of sociological approaches that remain accountable to their knowledge and experience.

Author

• Lawrenzo Howell, Brown University