Cooperative Learning and Social Movements – An Idea Worth Fighting For

• In Event: Students, Activism and Social Movements

Proposal

Cooperative Learning and Social Movements – An Idea Worth Fighting For
Cooperative and Solidary Learning can be essential to ignite critical conversations that could lead to social and solidarity movements. Students leave 12 years of schooling to enter the world of social and economic interactions and survival. They must be prepared to recognize and understand personal, interpersonal, and social conflicts and find ways to manage them wisely and, often, in the search for a common goal. They also need to find their voices, courage, and strength to actively fight for what they consider essential to a dignified life. I will start this paper by igniting the discussion about activism and social movements in education. Then I will dive into the genesis of cooperative learning and its potential as a catalyst to ignite social movements. I will finalize with an example of a Cooperative Learning and Solidary Education school in northeast Brazil that started as a social movement with the common goal of improving the community's educational and economic future. I draw upon the notion of robust egalitarianism described by Apple (2013), critical pedagogy, conflict resolution, and solidarity as links between cooperative education and social movements.
An Idea Worth Fighting
According to Della Porta (2020), social movements "refer to voluntary participation oriented to the realization of the common good, defying visions of human beings as mainly self-interested" (p.938). Social movements point toward the role of conflict, the transgressive nature of protest voicing the beliefs of challengers of the system contributing to democratic participation in an unconventional way as part of the political process (Della Porta, 2020). These movements were once limited to the field of social science, but since 1970 social movements have entered other disciplines, such as anthropology, psychology, and philosophy (Della Porta, 2020).
However, there seems to be a permanent shift as the social movement discourse recently pierced the field of education. The Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) 2021 conference held its annual conference in April 2021 with the theme Social Responsibility Within Changing Contexts. Many of the panels focused on social movements, for example, (1) How Children's Books Become Powerfully Engaging Tools for Critical Thinking and Social Movements; (2) The Youth Turn: Youth Movements and the Struggle for Public Education in Brazil; (3) Social Movements Learning and Knowledge Production in Times of Conflict (CIES 65th Annual Meeting Program, 2021). With the CIES 2024 theme: The Power of Protest, the transgressive discourse of social movements is coming to the mainstream, and words like activism, solidarity, and cooperation are now spotlights that build the foundation to shift the hegemonic and colonial rhetoric education is part of.
The goal of education should be to improve society, and we all have a responsibility to ignite and reignite these new and old conversations of transformation and move them to the forefront and forward as part of a more egalitarian society. How will we help the next generation recover existing alternative ideas and propose new ones? How can we equip them with the right tools to recognize and manage these conflicts originated from marginalization and power imbalances and help them start the journey to a sustainable living and radical democracy? Conflict Management and Resolution classes and seminars are increasingly being disseminated as part of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) strategies. Unfortunately, they are very sporadic and do not offer constant follow-ups, minimizing their effectiveness (Haymovitz et al.,2017; Trach et al., 2018).
Cooperative and Solidarity Learning, as a transformative pedagogy, makes conflict management and resolution a daily occurrence in the lives of students and teachers. Students leave 12 years of schooling to enter the world of social interaction and survival. They need not only to be prepared to recognize and understand personal, interpersonal, and social conflicts but also search for ways to manage them more effectively. This is an idea worth fighting for.
Cooperative and Solidary Learning
Cooperative and Solidary Learning is the core of the PRECE Movement (Programa Educacional Coraçao de Estudante – Educational Program Heart of a Student), a social movement founded in 1994 by seven young adults and a university professor in the community of Cipo, a rural low-income area of the city of Pentecoste3 in the state of Ceara, Brazil. The group believed that, although there were no secondary schools nearby, they could be given a second chance out of poverty through higher education if they studied together in a cooperative and solidary way. After almost 30 years, this movement has transformed and improved the lives of thousands of students and their families. Its foundation, based on dialogue, horizontal relations, respect, and the search for a common goal, is now part of the public school system and continues to give voice and courage to students and teachers to pursue their common goals by providing a space for social movements within the public sphere.
This paper aims to ignite conversations around these types of transformative pedagogies, which are already taking place in many classrooms in Brazil and the world. PRECE, in particular, has already given the poor and marginalized a dignified future by including dialogue, justice, cooperation, inclusion, collaboration, respect for life, social movements, conflict management, respect, diversity, solidarity, reciprocity, interdependence, love, simplicity, justice, dignity, and joy.
Cooperative and Solidary Learning provide a conducive environment for asking critical questions, teaching, and learning with one another and offer the language and the courage to create a more dignified life. I believe this idea is worth fighting for.

Author

• Virginia C. Gomes, University of Maryland - College Park