Does our current digital citizenship education really prepare students for effective citizenship? Digital communications technology offers powerful tools for civic engagement, but too often civic educators focus on “teaching good online behaviour” instead of teaching the skills and knowledge needed to safeguard and strengthen democratic institutions. And these skills are more critical than ever.
This changes everything. In scholarly journals, professional magazines, and popular media, there seems to be widespread agreement that digital media has radically transformed the way youth engage with one another and with the broader society, both socially and civically. Educators and researchers in civic education have understandably sought to adapt. There is little doubt that certain kinds of adaptations are necessary, and potentially transformative if they can harness the capacity for youth and young adults to be connected, to reach large audiences, and to organize others using the right combination of online and brick-and-mortar tools. But I am also concerned that an all-consuming focus on these powerful new tools for civic engagement may distract attention from serious shortcomings that have been widespread for decades. Are there basic principles of citizenship education that are important to maintain, even as we embrace and adapt to the digital era? Or do the bits and bytes of online social, political, and economic life obviate the need to focus on a more timeless set of fundamentals – habits of the heart and mind – that make democratic societies robust and enduring?
These questions were on my mind recently, when I stood in the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (train station) waiting for my train to Prague. Both of my parents were born in Germany, my father in Karlsruhe in 1927, and my mother in Frankfurt in 1928. My father was displaced by WWII (he moved to Lisbon with his parents and then to Louisville, Kentucky); my mother was less fortunate. Like my father, she left Germany before being sent to a work camp or concentration camp. Unlike my father, she left her hometown without her parents on a kindertransport to Heiden, Switzerland.
As I waited for my train, I realized that 80 years before my mother had stood in this same train station and waved goodbye to her mother and grandmother, who ran next to the train as it left the station. She remembers smiling so that her mother would not be sad. She also remembers giving her favourite doll to the girl seated opposite her, who was disconsolate. They were two of 100 children on the train headed to relative safety in Switzerland. It was the last time my mother would see her family. She was ten years old.
Although my parents – both German Jewish refugees – spoke little about their experiences during the war, I suspect that the profound injustices that informed their childhoods have had an indelible impact on my views about education and citizenship in democratic societies. What went wrong in German society that led to such unthinkable events as those that define the Holocaust? How could such a highly educated, mature democracy descend into such unimaginable cruelty and darkness? Historians have suggested a great number of causes, including Germany’s punishing defeat in World War I, the suffering German economy after the worldwide Great Depression, and the populist appeal of a leader who promised to fix it all.
As an educator, however, I can’t help but wonder what German schools might have done differently. What can we learn from what schools did or didn’t do in Weimar Germany (which was a democracy too)? What, if anything, should schools today teach children about civic participation, courage, and dissent? How can schools help young people acquire the essential knowledge, dispositions, and skills for effective democratic citizenship to flourish?
If we care about robustly democratic societies, we will have to be explicit about the kinds of knowledge, skills and dispositions required of democratic citizens.
Tools for engagement have changed, but our social, political and economic vulnerabilities have not. Educators imagine focusing on a kind of teaching and learning that puts democratic community life front and centre at the same time that it uses changes in digital technology to their advantage. These are both worthwhile goals, but they are not one and the same. If we care about robustly democratic societies, we will have to be explicit about the kinds of knowledge, skills, and dispositions required of democratic citizens.
Digital technologies, as the other articles in this special section demonstrate, have tremendous potential to help build a kind of participatory politics that strengthens democratic societies.1Teachers, researchers, and policymakers alike attest to the benefits of these powerful technologies and what they allow students to do, including:
These are powerful tools. These same features of digital civic engagement and exchange, however, can be put to use in the service of facile educational goals. As I detail in my recent book, What Kind of Citizen? Educating our children for the common good, when schools across Canada and the U.S. set out to teach democratic citizenship, a vast majority of them end up teaching good behaviour instead: follow the rules; listen to teachers and other authority figures; be respectful and responsible; and manifest a sense of patriotism and loyalty. These can all be admirable traits. But none of them are uniquely essential to democratic citizens. And none of them would have been the kinds of traits needed by German citizens in 1933 in order to alter the course of history. “Good character” is insufficient for safeguarding and strengthening democratic institutions and traditions.
I do not mean to imply that another holocaust is imminent or that there is some kind of equivalency between anti-democratic leaders today and Adolf Hitler. I use this example both because it has personal resonance given my family history and also because extreme examples have a way of making visible concerning developments and trends. Currently, in the U.S. notably but also in many other countries, a toxic mix of rising economic inequality and ideological polarization is increasing, leading to waning trust in democratic governance.
Eighty-five years after Germany’s democracy was replaced by a totalitarian Nazi regime, popular support for democratic governance is the lowest it has been in decades. In a widely circulated 2017 report, the Pew Research Center raised considerable alarm among those who had assumed that western democracies enjoy relative stability within an entrenched culture of democratic governance. Although the report was titled “Globally, Broad Support for Representative and Direct Democracy,” commentators, civic educators, and political scientists highlighted a number of findings that challenged the rosier title. In the U.S., for example, 22 percent of respondents thought that a political system in which a strong leader could make decisions without interference from Congress or the courts would be a good way of governing. Close to one in three respondents who identified as Republican and almost half of U.S. millennials thought the same (globally, that figure was 26 percent).2
In another study, Harvard lecturer Yascha Mounk and Australian political scientist Roberto Stefan Foa examined longitudinal data from the World Values Survey and found considerable cause for concern. Between 1995 and 2014, the number of citizens who reported a preference for a government leader who was “strong” and who did not need to bother with elections has increased in almost every developed and developing democracy and, again, the growth has been greatest among youth and young adults.3 Neither Canada nor the U.S. are exceptions. Democracy, it seems, is not self-winding.
Concrete examples now abound of leaders stoking the flames of populist nationalism – the rallying of “the people” against both “foreigners” and a constructed “elite” in the service of right-wing nationalism. Worldwide, politicians can now openly express disdain for hallmarks of democratic society, including the free press, civil liberties, and the courts, while fostering resentment against foreigners and ethnic “others.” These kinds of anti-democratic rhetoric and policies can drive individuals and groups to withdraw from the broader civil society altogether, preferring sub-group identity – what James Banks aptly calls “failed citizenship.”4Recent rhetoric during election campaigns in Canada reveals similarly concerning trends.
A rise in xenophobia and nationalism has resulted in incidents of hate speech, antagonism, and assaults on both newly arrived immigrants and native-born visible minorities in a growing number of western democracies. In the U.S., the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has documented a precipitous rise in hatred, fear, and alienation among students; and teachers have similarly reported a dramatic increase in hate speech.5 Social media echo chambers further entrench anti-democratic tendencies and pollute genuine social and political discourse.6 Yoichi Funabashi, chairman of the Rebuild Japan Initiative (dedicated to strengthening democratic ideals in Japan) summarizes the risks succinctly: “If society becomes characterized by intolerant divisions, in which people immediately select their allies and dismiss others as foes based on such criteria as race, ethnicity, religion or lifestyle, then democracy’s foundational principles, rooted in careful deliberation and compromise, will be rendered inoperable.”7
Online and offline, we need citizens who can think and act in ethically thoughtful ways. A well-functioning democratic society benefits from classroom practices that teach students to recognize ambiguity and conflict in factual content, to see human conditions and aspirations as complex and contested, and to embrace debate and deliberation as a cornerstone of democratic societies. Here are three strategies that can help shape educational practices in an era of both increasingly powerful digital tools and decreasing support for social democracy:
One hallmark of a totalitarian society is the notion of one single “truth” handed down from a leader or small group of leaders to everyone else. Questioning that truth is not only discouraged, but also often illegal. By contrast, schools in democratic societies must teach students how to ask challenging questions – the kind of uncomfortable queries that challenge tradition. Although most of us would agree that traditions are important, without questioning there can be no progress. Dissent – feared and suppressed in nondemocratic societies – is the engine of progress in free ones. Education reformers, school leaders, and parents should do everything possible to ensure that teachers and students have opportunities to ask these kinds of questions.
Much as Darwin’s theory of natural selection depends on genetic variation, any theory of teaching in a democratic society depends on encouraging a multiplicity of ideas, perspectives, and approaches to exploring solutions to issues of widespread concern. Students need practice in entertaining multiple viewpoints on issues that affect their lives. These issues might be controversial. But improving society requires embracing that kind of controversy so citizens can engage in democratic dialogue and work together toward understanding and enacting sensible policies.
Why would we expect adults, even members of Parliament, to be able to intelligently and compassionately discuss different viewpoints if schoolchildren never or rarely get that opportunity? In schools that further democratic aims, teachers engage young people in deep historical, political, social, economic, and even scientific analysis. They also challenge children to imagine how their lived experiences are not universal and how issues that may seem trivial to them could matter deeply to others. They have students use online tools to examine multiple perspectives not only to know that their (or their parents’) views may not be shared by everyone, but also to engender a kind of critical empathy for those with competing needs. This is the kind of teaching in a digital era that encourages future citizens to leverage their civic skills for the greater social good, rather than their own particular interests, thus working to challenge social inequities.
How should we do this? For example, teachers might present newspaper articles from around the world (easily accessed through the Internet) that examine the same event. Which facts and narratives are consistent? Which are different? Why? Textbooks from several different countries could provide another trove of lessons on multiple viewpoints and the role of argument and evidence in democratic deliberation. Many of these textbooks are now accessible online, allowing the kinds of comparisons that would have been difficult before the advent of communications technology. If textbooks are not available online, teachers can use the power of social media to connect with classes in other countries who are reading different textbooks. Even within English-language textbooks there are many opportunities. Schools in Canada, the U.K., and the U.S., for instance, present strikingly different perspectives on the War of 1812.
Why not ask students to use online and offline sources to research who wrote their textbook? Why were those people chosen? What kind of author was not invited to participate? The idea that a person or group actually wrote a textbook reminds us that the words are not sacrosanct but represent the views of a particular time, place, and group of authors. These approaches help demonstrate to students that “facts” are less stable than is often thought.
Students should also examine controversial contemporary issues. Students are frequently exposed to past historical controversies – such as slavery, Nazism, or laws denying voting rights to women. But those same students are too often shielded from today’s competing ideas (for example, the #MeToo movement, women’s reproductive rights, misinformation campaigns that employ social media as a dangerous and powerful tool, controversies over what should be taught in the school curriculum and how). Engagement with contemporary controversies using a range of perspectives and multiple sources of information – something online tools are uniquely well-suited to promote – is exactly what democratic participation requires.
It is not possible to teach democratic forms of thinking without providing an environment to think about. Schools should encourage students to consider their specific surroundings and circumstances. Here too, social media and other digital tools can be an asset.
One way to provide experiences with democratic participation in civic and political life is to engage students in community-based projects that encourage the development of personal responsibility, participation, and critical analysis. Action civics is a particularly powerful and thoughtful way to foster civic participation that transcends community service to also include a focus on government, policy, and dissent.8 We saw this with the students of Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, who, in response to the February 2018 mass shooting in their school, leveraged the power of social media and other digital tools to become key figures in a national dialogue on gun culture in the U.S., while also mobilizing both locally and nationally to agitate for gun control legislation, organize demonstrations, support electoral candidates, and register voters. Their ability to connect a very personal experience with the ways in which government, policy, and social and economic forces shape their lives has allowed them to participate on a national scale, and no doubt prepared them for a life of effective civic engagement. When students have the opportunity to engage with civics education through direct action in their own local context, the impacts of their work are integrated with their lived experience and can teach fundamental lessons about the power of citizen engagement both on and off-line.
Of course, choosing to be explicitly political in the classroom can cause friction for teachers – with students, parents, and administrators – even when teachers avoid expressing their own political views. Encouraging discussion, controversy, and action in the classroom can be daunting. Students may express views that make classmates uncomfortable; they may engage in political acts that concern their parents; or they may choose to challenge their own school’s policies. Democracy can be messy. Rather than let fear of sanction and censorship dictate pedagogical choices, however, teachers should be supported and protected, encouraged to use debates and controversy as “teachable moments” in civic discourse.
Another obstacle to focusing locally is the obsession with provincial (and national and international) standardized testing. The resulting emphasis on memorization and regurgitation of generalized knowledge prevents deeper critical analysis and runs counter to almost everything we know from education research about how to make teaching and learning meaningful and about how to foster engagement and participation in civic life.9
The communication technologies of the digital era have enormous potential to bring people together in collective pursuits. Those pursuits, however, must be consistent with democratic values. History demonstrates that just because schools teach children about citizenship and character does not necessarily mean they do it well, or even toward admirable aims. In fact, schools have sometimes engaged in some of the worst forms of citizenship indoctrination. Counted among the many examples of organized “citizenship” education are the hateful lessons learned by members of the Hitler Youth brigades such as racism, antisemitism, the glorification of Nordic and other “Aryan” citizens, and blind obedience to authority; or the Young Pioneers of the USSR who were taught to report any religious activity in their own homes to authorities so their parents could be prosecuted. Had these same youth had access to YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, would they have been more or less likely to teach one another about democratic ideals and the dangers of authoritarian rule?
Similarly, when we use digital technologies in schools, do we use them to teach children to unquestioningly preserve our social, political, and economic norms and behaviours, or do we use them to imagine and pursue new and better ones? Do we teach them only the importance of following the rules or also to question when the rules are not worth following? Do we teach students to mobilize in support of policies that promote only their own self-interest, or to think more broadly about their ethical obligations to others? I wonder what might have been different in 1941, the year my mother received her last letter from her parents, had children been taught not only compliance but also doubt and the obligation to imagine a better society for all. I think about what civic educators can do now – whether focused on new technologies or on the kinds of critical thinking skills necessary to sustain democratic norms and behaviours – to convey to students the power of community, as well as the pitfalls of blind allegiance to it.
Long before computers or the Internet, John Dewey described schools as miniature communities and noted that the school is not only a preparation for something that comes later, but also a community with values and norms embedded in daily experiences.10 In many ways the question of how to teach citizenship in a digital era is a much broader question about the purpose of schooling writ large. Transforming the way we teaching citizenship is not only the purview of the civics and social studies classroom, but a journey into all classrooms, all subjects, the hallways, and the relationships of the entire school experience. Citizenship education – indeed education of all sorts – is, ultimately, a proxy for the kind of society we seek to create.
Photos: Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-S69279,_London,_Ankunft_jüdische_Flüchtlinge and iStock
First published in Education Canada, December 2018
1 Also see the work of Erica Hodgin, Joseph Kahne, Ellen Middaugh, Ben Bowyer and others at the Civic Engagement Research Group in Riverside, California. www.civicsurvey.org
2 Pew Research Center (PEW), Globally, Broad Support for Representative and Direct Democracy (Washington, D.C.: PEW, 2017).
3 R. Stefan Foa and Y. Mounk, “The Danger of Deconsolidation: The democratic disconnect,” Journal of Democracy 27, no. 3 (2016): 5-17.
4 J. A. Banks, “Failed Citizenship and Transformative Civic Education,” Educational Researcher 46, no. 7 (2017): 366–377.
5 United Nations (UN), Racism, Xenophobia Increasing Globally (New York, UN, 2016), www.un.org/press/en/2016/gashc4182.doc.htm; M. Costello, The Trump Effect: The impact of the presidential campaign on our nation’s schools (Montgomery, AL: The Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016); W. Au, “When Multicultural Education Is not Enough,” Multicultural Perspectives 19, no. 3 (2017): 147–150; J. Rogers, M. Franke, J.E. Yun, et.al, Teaching and Learning in the Age of Trump: Increasing stress and hostility in America’s high schools (Los Angeles, CA: UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, 2017).
6 For research about media echo chambers, see, for example: J. Kahne & B. Bowyer, “Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age: Confronting the challenges of motivated reasoning and misinformation,” American Educational Research Journal 54, no. 1 (2017): 3–34.
7 Y. Funabashi, “Trump’s Populist Nationalism,” The Japan Times (2017, January 17). www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/01/17/commentary/japan-commentary/trumps-populist-nationalism
8 See, for example: B. Blevins, K. LeCompte, and S. Wells, “Innovations in Civic Education: Developing civic agency through action civics,” Theory & Research in Social Education 44, no. 3 (2016): 344-384; M. Levinson, No Citizen Left Behind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).
9 D. Koretz, The Testing Charade: Pretending to make schools better (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017); J. Westheimer, “No Child Left Thinking,” Colleagues 12, no. 1 (2015). http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/colleagues/vol12/iss1/14
10 J. Dewey, Moral Principles in Education (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1909/1975).
Over the past two years, I have had the chance to become a student leader and advocate for improvement in the education system. I have also had the opportunity, as a student trustee, to attend school board meetings and professional development opportunities for students.
These experiences have opened my eyes to the work that is being done in the Ontario education system to improve students’ education. I have learned that student voice can be heard on many different levels. Whether it be at a Ministry of Education consultation or a math class, each level is just as important as the others.
I remember in Grade 8, my teacher spoke about the value of getting involved in extra-curricular activities in high school. Grade 9 was a transition year for me. Like many others students, I was learning the ins and outs of high school and how to succeed. Because of this, I did not join many extra-curricular activities. In Grade 10, my journey into student voice began. A teacher who saw my potential invited me to take part in a school-level focus group about increasing student voice in my school board. I felt positively impacted by this opportunity because it made me feel that my voice was valued and that there is need for improvements.
In Grade 11, the same teacher (who had since moved on) came to my school and asked me to be a student representative at the planning level for student voice in my school board. This led to me being able to be a co-facilitator at a two-day student summit that brought together approximately 150 participants, ranging from students to the director of education, to discuss how to improve student voice in their schools. This event gave me insight into some of the issues that are experienced by students.
The two biggest issues that I saw were tokenism and lack of opportunity. By tokenism I mean, students who are lucky enough to be given an opportunity to share their input, often feel that they are simply listened to but no action is taken. I feel that this stems from the attitude we have developed in our society, that sees youth as disengaged, not willing to participate or not having valuable ideas. From my experiences, this is not the case. Youth are one of the groups that are being affected by problems in education; why not involve them in the process of identifying specific issues and coming up with a plan to solve them?
The second issue is connected to the first issue. Youth are often not given an opportunity to voice their opinion at higher levels of discussions. They are often left out from the meaningful conversations that occur at school boards, ministries of education, community stakeholder groups and many more. Because of this, the power of youth to influence change does not reach its full potential due to the lack of opportunities.
The opportunities that I have had in the last two years have greatly influenced my future career choices and the way that I view life. Being able to help facilitate growth in the education system has allowed me to realign my moral compass and realize that I have been blessed with a life of service to others in which I must find a way to improve others’ lives in the most positive way that I can. Expressing my views and others’ views has allowed me to see that there is good in this world and that youth are very powerful. All we must do is, empower possibility.
To conclude, to any educator reading this, come up with ways to meaningfully engage your students in the decision-making process. If you’re not sure how, reach out to others; there are many great people who are paving the way to improve the education system.
To any parent reading this: have a conversation with your child(ren) about what they can do to improve their voice. Help them find the power inside themselves to change the world.
And finally, to any youth reading this: your voice is powerful and can change the world in many ways. Help your friends find their voices and together, you will have even more impact in spreading your hard work for change.
Photo: courtesy Evan Rogers
First published in Education Canada, December 2018
How do young people use their cellphones to “speak back to political structures that were previously out of reach?” Casey Burkholder’s work with youth and cellphilming reveals how “young people are engaging in politics constantly, on and offline.”
A few weeks ago, I was having coffee with a colleague who was complaining about his niece. “She never looks up from her phone,” he said. “When I was her age, I knew things about the world. I could fix things. I talked to people. I made eye contact with adults. I listened to adults when they spoke. Kids today don’t do anything. They just take selfies and make videos and text.”
I paused a moment and then said, “When I was her age, adults were lamenting that kids wore too much black, played with gender in disruptive ways, sulked too much, were generally depressed and didn’t work hard or appreciate what they were given.”
He laughed, and said, “Maybe…” in a condescending way.
I continued, “Look, young people are engaging in politics constantly, on and offline. If anything, researchers are acknowledging the vast stores of knowledge and ways of being in the world that youth communicate. In my own work, young people use their cellphones to speak back to political structures that were previously out of reach. I promise you, the kids are alright.”
“Yeah, but what are they actually DOING?” he responded.
I let this comment sit a moment, sighed, and changed the subject.
This interaction stuck with me for the weeks that followed. What is it, I wondered, about young people that previous generations find so threatening or impenetrable? Maybe it’s just that their ways of seeing, engaging with, speaking back and responding to the world is unfamiliar. And all that unfamiliarity is distressing.
Academics like danah boyd,1 David Buckingham and Rebecca Willett,2 Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang3 have been writing about young people and the ways they engage and resist politically for some time now. Buckingham and Willett, for example, suggest that young people constantly make political decisions in their daily lives, from the things that they eat and the music they listen to, to the things that they wear. danah boyd explored the ways that young people create agentic communities and networks online. Tuck and Yang argue that the ways that young people resist can both uphold and confront inequities in society. Within this work on young people’s activism, political engagement, and media-making practices, I see opportunities to work with young people’s ways of knowing and documenting the world in order to speak back to these prescriptive and homogenizing discourses about youth. An example of these prescriptive and homogenizing discourses? Kids don’t do anything. Kids are always on their phones. Kids don’t. Kids just. And so on.
In my research, teaching, and activist practices, I work with cellphilming as a research methodology – where participants create short cellphone videos responding to particular prompts or community concerns in order to share (in my work, primarily) young people’s ways of knowing. In my doctoral research undertaken at McGill, I worked with my former junior high school students from 2008-2010 – ethnic minority young people who were living, studying, and working in Hong Kong. We created cellphilms about their sense of identity, belonging, and civic engagement practices in 2015, directly following Hong Kong’s youth-led Umbrella Revolution.4 For example, Katrina and Ann’s cellphilm, “Who Am I in Hong Kong?” makes visual the ways that they identify as Filipina-Hong Kongers, who were born and have grown up in the city, and who also experience feelings of otherness in the larger community. Sabi and Yuna’s “Ethnic Minorities in Hong Kong” depict the ways in which ethnic minorities interact with Chinese people in public spaces, and the ways these interactions influence their sense of belonging as Nepali-Hong Kongers. Through these youth-produced cellphilms, I learned to see the ways that formalized, segregated schooling structures made students feel isolated in the larger community, but also that school served as a space where these ethnic minority young people created agentic communities that resisted feelings of isolation. We have shared these cellphilms through YouTube, on a group-controlled channel called We Are Hong Kong Too. Our Google+ description reads, “This is a sharing space for a cellphone video-making project exploring space, self, belonging and civic engagement with ethnic minority young people in Hong Kong. We hope to foster dialogue and encourage reflection about what it means to live, work, study, and grow in Hong Kong.”
Even three years after we had originally produced and uploaded the videos, new audiences are continuing to engage with the ideas and the cellphilms. This online space is an important example of civic engagement – demonstrating one way that young people can get together to speak back to the things that are written and said about them in their community. The We Are HK Too project continues on YouTube, through Facebook and other social media spaces, and its lessons have continued to inspire my own research practices.
Right now, I’m working on a project with young people in Wolastoqiyik territory – Fredericton, New Brunswick – called Think/Film/Screen/Change. This project is multidisciplinary, and looks to understand more about gender, identity, youth civic engagement and do-it-yourself (DIY) media-making in the context of Atlantic Canada. I’m working with young people aged 12-17. We’re going to make cellphilms to address community issues that matter to young people across the gender spectrum, committed to creating safer spaces for queer, trans, and gender non-binary young people.
The main focus of the Think/Film/Screen/Change project is to research with young people in Atlantic Canada by refocusing their everyday media-making practices – those selfies and videos and texts my colleague was so worked up about – to address youth-identified pressing social issues in this territory, including gender-based violence, poverty, water and food security, among other issues. These are the issues that these young people are talking about and these are some ways that they are engaging with activism and political engagement in their on and offline lives already.
The Think/Film/Screen/Change project seeks to understand a couple of key questions: 1) How might cellphilming deliver complex understandings of social issues and centre community experiences from participants’ perspectives? 2) How might these young people engage the public in community issues that matter to them through participatory exhibiting (e.g. organizing cellphilm screenings in community centres) and archiving practices (e.g. sharing and saving the cellphilms in online spaces, like social media sites)? Through the creation of cellphilms and an archive of these visual texts, the project will include the participants in media production and dissemination over time.
With the creation of cellphilms and sharing these texts in a participatory digital archive on YouTube, the research aims to create spaces for youth to “screen truth to power,”5 in response to traditional media that tends to exclude, other, or commercialize youth perspectives. The study is also innovative in that it aims to develop a participatory approach to the archiving of research participants’ cellphilms through YouTube, where each participant will have the password to a shared public channel. This practice will advance the development of participatory archiving practices in visual research, and deepen an understanding of what sustained and ongoing informed consent means in research. In particular, the study aims to highlight the rights of participants themselves to have control over their visual productions. Through the nuanced example of the participatory archive of cellphilms that will be co-managed by participants on YouTube, the project will provide a critical understanding of gendered and dissenting acts of citizenship through the example of youth media production as participatory political engagement. The results of the research will reach audiences both within and beyond the academy, and in so doing influence methods and practice with implications for youth-led policy-making.
The Think/Film/Screen/Change research aims to provide a critical understanding of gendered acts of civic engagement in Atlantic Canada through the example of youth media production as participatory political engagement,6 aided by the creation of a participatory archive of cellphilms on YouTube and girl-led public screening events. Speaking to the field of civic engagement, the study aims to provide a complex example of the ways in which young people’s civic engagement is affected by their intersectional realities. I envision the youth-produced cellphilms as an opportunity to speak back to structural inequalities and homogeneous discourses that seek to smother youth civic engagement. At the same time, as Tuck and Yang have argued, the findings from the study may also illuminate the ways in which young people assert themselves as civic actors, including ways that uphold structural inequalities and dominant discourses.
Each of these civic acts – even those that uphold structural inequalities and dominant discourses – in the process of the Think/Film/Screen/Change research will be examples of youth political engagement. It is political to get together to talk about pressing issues for youth in this territory. It is political to identify challenges and potential solutions to these issues by and for youth. It is political to create short cellphilm texts to share with other community members. It is political to organize community screenings. It is political to think about what should happen to these cellphilms over time, and to identify future audiences to share the cellphilms with. In each step of the research process, young people will be enacting civic engagement.
I would also argue that in their existing media making practices – those selfies and videos and texts and the things they like and they share (their own set of citation practices) – young people are being and enacting political engagement. To echo what Carol Hanisch7 said so powerfully in 1969, “the personal is political.” The personal remains political in 2018.
And so, I am writing this piece to speak not only to my colleague, but to others who work, live and interact with young people, and also to those who engage with youth only peripherally. When young people are homogenized through statements like, “Kids today don’t do anything. They just take selfies and make videos and text,” we deny them their intersectional, heterogeneous lived experiences. We refuse to acknowledge their ways of seeing, documenting, representing, and speaking back to the world. We suggest that our ways are inherently more valuable and appropriate. But I think, in making these assertions, we are making a big mistake and missing so much of what young people are thinking, saying, responding to and doing. All of this leads me to one sincere conclusion: the kids are alright.
Cellphilms from the Hong Kong project can be viewed on You Tube: “We Are Hong Kong Too.”
Photo: Courtesy “We Are Hong Kong Too”
First published in Education Canada, December 2018
1 danah boyd, It’s Complicated: The social lives of networked teens (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014).
2 David Buckingham and Rebecca Willet, Digital Generations: Children, young people, and the new media (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013).
3 Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Youth Resistance Research and Theories of Change (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014).
4 The youth-led Umbrella Revolution occurred between September and December 2014, when citizens of Hong Kong occupied key commercial districts to protest the lack of democratic freedoms in relation to the 2017 Chief Executive Election. The movement’s name emerged from protestors’ use of umbrellas to block police-deployed tear gas. It is important to note that conversations about Hong Kong, democracy, and political autonomy from Mainland China continue to be expressed in the public realm, both online and offline, four years following the beginning of the Occupy Central movement – which blossomed into the Umbrella Revolution.
5 Svetla Turnin and Ezra Winton, Screening Truth to Power: A reader on documentary activism (Montreal, QC: Cinema Politica, 2014).
6 Henry Jenkins, S. Shresthova, et al., By Any Media Necessary: The new youth activism (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2016).
7 Carol Hanisch, “The Personal is Political,” in Radical Feminism: A documentary reader,edited by Barbara A. Crow (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
The potential of digital media to bring about a more equitable democracy won’t be fully realized unless we ensure that all young people have access to high quality digital civic learning opportunities. Teachers can, and should, play a pivotal role in supporting all youth to develop the sense of agency, motivation, and skills to use digital media to participate in democratic life.
In October 2017, Quebec’s National Assembly passed Bill 62, “which bans Muslim women who wear a niqab or burqa from obtaining government services — including [using] public transportation — without showing their faces.”1 In short order, various legal challenges were posed by the Canadian Civil Liberties Union and the National Council of Canadian Muslims. At the same time, Québecois residents who opposed the measure turned to other strategies to demonstrate their solidarity with those affected by the ban – marching in the streets and riding the Metro2 wearing niqabs and face coverings. Another facet of the protest and solidarity movement involved posting selfies3 on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook with faces fully or partially covered, either with traditional head scarves or with other coverings including motorcycle helmets, sunglasses and winter scarves, and surgical masks. These kinds of online expression show how traditional forms of civic action (like rallies) may be enriched by social media. They also show the potential power that digital tools and platforms have to circulate photos and other content with a civic or political message to a wide audience. Importantly, the potential here doesn’t end with expressing one’s voice; tweets with catchy photos, hashtags or memes can potentially change the conversation. Educators need to pay attention to this landscape as they consider what and how to teach for civic agency in today’s world.
Online tools and social media platforms have become a central part of civic and political life. A recent study found that eight in ten social media users reported that they feel social media platforms “help users get involved with issues that matter to them” and “helped bring new voices into the political discussion.”4 The digital age has opened up new ways to learn about issues, engage in dialogue, circulate ideas to a wide audience, and mobilize others to get involved. Yet, there are also unique challenges: assessing the credibility of online information, recognizing echo chambers and filter bubbles, learning to handle contentious online exchanges, determining potential risks of online content, reaching unexpected audiences, and considering the digital afterlife of one’s tweets, status updates, or snaps.
This digital landscape creates distinct pathways for youth to participate. Young people use social media as the primary way to communicate about politics.5 Despite perceptions that digital media distract youth from civic and political matters, 48 percent reported social media made them more aware of political issues and over 85 percent disagreed with the idea that social media lessened their awareness and commitments. In fact, one study found that 90 percent of youth who engaged in online civic and political activities report that they also vote or participate in institutional activities like letter writing and volunteering for a campaign.6
Digital media expand opportunities for a set of practices we call participatory politics. These practices differ from institutional politics in that they are peer-based and interactive; they tap into youths’ social networks; and they often draw on popular culture. In digital spaces, youth can participate without deference to adult-led institutions and bureaucratic structures that dictate the what, when, and how of civic and political action. For example, youth are blogging, engaging in online discussions, and creating and circulating clever memes and pointed hashtags. They are also using online petition sites like Change.org in order to influence the conversation and, in some cases, legislation around issues such as immigration, racist policing practices, gun control and climate change.
Just as democratic participation is changing in the digital age, so should our approaches to civic education. New knowledge, skills, and dispositions are needed to navigate this changing landscape. And just because young people know how to text or tweet, doesn’t mean they know how to use these tools for civic and political purposes. Data from a 2015 survey suggests that only 10 percent of youth engage at least weekly in such online political activities – meaning that 90 percent are not engaged or only occasionally engaged online.7
Therefore, bringing digital civics into classrooms and schools is essential. While this is already happening in some places, research points to an equity gap: youth who are White, from upper-income families, and high achieving academically receive far more of these learning opportunities than others.8 In addition, exposure to digital learning opportunities appears to be both inequitable and low overall. In a 2013 survey, 33 percent of U.S. high-school-age youth did not report having a single class session focused on how to tell if online information was trustworthy, and only 16 percent reported more than a few sessions.9 Therefore, it is critical to integrate digital civic learning opportunities for all youth across grade levels and content areas.
As educators consider teaching digital civics, we suggest the following framework that parses online civic engagement into four core practices. We also think it is essential to acknowledge the double-edged nature of digital life – the positive opportunities and genuine challenges connected to each practice.
At a time when information flows freely and rapidly from a diverse array of online sources – some credible, some not – it is vital to support youth to be thoughtful and savvy investigators.
Social media provide ample opportunities for youth to share their perspectives on public issues, learn about the views of others, and perhaps even engage in debate. Yet, the risk that conversations will turn toxic may deter youth. Providing youth with strategies and tools for engaging in online dialogue can help them feel prepared.
Online contexts offer nearly boundless opportunities to express and amplify one’s ideas and perspectives on important issues. As with dialogue, these positive potentials bring risks – including surveillance and backlash. Helping youth make thoughtful decisions about where, when, how, and to what ends to express their voices in networked spaces is essential.
The role of social media in supporting civic action is contested. Some describe e-petitions and mobilization via Twitter as “slacktivism” while others see great promise (if not clear evidence) of positive impact. In our networked age, we must help youth understand the potentials and limitations of tweets, likes, and hashtag activism in social change efforts, as well as the enduring role of face-to-face civic practices.
In order to attend to these opportunities and challenges, Nina Portugal and other educators in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in Oakland, California integrate civic and digital civic learning experiences into their core curriculum. In one project, Nina engaged her Grade 9 students in learning about various tactics of social change, both face-to-face and online. Students worked in small groups to identify an issue affecting their community and theninvestigate the history, root causes, and effects of that issue. Students then wrote a proposal outlining what they learned, what audience they wanted to reach, and what tactics they would utilize to respond to the issue. Next, students put their plan into action over the course of a week, posting media online using a common hashtag to document their actions. For example, one group of students focused on the negative effects of gentrification on communities of colour in Oakland. They mobilized people to write letters to the mayor and tweeted information about the effects of gentrification at the mayor every day during the action week.
After the week of action, students reflected on the effectiveness of their tactics, what they learned, and what they would do differently in the future. This reflection, along with their proposal and documentation of their action steps, were all posted to their class blog. This enabled students to voice their perspectives and raise awareness about their issues. It also gave other students the chance to read and comment on their classmates’ projects, opening up a dialogue amongst the various groups.
While the project undoubtedly provided students with exciting opportunities to learn about issues they care about, express their perspectives on a public platform, and take action, there is a lot to consider to facilitate such a project. For example, teachers have to navigate a number of concerns – such as juggling all the topics students choose, ensuring students’ work is ready for online publication and circulation, helping students reach an authentic audience, and monitoring the depth and academic tone of students’ comments. However, as Nina describes in a recent blog post, it is all worth it when students have opportunities to express their civic and political views in authentic contexts and to reach an expansive audience.10
The Digital Civics Toolkit (DCT) is a new resource that offers educators tools they can implement in the classroom to support their students as they engage with practices linked to participatory politics (see Figure 1). Created by members of the MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics, the DCT contains modules and activities that explore opportunities and tensions associated with participatory politics. It offers five ways to integrate digital civic learning into your classroom.
Youth today are growing up in a world in which digital media is not just about socializing with friends. Public issues and social change agendas can be – and are – raised, explored, discussed, and responded to on the Internet. While there are inevitable challenges and tensions, there are also positive opportunities, especially for youth. Further, the networked nature of civic and political life isn’t likely to go away. The potential of digital media to bring about a more equitable democracy won’t be fully realized unless we ensure that all young people have access to high quality digital civic learning opportunities.
Teachers can, and should, play a pivotal role in supporting all youth to develop the sense of agency, motivation, and skills to use digital media to participate in democratic life. And all educators have a role to play regardless of discipline, grade level, and learning context. By teaching digital civics, educators can enable more youth to recognize and, hopefully, seize new opportunities for civic and political engagement that are empowering, equitable, and impactful.
Original Illustration: istock
First published in Education Canada, December 2018
1 https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/10/19/women-scarf-selfies-bill-62_a_23249363/?ncid=tweetlnkcahpmg00000002
2 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bill-62-metro-protest-1.4366483
3 https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/face-covered-selfies-social-media-protests-over-quebec-s-bill-62-1.3641563
4 M. Duggan and A. Smith, The Political Environment on Social Media (Pew Research Center, 2016). www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/25/the-political-environment-on-social-media
5 P. Mihailidis, Media Literacy and the Emerging Citizen: Youth, engagement and participation in digital culture (New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, 2014).
6 C. Cohen, J. Kahne, B. Bowyer et al., Participatory Politics: New media and youth political action (YPPSP Research Report, 2012). http://ypp.dmlcentral.net/publications/107
7 J. Kahne and B. Bowyer, Can Media Literacy Education Impact Digital Engagement in Politics? Manuscript submitted for publication (2018).
8 J. Kahne and E. Middaugh, Democracy for Some: The civic opportunity gap in high school (CIRCLE Working Paper 59, 2008). www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/WorkingPapers/WP59Kahne.pdf
9 J. Kahne, E. Hodgin, and E. Eidman-Aadahl, “Redesigning Civic Education for the Digital Age: Participatory politics and the pursuit of democratic engagement,” Theory and Research in Social Education, no. 1 (2016): 1-35.
10 N. Portugal, “Confronting the Monster Under the Bed: Integrating blogging into the classroom,” Teaching Channel (May 14, 2018). www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2018/05/14/integrating-blogging
Teaching people to write is a bad idea! Writing extinguishes memory, stifles the free flow and development of ideas by freezing them in text, provides the semblance of wisdom without real depth, and, therefore, creates superficial and boring people. In short, writing destroys the discourse necessary for deep learning. This is essentially the argument Socrates made 2500 years ago to his friend Phaedrus, who extolled the virtues of a discourse on friendship written by the orator Lysias. Phaedrus had a copy of the speech with him and testified that Lysias had covered the subject comprehensively and, he believed, “no one could have spoken better or more exhaustively.”1 Socrates, however, disagreed. He had questions about several elements of Lysias’s argument, and without the author present saw no way to explore those. For Socrates, discourse (and therefore learning) was a living thing, a conversation in which participants could ask questions, press for meaning, and make arguments. Writing, he believed, stifled all of that by separating the author from his or her words, and, therefore, was anti-educational. What appeared to Phaedrus to be an educational innovation was, in Socrates’s view, a disaster.
I know just how Socrates felt. Digital media is often touted as a democratizing force and a boon to civic participation, but I have serious doubts. Whether it be reading the nasty comments of trolls at the end of news articles online, learning about the secret appropriation and misuse of digital data to manipulate public opinion and, in particular, electoral politics, or watching a vicious and superficial dispute on Twitter, my observations of civic engagement in the contemporary world leads me to a Socratic view of digital media: it is antithetical to informed civic discourse! And I am not alone. Writing in the Globe and Mail recently, British historian Niall Ferguson argued, “Sadly, over the past two years, it has gradually become apparent that the Internet may pose a bigger threat to democracies than to dictators.”2
While it would be nice to crawl into my curmudgeon’s shell and ignore the innovations of technology, I really can’t and still claim to be a civic educator. Socrates may have hated writing, but we know that, ironically, because Plato preserved his arguments in written from. Writing did not disappear because the Athenian philosopher railed against it; it became pervasive and most of us would agree it has not undermined thought or destroyed education. Similarly, digital media are here to stay and will shape our civic life in important ways.
That is not to say Socrates’s concerns about writing were all wrong. Writers do often treat important concepts superficially, use rhetorical techniques to distort arguments, and make very selective, and often inappropriate, use of evidence. In short, they always privilege a particular view of the world and often descend into propaganda. Furthermore, in many contemporary societies published written works are often imbued with an authority that makes them immune to critique. How many times have we heard the expression, “look it up in the book,” when someone wants to authoritatively end an argument? Socrates was right; all of these things, as well as others, make writing a potentially manipulative and dangerous tool both for education and citizenship.
On the other hand, writing allows us to expand the number of people reached by particular ideas and arguments. It often provokes us to reconsider old ideas and think in new ways. Powerful writing can and does move us, inspire us, and change us. Good writing brings us into contact with new worlds, and enriches our common humanity.
In the same way, digital media has the potential to broaden the human conversation by including more voices over multiple formats and platforms. It can put us in direct touch with people, cultures, and ideas from around the world, and allow us to express ourselves in ways unthinkable just a few years ago. Like writing, digital media also has its downsides. It can be used to invade privacy, provide a megaphone for hate, and reduce complex ideas and arguments to 280 characters. So, what are we as civic educators to make of this innovation? How can we help young citizens use digital technology to enhance their participation in civic life?
The way we have approached writing in education provides important guidance. Virtually all contemporary Language Arts or English curricula in democratic societies promote a critical approach to literacy in general and writing in particular. They take seriously Socrates’s concerns about the power of writing to shape discourse and understandings, often in unexamined ways, and call for students to develop understandings and skills to use the medium both functionally (to read for information, for example), and critically (to understand how the medium works as a social enterprise). The middle level (grades 6-8) curriculum in Atlantic Canada describes critical literacy this way:
Critical literacy is the awareness of language as an integral part of social relations. It is a way of thinking that involves questioning assumptions; investigating how forms of language construct and are constructed by particular social, historical, cultural, political, and economic contexts; and examining power relations embedded in language and communication. It can be a tool for addressing issues of social justice and equity, for critiquing society and attempting to effect positive change.3
Critical literacy then, is not simply the ability to read and write; it is an essential aspect of informed civic engagement.
In my view, we should approach digital media platforms in the same way, helping young citizens to use them both receptively and productively in critical ways related to fostering informed democratic deliberation and action. Recently I have been asked to review sets of competencies proposed for digital citizenship and have been quite distressed. I notice that they focus on two areas: online etiquette and Internet safety. The former concentrates on teaching students to be polite in digital environments, the latter on mitigating the dangers of cyberbullying, luring, sexting and the like. While both of these are important, neither is related to civic engagement or takes a particularly critical approach to working with and in digital media.
Ken Osborne made the point years ago in this publication that good citizenship involves much more than being a nice person.4 Below, I suggest two dark clouds and corresponding silver linings for fostering a critical civic work in digital environments.
Our digital platforms know us well. They collect demographic and personal information about us, continually track our online activities, and target our newsfeeds, popups and advertisements to fit with our evolving profile. This can be quite efficient as we are fed news from sites that share what the relevant algorithm calculates we’ll appreciate. I don’t get ads for acne cream and my granddaughters don’t get them for senior living. A few years ago, in a book and TED talk, Eli Pariser warned about this phenomenon which he called “filter bubbles.” They can make life more comfortable and easier, but they are lousy preparation for civic life, which is centred on engaging with others who come from different perspectives and backgrounds. Filter bubbles, whether created by online formulas or our own voluntary sorting of ourselves into groups and neighbourhoods of like-minded people, create barriers to effective associational and civic life, and are often fostered by uncritical engagement with digital media.
The silver lining, though, is that while Google and Facebook think they know us, they do not control us unless we allow them to. Digital media allow for the possibility of hearing from myriad others who do not share our worldviews and perspectives. Young citizens can be helped to cast off their filter bubbles, and both engage with people and ideas from diverse perspectives and cultures as well as use digital platforms to share their own stories. Two of my colleagues in the Faculty of Education at the University of New Brunswick, Casey Burkholder and Matt Rogers, engage students in using film and cellphilms to narrate aspects of their lives.5 These include navigating complex identities as minority individuals in an aggressively monolithic society, as well as struggling to make sense of and handle things like family violence, racism, and sexuality. I am an educated person and have read a lot about all of these phenomena, but watching and hearing these young people tell their stories moves me in ways that are much more visceral. My empathetic understanding is always enhanced, and that is a critical aspect of democratic civic dispositions. Digital media can isolate and insulate us from engaging with difference, but it can also enhance perspective taking and empathy, and make it possible to connect with diverse others more deeply and meaningfully than ever before. Good civic education will foster understanding of the former and facility with the latter.
In December 2016, Edgar M. Welch charged into a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C., with several guns.6 He was there to liberate children being held as part of a child abuse ring. Except there were no children there, and the sex abuse ring was a figment of the imagination created by demagogues and widely distributed on the Internet by malevolent or ignorant sycophants. This was a particularly vivid example of the potential impact of so-called “fake news” that permeates the Web. People and “bots” spread false information about politics, social policy, medical treatments, relationships, and just about every other aspect of human life. This information is absorbed, manipulated, and passed on by many others. We know, for example, that in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, fake rallies were advertised as a ploy to bring opponents of particular policies or candidates into the street in droves and exacerbate already simmering tensions.
On the other hand, digital media allows incredible access to the best ideas in the world. In a very simple example, I regularly ask my graduate students to email scholars whose work they are encountering. More often than not, these academics write back and frequently establish an ongoing relationship that takes my students deeper into the research areas they are exploring. They become engaged in cutting-edge conversations in their fields. That is only one of the possibilities digital media has to enhance our engagement with new and evolving ideas and phenomena.
While the dark cloud of “fake news” is exacerbated by digital media, it is not really anything new. Critics of democracy in the days of Plato and Socrates worried that silver-tongued demagogues could manipulate the mob in dangerous ways through distorting reality or presenting falsehoods. Citizens have always had to learn to separate the wheat from the chaff in civic discourse; while the medium might be different in the digital age, the mission isn’t. Students can be taught to ask some of the same kinds of questions long suggested by advocates of critical literacy: Who created this source? What is/are their purposes? What inferences can I draw from this source? What perspective does this source ask me to assume? What viewpoint is presented in this source? What does this source omit or distort? How is my own response related to what is presented by the source?7
From the beginning, liberators and charlatans have been part of the democratic process. It has always been, and will continue to be essential that young citizens develop the critical facilities to separate one from the other and to use digital media and other forms to engage in work for the common good.
Civics education curricula around the world credit Socrates’s fellow citizens in Ancient Athens with establishing the first democracy. The trial and execution of Socrates, grounded, Plato argued, in the manipulation of public opinion, demonstrated it wasn’t perfect. Democracy has evolved considerably since those early manifestations, particularly with regard to who is included in the civic polity. It still isn’t perfect, and many of the challenges it faces are similar to the ones faced in Ancient times. The project of civic education in the 21st century is largely the same as it was in Athens: helping young citizens deal with the complexities, nuances, and shifting nature of power and politics in a world that often prefers simplicity and certainty. The mechanisms citizens use to engage have changed, but the underlying project is the same.
First published in Education Canada, December 2018
1 Plato. n.d. “Phaedrus.” The Internet Classics Archive. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.1b.txt.
2 Ferguson, Niall. 2018. “Social Networks Are Creating a Global Crisis of Democracy.” Globe and Mail, 2018. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/niall-ferguson-social-networks-and-the-global-crisis-of-democracy/article37665172/.
3 New Brunswick Department of Education, English Language Arts: Middle Level. (Fredericton: Educational Program & Services Branch, n.d.), p. 103.
4 Ken Osborne, “Political and Citizenship Education: Teaching for civic engagement.” Education Canada 45, no. 1 (2005): 13–16.
5 For more information about this project, see Casey Burkholder’s article, “The Kids are Alright,” in this issue of Education Canada.
6 Cecilia Kang and Adam Goldman, “In Washington Pizzeria Attack, Fake News Brought Real Guns,” The New York Times (January 20, 2018), sec. Business Day. www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/business/media/comet-ping-pong-pizza-shooting-fake-news-consequences.html.
7 Adapted from International Reading Association, and National Council of Teachers of English, Standards for the English Language Arts (Newark, Delaware and Urbana Illinois: 1996), p. 15. www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Books/Sample/StandardsDoc.pdf?_ga=2.55023531.123604395.1532439582-324293061.1532439582
Amanda Yuill’s writing has authenticity that can only come from classroom experience. Her ideas for connecting with the varied students in our classrooms are blended in this book with anecdotes and vignettes from her professional experience. With insight and humour, she describes how teachers can use a range of tools to help students feel connected to their teacher. Reaching and Teaching Them All is organized into three sections that explain how to connect with students who:
While the publishers suggest that this book has strategies for every grade, it is most useful for teachers working with students from Kindergarten to Grade 8. The publishers also suggest that the book is valuable for both new and experienced teachers, but because Amanada Yuill models professional reflection, this book is especially well-suited for teachers in the early stages of their careers.
Yuill’s suggestions are diverse. She offers ideas for how to begin the school year, manage conflict, and maintain boundaries with students. She provides tips for connecting with students who are new to the country and tips for connecting with students with behavioural challenges. She suggests how teachers can support students who are experiencing sickness, death, poverty, or abuse at home. She offers advice for how teachers can work with the range of students in our classroom who experience ADHD, anxiety, autism, and various common forms of mental illness.
Underlying the practical suggestions in this book is Yuill’s belief that students should be involved in classroom decisions as much as possible, and that teachers have a responsibility to teach students the behavioural skills that they lack in order for them to be successful. Put another way, Yuill understands that students need a teacher to help them figure out what they could do differently, and this is most effectively done when students feel connected to their teacher. Yuill’s classroom-savvy ideas will help teachers make that valuable connection.
Pembroke, 2018
ISBN: 978-1551383309
First published in Education Canada, September 2018
BrainReach, a volunteer program based in McGill University, sends graduate neuroscience students into classrooms across Montreal to lead hands-on science lessons about the brain.
When you ask a child to draw a picture of a scientist, what is the result? Many might think of an Einstein look-alike with wild hair, dressed in a while lab coat and mixing colourful, bubbling chemicals. But those perceptions can change dramatically when someone who doesn’t fit that image comes into a classroom, identifies herself as a researcher, and begins to make science tangible and accessible to young thinkers. Personal connection can break the traditional barriers that separate academia from the general public and circumvent the media-as-gatekeeper pattern that we see so often. It transforms science from “something that other people do” into “something I can interact with.” Here is the story of one graduate program in Montreal that is making just such a connection with kids throughout their province.
BrainReach was spearheaded in 2011 by Dr. Josephine Nalbantoglu, then-director of the Integrated Program in Neuroscience at McGill University. (See “Resources” for links to this and other programs mentioned in the text.) Ian Mahar, a graduate student presenter and coordinator at the program’s inception, remembers: “Josephine called a meeting and asked if anyone wanted to help build this initiative known as BrainReach, and a number of us raised our hands to get involved. We had no idea how it would build from there, though I’m sure we would have been surprised to know.”
BrainReach sends graduate student volunteer educators into classrooms across Montreal to lead hands-on science lessons about the brain. The key to BrainReach was having the same presenters come back to one classroom multiple times, to build a rapport with the students and field their questions as they grew in curiosity and comfort. According to Jenea Bin, another of the first BrainReach coordinators: “We decided to target underserved schools in Montreal, as these students do not always have the same access to science learning materials. At the high school level, these schools also tend to have higher dropout rates.”
Another approach that has distinguished BrainReach since the beginning is its emphasis on developing a curriculum that is coherent with the current research about learning – we are a neuroscience program, after all! Each presentation has to have a few interactive activities to help kids experience the material (not just hear it). We help the students observe brain cells through microscopes, touch a real brain, record electrical signals from their muscles, and learn about perception with prism goggles. Reviews are built in at the end of each session, as well as the beginning of the next one, to help with learning retention. The initial curriculum was developed over the course of a year, and from then on we have been updating it constantly, since neuroscience is a field under rapid development.
The BrainReach North branch was developed in 2013-14 to serve kids in the north of Quebec. “I have a family branch in a small community on Baffin Island called Cape Dorset,” explains Emily Coffey, who laid the groundwork for the new branch. “In those small communities up north, many children have even less access to science. They can’t be taken to museum trips, and may never meet a scientist.” This required a re-imagining of BrainReach, leading to online guides for teachers and videos to explain concepts and take advantage of the same hands-on activities in places we couldn’t send graduate students in person.
“I enjoyed it immensely from the first presentation, and was hooked; I remember wanting to work with as many classrooms as I could,” recalls Ian. He and many volunteers after him were motivated to bring in the newest research, cultivate a hunger for learning in their students, and challenge neuroscience myths (Do you really use only ten percent of your brain? No!).
Nowadays, we also hear from parents asking for the BrainReach program to come to their son or daughter’s school. This is heartening, and we are thrilled that parents are willing to act as liaisons for us – but it is imperative that the teacher is also on board. Teachers have limited classroom time, and even in elementary school they have a curriculum to get through. In order for a teacher to feel that it is worthwhile for them to give us hours of classroom time, we have to address the ways in which BrainReach covers parts of Quebec’s standardized curriculum; we also have to adequately communicate the benefits of the program to their students. For example, students need to learn about the scientific method and its associated terminology. So, in our session about brain cells, we ask students to make a hypothesis (or “educated guess”) about what a neuron will look like before they take a look in the microscope, recording their predictions in the form of a drawing. Then, we have the children look and draw what they see, just like the great scientists who first observed these amazing cells.
BrainReach sessions are also used to inform students about the neuroscience behind relevant social issues. In the high school curriculum, a full session is devoted to mechanisms of drugs and addiction, and in elementary school, we talk about how sleep affects our attention, mood, and memory.
Once a solid contact is made, it is a “win-win-win” situation – teachers get help preparing their science class, the kids get to develop relationships with people currently involved in neuroscience research, and the graduate volunteers gain crucial presentation skills and a connection to the world outside academia. “The children are always excited to know that the BrainReach presenters are coming,” one teacher commented. Ben Gold, who has been a presenter with the program for four years straight, remarked that he has also learned a lot about neuroscience by returning to the basics, thinking about things from the students’ perspectives, and working with teaching partners who have different areas of expertise. Another volunteer, Cindy Hovington, was so inspired by her experience that she went on to found Curious Neuron, an organization dedicated to translating research into accessible content for the public.
As the organization became bigger, we had to systematize and structure the program. This is a challenge for neuroscience graduate students, who are used to more solitary work in their own labs, and are contributing to BrainReach entirely on a volunteer basis. In fact, it was (and continues to be) a crash course in project management.
We formed subcommittees for Elementary, High School, and North, each with about ten people. While some recruited and matched volunteers with schools, others focused on refining the curriculum and translating it into French. Still others inventoried and distributed supplies for our interactive activities on a weekly basis. We streamlined our work using online tools such as Google Drive, Wikispaces, and Slack.
At each turn, we were supported by the boundless enthusiasm and energy of our program’s graduate students, but we also depended upon the consistent backing of program administrators. In addition to the Integrated Program in Neuroscience’s structural support, we partnered with Montreal’s Centre for Research in Brain, Language and Music for extra funding, an extended pool of potential volunteers, and the ability to give one-time workshops as a part of the 24 Hours of Science initiative. We even began taking on interns from Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business to help us develop a more professional presence and seek funding.
Kelly Smart, BrainReach North’s current president, has the additional task of communicating cross-culturally and establishing working relationships at a distance. “We approach this by collaborating whenever we can. We seek out people and groups who already have the connections and expertise we need, and we try to work with them and learn from them. It takes a lot of persistence and a willingness to listen and adapt constantly,” says Kelly.
Finally, as with any volunteer-based organization, resources are an issue. BrainReach does not have a fully sustainable funding model, and for the most part we have worked with donated equipment and temporary office spaces. However, the program has received some important boosts, including a Telus grant, as well as a recent crowdfunding campaign that brought in over $12,000! These funds will help us to plan better for the future, and invest in key infrastructure elements such as a website, as well as allowing us to send volunteers into Indigenous communities to give science camps as part of BrainReach North.
We are still developing and refining the program based on feedback from volunteers and teachers, but the most reliable measure of success is whether schools continue to sign up. And they do! This year, we have sent 100 volunteers to over 30 schools in the Montreal area, and have sent volunteers on teaching trips to three remote northern communities. Under the leadership of Marisa Cressati as high school coordinator, we saw a spike in the number of registered high schools and non-traditional classes (like homeschool co-ops and classes for kids with special needs). We hope to see other university groups learn from our experience and establish similar programs, especially in an age where media trends can obscure the difference between good and bad science. Giving science a “face” can change the way people interact with it, at any age.
Brainreach: Come say hi to us on social media!
Facebook @BrainReachMissionCerveau
or follow the BrainReach North Blog
Integrated Program in Neuroscience
Photo: courtesy Anastasia Sares
First published in Education Canada, September 2018
Without question, we need discussions about Truth and Reconciliation in all classrooms in every community and every educational institution across Canada. From my traditional Mi’kmaw way of understanding the world, I firmly believe these discussions must begin with exchanges of stories because such is the foundational basis of all relationship. I also passionately believe these exchanges must be ongoing and that they must take place within an acknowledged journey of co-learning wherein we – Indigenous peoples and the newcomers in our Indigenous lands – seek to learn together, to learn from each other, and to learn to draw upon the strengths, indeed the best, in our different ways of knowing, doing, and being.
Many years ago, I brought forward the guiding principle of Etuaptmumk or Two-Eyed Seeing for co-learning. It encourages the realization that beneficial outcomes are much more likely in any given situation when we are willing to bring two or more perspectives into play. As such, Etuaptmumk / Two-Eyed Seeing can be understood as the gift of multiple perspective, which is treasured by the Mi’kmaw people and probably most Indigenous peoples. Our world today has many arenas where this principle, this gift, is exceedingly relevant including, especially, education, health, and the environment. I’ve often described Etuaptmumk / Two-Eyed Seeing this way:
“I, you, and we need to learn to see from one eye with the best or the strengths in the Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing… and learn to see from the other eye with the best or the strengths in the mainstream (Western or Eurocentric) knowledges and ways of knowing… but most importantly, I, you, and we need to learn to see with both these eyes together, for the benefit of all.”
In my experience, many people across Canada and in different locations have a desire to bring together the ways of knowing of Indigenous peoples and newcomers. Different approaches and different names are in use for this type of work and Etuaptmumk / Two-Eyed Seeing is but one. Regardless, the work is not easy. I always emphasize that the ongoing journey of co-learning is essential in order to develop and nurture collective and collaborative understandings and capabilities. Otherwise, the work can all too easily slip into a lazy, tokenistic approach in which Etuaptmumk / Two-Eyed Seeing and similar efforts quickly become mere jargon, trivialized, romanticized, co-opted, or used as a “mechanism” where pieces of knowledge are merely assembled in a way that lacks the S/spirit of co-learning. And thus, we need ongoing co-learning in our classrooms. But we need also to act upon the recognition that informal learning environments exist in abundance throughout our communities and within the whole of society… and co-learning needs to occur in them as well as in the formal classroom setting. So I believe this educational need is both deep and broad.
I look forward to this special issue of Education Canada: We must share our stories and we must learn to listen to stories other than our own… our knowledges live in our stories.
L’pa ma’ pun tluow ta’n tettuji nuta’q sku’tminenow Ketlewo’qn aq Apiksiktuaqn msit wutaniminal aq msit ta’n te’sikl kina’matnuo’kuo’ml ta’n telki’k u’t Kanata. Ta’n ni’n tel nestm koqoey, amujpa tela’sik wlu wsitqamu’kminu. Amujpa etlewistu’ti’k aq wesku’tmu’k ta’n wejitaik mita ta’n tujiw etlewistu’ti’kw melkiknowatu’k ta’n teli-mawqatmu’ti’k u’t wsitaqmu. Paqsipki-tlamsitm ta’n tettuji nuta’q u’t tla’siktn ke’sk pemitaikl msit wutawtiminal. Nutaik toqi- kina’masultinew mawi kwilmu’kl ikjijitaqnminal aq kinu’tmasultinew ta’n koqoey maw-kelu’kl e’tasiw ala’tu’kl, muskajewe’l. Mu ajkine’nuk ta’n tettuji pilui-kina’masulti’k, ta’n tel-lukuti’k aq ta’n telo’lti’k – mawikwaik amujpa nike’ – l’nu’k aq ak’lasie’wk.
Sa’qiji’jk na nike’wesku’tm aq kekkina’muey ta’n ni’n telo’tm wela’sik tel-kina’masultimk kiskuk. Telui’tmap “Etuaptmumk.” Akklasie’wiktuk telui’tasik – “Two-Eyed Seeing.” Etuaptmin na koqoey, toqa’tu’nl ikjijitaqnn. Mnaqij akkaptmin u’t tel kina’masimk, nmitisk aq wetuo’tisk me’aji wl’a’sik toqa’tumk ikjijitaqnn l’nue’l aq aklasie’we’l. Na nekmowey wjit Etuaptmumk teliksua’tasik kutey iknmakumkl ta’n tujiw tel-kina’masimk l’nuimk. Nestmu’k, mita sa’q ki’s tel’ukuti’k aq kesite’tmu’k.
Kiskuk u’t eymu’ti’k u’t wsitqamu pukwelkl etekl koqoe’l ta’n kisi we’wmu’k Etuaptmumk. Kisi we’wmu’k wjit kinamasuti, t’an teli-tajiko’lti’k, aq ta’n te’li klo’tmu’k u’t wsitqamu. Kaqisk teluey amujpa ewe’wmin newte’jk pukik meknimin ta’n mawi-knaql lnueye’l ikjijitaqnn ta’n nenminn aq ta’n mawi-wla’sital wjit ki’l, ni’n, aq kinuk, tujiw kekknu’tmasin ewe’wmin piluey pukik ta’n te’sik nenmin ikjijitaqn akla’siewey koqoey kelu’k ta’n tel-nmitu’tij. Tujiw weswa’tu’nl ikjijitaqnn aq toqwa’tu’nl – Etuaptmumk msit kowey, mawa’tu’nl aq aji wlaptikemk kwilimimk mawi-kelu’k wjit msit wen. Ta’n ni’n telaptm koqoey aq ta’n tel nenm, pukwelk wen ewe’wk Etuaptmumk msit Kanata aq se’k u’t wsitqamu. Pukwelk wen wetnu’kwalsit kisi toqa’tun l’nuey aq akklasie’wey klaman wla’sitow aq klu’ktitow. Jel ap pilu’wi’tmi’tij ta’n tujiw wejitu’tij, katu newte’jk na pasik ni’n telo’tm etek – Etuaptmumk. Katu ap mu-ajjkine’nuk mita l’pa ma’ pun tluow ta’n tel nuta’q mawa’tunew aq toqa’tnow ikjijitaqnminal pemitaik kekknamasutimk klaman ml’kiknowatisnuk mawa’tu’kl ta’n te’sikl iknmatimkewe’l ala’tukl aq ta’n te’sikl me’ kisi kina’masultitesnuk.
Mu ml’kuktmuk u’t nike’, aq attikineta’wk toqa’tunew, aq e’tasiw kepmite’mukl kjijitaqnn lnu’eyl aq akklasie’we’l, na mnaqnatew aq ewliksu’a’tasiktitew koqoey maliaptmu’k. Na ni’n nekmowey ketlamsitm aq kejitu nuta’q u’t toqa’tasin kkjijitaqnn kina’matmuo’kuo’ml, katu elt nuta’q kepmite’tminow te’sik kisi kina’masimk wutaniminal aq msit u’t wsitqamu. Nuta’q elt tuwa’lanew kwijimuk ta’nik kekknamu’kik mita asa newte’ te’sik kisi kina’masultitaq kwijimuk aq malikwuo’mk. Ta’n tel-nemutu ni’n, kenek me’ eltaik kekkna’masulti’kl toqwa’tumk u’t kkjijitaqnn, pukwelk me’nuta’q pana’tunew. Nenaqite’tm u’t wi’katikn: Kina’masuti Kanata: Nuta’q kin’ua’tatultinew a’tukwaqniminal aq kina’masultinew ejiksitmu’kl atukwaqnn se’k wejiaql – kkjijitaqnminu mimajik atukwaqnnminal.
(Elder Albert’s voiced thoughts, written in Mi’kmaw by Carol Anne Johnson)
First published in Education Canada, June 2018
As Canada moves to reconciliation, we find ourselves at a crossroads – a crossroads between identifying the problem and finding its solution. And as this country’s perspective on Indigenous issues is rapidly changing, so should our education system. The problem is that we are still stuck in the past. From uninterested teachers to poor, outdated resources, we as students deserve better. Our approach to teaching Canadian history must change.
From Grades 4 to 7 we’ve learned the same progression of Canadian history. It starts when European explorers come to Canada. We’ve moved on from them “discovering” Canada but it’s still in no way a fair account of history. They’re treated as heroes — the French and English explorers who established the European-Canadian society as we know it. What this narrative fails at is both teaching what happened before settlers arrived and how their arrival hurt Indigenous peoples.
History textbooks that are so unjust shouldn’t be permitted today.
Updating our resources is never a priority for school administrations. Students, donors and staff all prefer more tangible investments: new technology, trips or artists/scientists in the school, not a new outlook on our history. Yet history textbooks and other resources should be a number one priority, as the difference between what is and should be taught is drastic. History faces unique problems that are unlike any other subject, as our society’s outlook on its complex issues have changed since our textbook’s publication in 2001. That inaction is leaving people behind.
History textbooks that are so unjust shouldn’t be permitted today. Books that have one page on the more than 10,000 years of history before settlers came. Books that seldom give the view of Indigenous people. And books whose writers thought it was acceptable to write one short chapter on the traditions of Indigenous peoples and throw their hands up in the air. All these flaws create a textbook that chooses whose voices should be heard by the students, instead of letting all sides share their stories and the students make that judgment for themselves.
As Canada comes closer to a turning point, one would think that the time to act is now. Yet no action is being taken. So being tired of that inaction and the same flawed narrative, I proposed a solution.
I presented my teacher with a few pages of the Manitoba curriculum, which went further in depth about Indigenous peoples, and proposed that this could fill some of what was missing in the textbook. It built on what the Ontario curriculum lacked, highlighting the wide range of Indigenous societies and the traditions of pre-contact Indigenous peoples.
I was shut down and told that I could refer students to the resource and they could access it in their own time. A fellow classmate told me afterwards that no other student was going to go to that resource. I agreed with him. If we don’t challenge our students to think differently, nothing will change. And this burden falls on educators. Students shouldn’t be begging to further their education, teachers should be inviting it.
Every Toronto school teaches empathy – putting oneself is someone else’s shoes. Yet the schools’ actions don’t follow through. As non-Indigenous people we need to put ourselves in the shoes of the Indigenous people from across the country whose stories, culture and voice are being left out. We will never be able to repair our relations with Indigenous peoples if we’re being taught that they don’t matter. If our government and our society are so keen on changing those relations, they must start changing our education.
Note: The Ontario government plans to introduce a revised curriculum in Fall 2018 that will include or strengthen Indigenous content in several subject areas.
Photo: courtesy Jed Sears
First published in Education Canada, June 2018
How do we create the needed change to move from a system focus on content acquisition to a mindset that helps develop and grow this content knowledge in a deeper, more meaningful manner and helps all students to excel? Michael Fullan, Joanne Quinn and Joanne McEachen share some strategies and answers in their new book, Deep Learning: Engage the world change the world.
This book does not attempt to sell a pre-packaged program, nor does it encourage teachers to make subtle shifts in practice. Deep Learning shares an effective mix of the why and the how of Deep Learning through theory, strategies, and successful examples to create a cultural shift to “attack inequity with excellence.” Educators can tap into the strengths and talents of teachers and learners to better engage, make learning more meaningful, and “help all young people to flourish.” The authors describe a “fusion of the most effective pedagogical practices with emerging innovative practices that together foster the creation and application of new ideas and knowledge in real life.”
The authors do not simply share what is wrong with education; rather, they choose a strengths-based model by identifying effective pedagogies that occur in pockets within schools. They build on these examples to create system-wide change. By focusing on their 6 C’s (character, citizenship, communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking – which align very well with the focus on Core Competencies in the redesigned curriculum here in British Columbia), conditions are created for deep learning and students gain the knowledge and skills they need to flourish in school and beyond.
As a principal, I thoroughly enjoyed the balance of research, examples, and ideas to move learning deeper in schools. The book is a fantastic entry point to deep learning and educators can go on to use the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning website (http://npdl.global) to watch videos, read additional resources, and connect with other educators from around the world who are working to shift their mindset and create this change. Educators can use this book as a resource to start the conversation or continue the dialogue to help create the needed shift in pedagogies and culture to move to deeper learning in schools.
Corwin, 2017 ISBN: 978-1506368580
Photo: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, March 2018
Do you recall the unprecedented demand for technology “how to” sessions in the 1990s? I remember training sessions that were often packed over-capacity. Participants would even pair up and share one computer station while being guided through a demonstration of how to search the worldwide web or how to create electronic slide show presentations.
Fast-forward almost three decades. Training sessions are replaced by YouTube videos and other on-demand learning options. Technology is mobile and more accessible than ever before. Does this mean contemporary learning designs with technology now provide appropriate and meaningful learning experiences for students? Are we there yet? I don’t think so.
Recently, I was invited to unpack the term “technology-enhanced learning environments” (TELEs) and suggested TELEs can be defined as “complex learning environments that enable appropriate use of technological resources in order to continually enhance the conditions conducive to learning.”1 The emphasis is on appropriate use of technology. What is appropriate use?
Imagine the following scenario: The students are going on a field trip and will use technology to prepare a slide show to share highlights from the field trip and to demonstrate their learning. The slide show will be shared with the school community and other students who were not able to experience the field trip or learn about the given concept. In other words, the students will create slides to document and share their learning. At first glance, this may seem like a technology-enhanced learning environment, with technology being used appropriately. But let’s consider how this scenario could be improved.
When designing learning experiences, teachers may find it useful to consider the following five questions, drawn from the “Teaching Effectiveness Framework,”2 as a lens for strengthening technology-enhanced learning environments:
How might an expert in the field document experiences from a field trip? Consider how the curator, museum, operator, scientist, would use technology to document their findings or experiences in the field? Perhaps students could video record the fieldtrip while on location to create a virtual or augmented reality artifact, or a time-lapse representation of the experience with audio narration.
How can this work foster creativity, collaboration and innovation? How might the students combine their multimedia artifacts of the experience for others to use? How might the creations support learning for those who were part of the field trip, for those who were unable to attend, and even for audiences from other parts of the world that may be interested in the experience? Perhaps students could work together to capture multiple images for stitching, photogrammetry, or developing a photomontage that could be shared beyond the classroom.
How can a TELE support formative assessment to help improve the work while the learning is occurring? The teacher and peers can provide feedback on draft versions of the multimedia creations and seek guidance from experts (professional or amateur) in the field, such as videographers, photographers, fieldtrip personnel, etc. Might students also seek guidance from experts to develop criteria for high-quality work, and then use these criteria for assessing their work?
What might be a cause for students to deeply invest in the work, both emotionally and intellectually? Perhaps students could discuss the purpose for sharing the work and create a multimedia experience to take an active stance about a related issue that needs attention.
How does this design demonstrate the appropriate use of emerging technologies for learning and how these technologies are used in today’s world? Perhaps teachers could look for ways forward with learning designs beyond the slide show presentations from the 1990s. Next time you are designing or re-designing a lesson, consider how you might use the five questions provided as a lens for strengthening technology-enhanced learning environments.
First published in Education Canada, March 2018
School choice allows parents to decide where to send their children to school, regardless of their location of residence. Research reveals that families – across ethnicities, income levels and socioeconomic statuses – consider common factors when choosing schools. These factors include high academic results, curriculum offerings, teacher quality, small class sizes, and the availability of day care and extracurricular activities. However, parents of lower socioeconomic status tend to rank safe environment as their primary concern, while parents of higher socioeconomic status prioritize the values that schools embrace. Although public schools are often assigned to children based on where they live, this difference in priorities reflects the diverse needs, interests and expectations of both students and parents when choosing a school.
Evidence suggests that increased choice can lead to greater inequality across schools, reduce diversity and further negatively impact students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. As disadvantaged parents are more likely to have limited access to information and resources, they may experience difficulty in making informed school choice decisions. Therefore, ensuring equity must be considered in school choice initiatives to offset any barriers related to income and other resources.
Burke, L. (2014). “The value of parental choice in education: A look at the research.”
Retrieved from http://www.heritage.org/education/report/the-value-parental-choice-education-look-the-research
Lubienski, C. (2008). “The politics of parental choice: Theory and evidence on quality information.” In W. Feinberg & C. Lubienski (Eds.), School choice policies and outcomes: Empirical and philosophical perspectives (pp. 99–119). New York, NY: State University of New York Press.
Raty, H., Kasanen, K., & Laine, N. (2009). “Parents’ participation in their child’s schooling.” Scandinavian Journal of Education Research, 53(3), pp. 277–293.
OECD (2012). Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools (pp. 64-72), OECD Publishing.
Bell, C. A. (2008). “Social class differences in school choice: The role of preferences.” In W. Feinberg & C. Lubienski (Eds.), School choice policies and outcomes: Empirical and philosophical perspectives (pp. 121–148). New York, NY: State University of New York Press.
Brighouse, H. (2008). “Educational equality and varieties of school choice.” In W. Feinberg & C. Lubienski (Eds.), School choice policies and outcomes: Empirical and philosophical perspectives (pp. 41–59). New York, NY: State University of New York Press.Gibbons, S., Stephen, M., & Silva, O. (2006/7). “The educational impact of parental choice and school competition.” Retrieved from http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/CP216.pdf
Glatter, R., Woods, P. A., & Bagley, C. (1997). “Diversity, differentiation and hierarchy: School choice and parental preferences.” In R. Glatter, P. A. Woods, & C. Bagley (Eds.), Choice and diversity of schooling: Perspectives and prospects (pp. 7–28). London, UK: Routledge.
Gordon, L. (2008). “Where does the power lie now? Devolution, choice and democracy in schooling.” In W. Feinberg & C. Lubienski (Eds.), School choice policies and outcomes: Empirical and philosophical perspectives (pp. 177–196). New York, NY: State University of New York Press.
Paulu, N. (1995). “Improving schools and empowering parents: Choice in American education: Benefits of choice.” In M. D. Tannenbaum (Ed.), Concepts and issues in school choice (pp. 452 470). New York, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.
Reich, R. (2008). “Common schooling and educational choice as a response to pluralism.” In W. Feinberg & C. Lubienski (Eds.), School choice policies and outcomes: Empirical and philosophical perspectives (pp. 21–40). New York, NY: State University of New York Press.
Tannenbaum, M. D. (1995). “Vouchers.” In M. D. Tannenbaum (Ed.), Concepts and issues in school choice (pp. 7–15). New York, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.
Teske, P., Fitzpatrick, J., & Kaplan, G. (2007). Opening doors: How low-income parents search for the right school. Washington, DC: Daniel J. Evans.
Willms, J. D., & Echols, F. H. (1993). “The Scottish experience of parental school choice.” In E. Rasell & R. Rothstein, R. (Eds.), School choice: Examining the evidence (pp. 49–68). Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute.
Linguistic diversity has become a defining feature of Canadian classrooms today. Multilingual students, who speak different languages at home and at school, have become the norm rather than the exception, particularly in major urban centres. Take the Toronto District School Board and the Vancouver School Board: they both report over 120 languages spoken by their students and their families. It’s not uncommon for teachers today to have classes filled with students who speak many different languages at home. At a time when people are constantly on the go and technology makes it relatively easy to communicate around the globe 24/7, researchers have observed that children navigate their different language and literacy practices with natural ease; they have grown up in a world that depends on flexible language and literacy practices. Many teachers, however, don’t share students’ diverse linguistic backgrounds or experiences with growing up in a digitally mediated world. And teacher preparation programs often offer little required work with English learners and their families. Yet as classroom populations continue to diversify, the need to develop inclusive multilingual pedagogies also grows.
Are there ways to bridge this divide? How can teachers draw on students’ diverse cultural assets and build on the linguistic expertise that students bring into today’s classrooms, rather than constraining it? Surely, all students should leave school with more expansive linguistic repertoires rather than losing their home languages in the process of acquiring the language of instruction. Further, how can teachers engage parents in their children’s language and literacy development if parents don’t speak the language of instruction? Teachers, naturally, don’t speak all of their students’ home languages!
Dr. Jim Cummins has advocated that teachers engage multilingual students in the creation of what he calls “identity texts”: students are encouraged to use their home languages and cultural understanding alongside the language of instruction to produce multimodal texts for academic purposes that reflect students’ identities in positive ways.[1] Over the past decade, researchers and teachers across the country have been putting this idea into practice through the creation of a range of dual-language books, documentaries, installation art exhibits and dramatic performances.
Beyond the ESL classroom, identity text work can offer mainstream teachers a powerful strategy for building all students’ appreciation of linguistic diversity and for leveraging students’ and their families’ multilingual literacy expertise. Over the past seven years, I have collaborated with classroom teachers across English and French schools in Canada, France and the U.S. to explore the affordances, challenges and outcomes of engaging students collaboratively in multilingual project-based learning (MPBL). Most recently, I’ve partnered with elementary teachers in Toronto in English, French immersion and French language schools, as well as a private school, to design and implement MPBL across content areas such as social studies and science.[2] Over a two-year period, we worked with children in Grades 4-6 to produce collaborative multimodal and multilingual books using English, French and students’ home languages. Examples of students’ work can be seen on the project website: www.iamplurilingual.com.
Across these school partnerships, five principles emerged that can guide teachers and administrators seeking to cultivate a multilingual orientation and to design collaborative multilingual inquiry projects to enhance learning and to build social understanding of linguistic diversity:
1. Draw on the diverse languages of the school community, including but not limited to incorporating students’ home languages, local Indigenous languages, and the language(s) of instruction. Even if your student population does not include many speakers of other languages, teachers can always incorporate Canada’s official languages – English and French – local Indigenous languages and other languages represented across the wider community. Investigate language resources in your community so you can cultivate a rich language ecology in your classroom.
2. Invite parents, families and community members to contribute their language and cultural expertise to help students bridge diverse home, school and community language and literacy practices. Parents, grandparents and other family members may be hesitant to volunteer in a school where they don’t speak the language of the classroom. Invite them in to share their languages and experience as multilingual role models, not only for their children but also for the entire class.
3. Group students of different language backgrounds to work collaboratively on content-based projects, as a context for developing language and literacy skills along with content knowledge and understanding. While having students who speak different languages work together may seem counter-productive at first, keep in mind that the goal is not that they become fluent in all of the languages represented, but rather to develop a welcoming curiosity about languages and one another.
4. Build students’ metalinguistic awareness explicitly by actively comparing different languages and how language(s) function, and identifying patterns for cross-linguistic transfer. Draw students’ attention to how languages work and how they are related. Bridge from what students already know in their home and community languages to the language of instruction.
5. Publish collaborative multilingual projects for authentic audiences through an end-of-project celebration, and through the use of technology to reach broader audiences. Celebrate students as creative, multilingual producers rather than consumers. Plug into other schools, community groups and families to share the multilingual work that students generate to extend it beyond your classroom and to receive feedback and inspiration to keep on.
Students’ reflections about themselves and their work speak to the importance of inviting students’ languages into the classroom. One student said about her group’s multilingual book, “No one knew I can speak Swahili before. It’s like now they know me for real.” Another student commented, “My work makes me feel original. I am the only person in the class who can read and write these three languages and that makes me special.” And yet another student remarked, “Before this project, I never liked reading and writing. Now I think I like it!” These powerful identity statements highlight how supporting students’ use of their home languages within the classroom increases their engagement; consequently, they produce high-quality work in which they take pride.
Beyond the students’ positive responses, teachers consistently report that doing multilingual work with students shifts how they see culturally and linguistically diverse parents.
MPBL creates an authentic opportunity to invite parents into the classroom and the school as language and literacy experts. This positioning of multilingual parents as having valuable language expertise allows parents who might otherwise feel marginalized because they don’t speak the language of the classroom, to feel welcome into the school. Furthermore, when teachers host celebration events to present students’ multilingual work to their families, teachers have noted that they have greater turnout and that in many cases, parents and extended family members have come to the school for the very first time. As one teacher explained, in reference to newcomer families:
“I’ve seen a greater confidence of parents in school… the fact that we valued their home language and culture within our French class allowed parents to be involved in the learning of French in some way. Even if it may seem paradoxical, the fact that we purposefully drew on their family’s language created a reassuring context for engaging in learning. They knew that we were not trying to exclude their culture or their identity.”
In my interviews with parents, I’ve found myself surprised by parents’ expressions of appreciation that the school affirmed to their child the value of their family’s home language and culture through MPBL. The sense that has emerged is that MPBL builds reciprocal relationships among teachers and families. One mother, for example, who had compared trying to get her daughter to learn Farsi to forcing her to eat her vegetables, recounted:
“[My daughters] weren’t curious about this ‘other’ language for a long time and the writing the translation in Farsi was a good thing and [my daughter] was happy that I could actually do it for her… it kind of opened up the door a little bit. Like she now thinks she’s more interested in the language.”
When schools affirm students’ home languages and cultures, parents become language and literacy experts in the eyes of their children, and multilingual parents are empowered to actively participate in their child’s learning at school and at home.
Another parent further explained how valuable it is for parents to have their children’s home languages affirmed by the school:
“I think the project has been good for [my daughter] because I think sometimes you need to mirror back to a child what they have… It hasn’t been apparent to them as a gift possibly and so having the school… pay attention to that is a way of saying to them, ‘You guys have gifts! [It’s] a really lucky thing that you have access to another language!’ It’s also powerful when it comes from teachers… As a parent when you hold the mirror up to your child to say, ‘This is the wonderful gifted person I see you are,’ it’s like, ‘Whatever, Mom.’ I think [kids] dismiss it. I think they’re pleased on one level but you as a parent sometimes don’t have as much weight. But when an external person validates that, it gives them a level of thoughtfulness about themselves that they don’t necessarily get when it’s just a parent mirroring back… When it’s valued elsewhere it’s a solid reinforcement!”
This parent’s reflection highlights that MPBL can forge mutually beneficial relationships among teachers, students and parents that multiply opportunities to affirm children’s identities as they integrate creatively their home and school language and literacy practices.
My current research investigates MPBL as a school-wide strategy for building multilingual language awareness and intercultural understanding with a local elementary school in Madison, Wisconsin. In this work, parents’ reflections about their children’s collaborative multilingual work continue to affirm that teachers and parents must be partners in raising children to become thoughtfully engaged citizens in our diverse world. In closing, listen to the responses of parents following the creation of multilingual class books with five Grade 1 classes as part of a science unit about plants:
• “I was so pleased with the book I was almost brought to tears. Particularly considering the xenophobia in our culture today, it’s a wonderful way to promote the inclusion of different languages and cultures. Thank you!”
• “I think it was great to have [children] working on something together. This book is definitely something we will keep and reflect back on and share with other family members.”
• “We wished we could have contributed with a foreign language of our own! [Our son] can recognize the different languages (mostly) on sight. He was very proud of being able to say a few sentences in Arabic.”
• “My sense is that seeing… languages together in the book gives children the visual reminder of other classmates’ perspective. This project seems original, creative and useful!”
Around the world where racial, linguistic, religious and political differences threaten to divide communities, the need to build bridges among teachers, students and families from diverse backgrounds is critical. Affirming and leveraging students’ cultural and linguistic assets helps move towards building more inclusive schools and gives students an opportunity to learn how to work together across their differences, within the microcosm of their classrooms.
Image: courtesy Gail Prasad
First published in Education Canada, December 2017
There’s a vintage piece of market research about how we make our choices as consumers. Stop a bunch of people in the street and ask them how they like their coffee, and the overwhelming majority will say the same thing: strong, black with a powerful aroma. Follow those same people home and watch how they make their coffee. The chances are that it’ll be weak and milky. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the coffee shops in Seattle made it cool to ask for a weak, milky coffee by calling it a latté.
This disjuncture, between our stated wishes and our actions, doesn’t just apply to coffee preferences. As an observer of “parent evenings” in the U.K., I see one parent after another speak the language of black coffee. The talk is of grades, targets, revision strategies, or homework compliance. Talk to those same parents outside the intimidating atmosphere of what many Australian parents call “the five-minute speed dating exercise” and the conversations have a very different, latté-like tone: Are their kids happy? Do they make friends easily? Are they speaking much in class? Have they experienced bullying?
I’m lucky enough to work in schools around the world, and it was this universal dissatisfaction with these encounters between parents, teachers and students – often amounting to little more than a performance review of a disgruntled employee – that convinced me there had to be a better way.
In most countries, it seems that the input of parents into the culture-building of schools too often fails to rise above what Australians call the “sausage sizzle”: primarily, organizing or participating in occasional fundraising social events. This seems to be a great opportunity missed. I have long maintained that the biggest underutilized resource, that schools ignore at their peril, is the skillset within its parent body. Here you’ll find senior executives, skilled craftsmen and women, artists, community lynchpins – yet how often are those skills woven into student’s learning experiences?
In an attempt to recast the concept of parental engagement, I put together a series of workshops that would bring teachers and parents together to get beyond speed-dating and black-coffee conversations, so that deep learning conversations could take place. In the first parent workshop I led, in Canberra, as part of a national tour sponsored by the Australian Parents Council, I asked discrete groups of teachers and parents to brainstorm ways that stronger partnerships could be built. The teacher group suggested weekly newsletters and social media tools to update parents on their child’s progress – strategies to inform, not involve. The parents had other ideas: they saw themselves as potential reading coaches, classroom assistants, assessors of student presentations of learning, field trip organizers. There was no denying their desire to be in the thick of all things learning.
I’ve observed this divergence – not to say gulf – in ideas for deepening parental engagement in several countries. From hypercities like New Delhi to rural communities in England and Ireland, I’ve felt the same urgency from parents, no longer content to be supporting from the sidelines, asking instead to be active players.
First, we should see this call for greater parent participation as an opportunity, not a threat. I’m not being naive here. We’ve all encountered parents who seem to view schools as little more than child-minding provision, the salve for all of society’s ills, or the reason why their child missed out on that Nobel Prize. But the majority of parents well understand the pressures schools operate under, and – here’s the kicker – really want to better understand this thing we call learning. Get a bunch of parents in a room, ask them to identify the design principles of their “dream school” or show them videos of direct instruction/inquiry-based learning in action, and two things inevitably happen: they realize how complex the task of teaching 25 kids with widely differing needs actually is; and second, they become immersed in deep learning conversations.
I once spoke with an inspiring school principal who voiced a frustration commonly shared by school leaders: “The biggest obstacle we face, when trying to innovate, is parental perceptions of what ‘school’ is supposed to look like. They have a mental model from when they attended, and they find it hard to see it any other way.” I spoke to a highly successful parent in Gurgaon, in India, who appeared to confirm the problem: “I know the traditional model of an Indian school classroom is not going to survive the 21st century, but I came from a small village, and now I work for a multinational corporation – it must have worked for me!”
So, resistance to change is often greater in schools serving wealthier populations. But when I ask school principals what they’ve done to involve parents in discussions around the imperative to change, the response is almost always “not much.” And here’s the rub: if we want to redesign schools for the unique challenges that our kids will face, we can’t do it without getting parents involved in the conversations.
Part of those discussions, I would suggest, needs to be around what is meant by “parental involvement.” Most parents feel that the best way they can support their child’s attainment in school is through interventions associated with being a good parent: reading to them, helping with homework, attending PTA meetings, monitoring their test prep, and so forth. The confusing reality is that there is no clear evidence to show that any of these things work.
The seminal work on parental involvement, The Broken Compass: Parental Involvement With Children’s, [1] concluded that what seems to improve test scores in one context (say, parents discussing school experiences with Hispanic children) had a negative effect in another (parents of Black kids doing exactly the same thing). Authors Harris and Robinson also demolished the homework myth (helping kids do their homework usually has a negative effect on test scores) and the “Tiger Mom” illusion (there’s no evidence to show that Asian parents value education any more than other ethnic groups). The researchers did find evidence to support some parenting strategies: regularly talking about post-school aspirations appears to have a positive correlation with better attendance and attainment, and regularly reading to children before they start going to school has an obvious impact upon language development. Other than that though? Not so much.
It’s hard to overestimate how counter-intuitive the evidence appears. Having parents engaged in their child’s learning must be a good thing, right? Not if you equate success with academic scores. However, there are many other reasons for advocating greater parental involvement – and many other forms it can take.
Despite the confusing and even discouraging evidence they uncovered, even the Broken Compass authors wanted to see greater parental participation.
“Effective parental involvement might, in fact, be in reach, but we are stuck in conventional ways of thinking about parents’ roles. What we need in this country is the next step – explaining to educators and parents that parents matter on a much more intangible, abstract level. That has to do with their effectiveness in communicating to their children how essential education is to the kids’ lives.”[2]
“It is clear that powerful social and economic factors still prevent many parents from fully participating in schooling. The research showed that schools rather than parents are often ‘hard to reach.’ The research also found that while parents, teachers and pupils tend to agree that parental engagement is a ‘good thing,’ they also hold very different views about the purpose of engaging parents.”[3]
The Broken Compass conclusion was that parents shouldn’t worry about volunteering or observing in a classroom, but should focus instead on “stage setting”: a theatrical term meaning to create the right environment for the actors (teachers) to perform. But I would argue that parents want to, and should, be on the stage, not passively supporting from the wings.
There is, however, an even bigger potential gain to be had from an equal, and genuine, partnership between schools and parents, and I sincerely believe its time has come. For those of us who believe that politically-driven education “reform” is a poor substitute for educator-led system transformation, who preach the urgency to re-think schooling so that it can be future-facing, we must ruefully accept that there isn’t a secretary of state for education anywhere in the developed world who will listen and act purely upon the guidance of professional educators. As the U.K.’s former education boss, Michael Gove, observed during the divisive Brexit campaign, “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.”
But they will listen to parents, because parents vote, in large numbers. And parents really care about their children’s education. What’s more, parents are becoming more vocal, more autonomous about ensuring that their children get an education worth having. In growing numbers, they are withdrawing their children from anxiety-inducing, relentless testing regimes; more of them are even taking the difficult decision to homeschool their kids. In many countries parents are demanding more from their politicians, and from their schools. If we’re being honest, most educators would have to accept that they’ve not done a great job in getting parents onside and tapping into parent power. But that’s beginning to shift. We’re realizing that if we want to see an education revolution, we need to work more closely alongside parents.
“The people we have to engage with are parents. When I started working on the book, I asked parents on Twitter and Facebook what their biggest concerns were about education. I had literally hundreds of responses within half an hour. It was just like lancing a boil. The narrative is changing in education, because the world around it is changing so much. And it’s been happening for a long time: the falling value of university degrees, the costs of getting them; the whole political economy of education is shifting, and parents are sensing it… There are forces for change that we’re not inventing, we’re just trying to account for them. (Parents are) the audience that we haven’t been able to get through to yet. We need to get better at getting the message across.”
There may be scant evidence to support greater parental engagement as a means to improving test scores. There is, however, a social and, I would suggest, a moral imperative for us to re-visit our perceptions of parents as partners in learning. Put bluntly, we need them much more than they need us. By thinking beyond their role as mere “stage setters,” we can not only significantly enhance the learning experiences of our students, we can tap into their enormous political influence and power to help bring about the transformation of schooling, and future-ready students.
Photo: Anne-Sophie Hudon-Bienvenue
First published in Education Canada, December 2017
[1] The Broken Compass: Parental involvement with children’s education, K. Robinson and A. Harris (Harvard University Press, 2014).
[2] www.macleans.ca/general/helping-with-homework-isnt-important-but-talking-about-kids-post-high-school-plans-is/
[3] Alma Harris and Janet Goodall, “Do Parents Know They Matter? Engaging all parents in learning,” Educational Research 50, no. 3 (2008).
[4] G. Claxton, What’s The Point Of School? (OneWorld Publications, 2008).
Recently I read a viewpoint about parent engagement stating that it is critical for parents to speak the language of education if their children are to succeed and, thus, it is a responsibility of educators to build parents’ capacity in this regard. When I read this comment, I was immediately drawn backward in time to a poignant moment I experienced with an Indigenous parent. An attendee at a workshop I was facilitating on parent engagement, this mom approached me during the nutrition break and said to me, “I want to be engaged but I can’t go to my kids’ school. I don’t have the right clothes and I don’t have the right words.” Looking into the mom’s face and hearing the painful emotion in her words, it was heartbreakingly apparent that the place for change did not rest with the mom, but instead with the structures and practices being lived out on the school landscape.
The statement about parents troubles me for two foundational reasons. First, it reflects a “schoolcentric”[1] way of thinking, one in which the current structure of school is accepted as is and left unquestioned. The focus of conversation, then, centres on how parents can serve and support that taken-for-granted school structure, rather than on the changes that are needed in the school structure in order to realize the strengths, needs, and desires of parents. Second, when educators assume the need to build the capacity of parents, they are placing themselves in a hierarchical position above parents, as both more knowing and more capable. In both instances, parents such as the mom I mentioned are left to feel lesser and excluded by the school. As I share practices that I feel are familycentric[2] rather than schoolcentric, I make central my belief that embracing a philosophy and pedagogy of “walking alongside” is at the heart of working with all families.
To walk alongside parents means to be with them – whoever they are, whatever the context in which they live. It means to recognize them as individuals who began their children’s education at birth and who are continuing to educate their children throughout their lives, as they strive to realize their hopes and dreams for their children. It means to see them as individuals with capacity, with parent knowledge of their children, and of teaching and learning.[3] It means, as a teacher, to see oneself in relationship, as someone who accompanies[4] parents on this journey, supporting them by providing schooling for their children. It means, as a teacher, to “care for” and to “care about” parents,[5] to be concerned with creating a rightful place and voice for all parents in their children’s learning – whether or not they have the “right” words and clothes. It means acknowledging that the teacher cannot achieve alone what it is possible to achieve when parent knowledge and teacher knowledge of children are used together.
So, how might one walk alongside? A new school year often begins with a “Meet the Teacher Night,” a historical and deeply ingrained schoolcentric practice that places the focus on the teacher and the curriculum to be covered in each grade level or course that year. How do we interrupt such a practice for parents with a residential school history and a resulting distrust of schools? For newcomer parents who do not yet speak the dominant language or understand the school system in Canada? For parents who do not have the right words or the right clothes? For parents who do not have childcare, transportation, or a work schedule that enables their attendance? We can discard this practice and replace it with a familycentric approach in which teachers go to homes and communities to meet families and to learn with and from them. This creates an opportunity to build trust and relationships early, for teachers to learn of parents’ hopes and dreams for their children, and to become awake to the capacity parents possess.
Whether going into the community takes the form of a community walk or canvas to say hello and make introductions, brief purposeful drop-by visits, or scheduled home visits, it lets parents know, “You matter to us. You have something to offer your children’s schooling. We have much to learn from you.” Heidi Hale, an educator working in a core neighbourhood in Saskatoon, made home visits to meet the parents of her Kindergarten students. At the end of one visit, an Indigenous grandmother, with tears in her eyes, said to Heidi, “No teacher has ever come to our home before.” Katelynn Moldenhauer, a Pre-Kindergarten teacher working in a culturally diverse neighbourhood, jokes that she has to be careful not to schedule too many home visits in one day, as she is not able to eat and drink all of the beautiful cultural food and beverages that are specially made for her visit. In a community canvas to share information about Howard Coad School’s summer programming for children, parents, and families, four of us visited approximately 30 homes. The very next afternoon, 65 children and parents took part in programming, an increase of about 40 individuals over typical attendance to that point. When teachers visit in homes and in community, a one-way relationship becomes two-way and reciprocal. Teachers shift from solely expecting parents to learn from them and the school to being open, also, to learn from parents and from their rich knowledge and experiences.
Once parents are comfortable to enter the school landscape, how do school personnel welcome them in order to ensure they feel “good” or “right” enough about being there and to keep them coming back? I believe we can learn some lessons from Princess Alexandra Community School in Saskatoon. School staff recognized that when they required children to go to the office for a late slip, they were defeating their own desire to increase children’s instructional time and their sense of inclusion in the school community. Upon reflection, they dropped this practice and, instead, welcomed children warmly into the classroom, at whatever time they arrived, saying something like, “We are so glad you are here. Have you eaten?” Caring for and caring about the children, the staff enacted a strength-based approach in which they expressed appreciation for the children’s presence and ensured the children were well positioned to learn.
Seeing the results of this change, the staff extended their welcoming practice to parents as well. Upon entering the school, parents too were greeted, perhaps offered a cup of coffee or asked if they had had breakfast, perhaps asked how they were doing, whether they needed assistance, or perhaps offered a place to sit, a computer to use, or a newspaper to read. Initially, the school’s elder, known as Kokum Ina, often did the greeting as did Ted Amendt, a Métis man who served as the community school coordinator. Both individuals were well known in the community and presented a “mirror” to parents, reflecting back to them their own Indigenous identity. Soon school leadership realized that if greeting was important, it had to become the work of the entire school community and not be left to one or two individuals. At school assemblies, all staff and students were taught and were given time to practice extending a warm greeting to parents, family members, and visitors entering the school. As the wave of greetings became the daily norm at the school, the landscape shifted. Instead of harbouring reservations such as, “I can’t go to my kids’ school. I don’t have the right clothes and I don’t have the right words,” the parents at Princess Alexandra felt a part of the school.
Golden Greeters are retirees who visit Archbishop M.C. O’Neill High School in Regina on a regular weekly basis, greeting students as they enter the school. The mission statement of the Golden Greeters reflects their belief that “no child should go to school without their name called in love.”[6] I believe that neither should parents enter a school without their name called in love. A warm and genuine greeting, which reflects both caring for and caring about, creates a feeling of safety and belonging for parents and honours who they are and what they bring to the school landscape.
Once parents are present on the school landscape, how are school structures created or adapted to give them an authentic and meaningful voice? I frequently hear parents say such things as, “Oh, I didn’t know I could attend the School Community Council meeting” or “I thought that notice was for other parents but not for me.” Further, the governance structures and practices of parent bodies – official and prescribed roles, voting processes, formalized meeting procedures such as Robert’s Rules – are often threatening or intimidating to those who are unaccustomed to them and serve to marginalize or silence many parents, or to keep them away all together.
Schoolcentric practices, typically reflective of a Eurocentric worldview, are often at odds with the communal and collective approach characteristic of Indigenous ways of thinking, being, and doing. When Vernon Linklater was “chair” of the School Community Council at his sons’ elementary school in Saskatoon, a school with a student population which was about 95 percent Indigenous at the time, he chose to organize their meetings in a circle, with school leadership, staff, and parents intermingled, all visible and present to one another. As Vernon explained, a circle, in First Nations culture, has always held significance and deep meaning because it is a prominent symbol in nature. With no beginning and no end and all members positioned equitably, Vernon found that a talking circle was a richer and more inclusive way to give everyone voice, to make decisions, to discuss issues, or to solve problems. When schools and school bodies work in culturally responsive ways, parents do not have to have the words of the school or of unfamiliar governance structures to participate. They are able to join the circle, to speak from their own knowing, to share their own wisdom and insights, and to positively influence outcomes for their children and their families.
As a core neighbourhood principal in Saskatoon, Yves Bousquet put a great deal of time and thought into issues such as attendance, retention, and transiency. His belief was, “We can teach students successfully when they are here. Our challenge is to get them to school and keep them engaged with us over time.” This is true for parents as well. I believe strongly that all parents want to be engaged in their children’s teaching and learning and to do whatever they can to support and facilitate their children’s success. To get them to school, we need to first extend ourselves to them, get to know who they are, see their capacity, and learn from them about their children, their families, their cultures, and their hopes and dreams. It is then, when we are walking alongside, connected through trust and relationship and equitably positioned on the school landscape, that we can share with them the language of education, of why and how it is used and what it means, of how it can become part of their repertoire too. We can support them in realizing their capacity so that when it is important for them to know and use the language of education, they have the right words and are confident to use them.
Notes
[1] M. A. Lawson, “School-family Relations in Context: Parent and teacher perceptions of parent involvement,” Urban Education 38, no. 1 (2003): 77-133; D. Pushor, “Bringing into Being a Curriculum of Parents,” in D. Pushor and the Parent Engagement Collaborative, Portals of Promise: Transforming beliefs and practices through a curriculum of parents (Rotterdam, NL: Sense Publishers, 2013), pp. 5-19.
[2] D. Pushor, “Walking Alongside: A pedagogy of working with parents and families in Canada,” in L. Orland-Barak and C. Craig (eds.), International Teacher Education: Promising pedagogies (part B) (Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., 2015), pp. 233-251.
[3] D. Pushor, “Conceptualizing Parent Knowledge,” in D. Pushor and the Parent Engagement Collaborative II, Living as Mapmakers: Charting a course with children guided by parent knowledge (Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., 2015), pp. 7-20.
[4] M. Green and C. Christian, Accompanying Young People on their Spiritual Quest (London,
UK: National Society/Church House Publishing, 1998).
[4] N. Noddings, Starting at Home: Caring and social policy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001).
[6] Dr. Jerry Goebel, Communities of Trust, personal communication.
Quinten was four years old when his mother, Rina, finally “accomplished” his diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. “Accomplished” is how she describes it. Rina called around and found three pediatricians who could give a diagnosis, but the waitlists were almost a year long. Paying for a private diagnosis was not an option; Rina had left her job to care for Quinten’s needs and money was tight. The wait was excruciating, because everything Rina read about autism told her that early intervention was crucial to long-term success. Every day she would sit with Quinten, trying to engage him in some social play. She watched the days slip by as she waited to hear back from the doctor’s office. Rina cried on the phone to her mother and tried to explain why she felt so powerless and frustrated. In fact, she found herself crying a lot during those months.
In an act of sheer desperation, she called the doctor’s office and pleaded to be moved up the waitlist. “I was not a pretty picture,” she would later tell her friends, but through the weeping and her stubbornness, the office secretary finally broke down and found a timeslot for Quinten. It worked! It actually worked! After a lifetime of being polite and waiting her turn, Rina realized that she was going to have to be ferocious for Quinten. As the relief washed over Rina, she resolved to never let Quinten lose out on something because she was too mild-mannered to demand it.
In my role at the Faculty of Education, it often falls on me to explain to new teachers how to collaborate with parents. Parent-teacher collaborations can be difficult and, as a teacher and as a parent of a child with special needs, I know first-hand how complicated and combative these relationships can be.
One of the first things I tell my student teachers about collaborating with parents is that parents of students with special needs, like Rina, are dealing with pressures beyond those faced by all parents. The research on the well-being of parents of students with special needs is very clear: the added pressure often leads to toxic stress, depression, and chronic health concerns. When parents like Rina are overloaded with those stressors, it has been my experience that they may respond in two extreme ways. I call those two extreme responses the Summer Bear and the Winter Bear.
The Summer Bear describes an active, protective parent that uses will, strength, and dedication to navigate the school system.
Quinten is starting Grade 5 now, and since his diagnosis, Rina has stuck to her resolution to be a powerful advocate for her son. At first Rina found the school system to be slow to respond to Quinten’s needs but, with a little prodding, she found that it can be moved to action by passionate, informed parents like her. It may have taken some intense conversations with his resource teacher, some toe-to-toe battles with Quinten’s classroom teachers, and even threats of legal action, but Quinten has had the resources and supports that Rina knew he needed. She doesn’t even mind her reputation for being a pushy parent. She has found that Quinten’s new teachers have been less resistant to her ideas if they are somewhat intimidated by her.
You may have already crossed paths with one or two Summer Bears during your career. The Summer Bear is an unstoppable force. A Summer Bear will call you at your home to ask you about the student’s progress in geometry. Then, when you let the call go to the answering machine, the Summer Bear calls your principal to discuss the school’s failure to communicate clearly. If the principal is not available, the next call goes to the superintendent. Sound familiar? Summer Bear-type parents are so notorious that representations of them have been popping up in prime-time television shows.
In the opening sequence of the first episode of ABC’s Speechless, a sitcom about a family with a son with cerebral palsy, mom Maya DiMeo wants to treat her family to breakfast with a nearly expired 50-percent-off breakfast coupon. With three minutes until the coup-on expires, Maya loads her family in the car and drives wildly through town to the restaurant, at one point using the shoulder as a passing lane. As might be expected, the speeding van is noticed by two police officers in their cruiser. The younger police officer turns on the siren and readies himself to begin pursuit, but is stopped by the older police officer. “Not her,” the older officer says, turning off the sirens and sitting back. “Life’s too short.”
Although the representation of Maya DiMeo as a force for her children is played for laughs, the intensity and dedication of parents like Maya DiMeo can make the work of educators very difficult.
Quinten is in Grade 7 and Rina has been advocating for him tirelessly for years. Recently though, Rina finds herself exhausted by the process. Her battles with the school have worn her out. Starting in January, Quinten’s educational assistant support was reduced by .25 and, rather than organizing a meeting and demanding it be returned, Rina let the issue go. Not only that, but Rina has been finding herself less able to do the small things, like pack Quinten’s lunches. She used to use Sunday afternoon to cook a week’s worth of organic lunches, but for the last couple of weekends, she has spent her Sundays recuperating. Last week, she bought some of those pre-packaged meals from the grocery store and sent those in for lunches. Every day for years, she spent an hour after supper reading with Quinten and reviewing his homework – but now she just can’t summon the energy. “What happened to me?” she wonders as she cues up Quinten’s favourite YouTube show on her iPad and passes it over to him.
Another response to the parental demands of raising a student with special needs is the Winter Bear. To understand this parent, imagine a bear, still sleepy from its winter nap. The Winter Bear parent is slow to respond and may appear to only do the minimum to support the student. The Winter Bear won’t respond to your emails and has to cancel meetings at the last minute. It can be frustrating working with Winter Bears, but do not be too quick to judge them as inadequate or selfish.
Okay, confession time: the reason I know about the Summer Bear and the Winter Bear is because I have been both types of parent. Like Rina, I worked extremely hard for several years and then – though I’m not proud of it – I had to take a step back. I was completely exhausted! As for my daughter’s teachers, I have no doubt they had a difficult time working with me in both of those phases.
So, what do I tell new teachers about working with parents of students with special needs?
When working with parents of students with special needs, we should navigate three fundamental tensions: communication, access, and power.
Communication with parents of students with special needs involves more than sending a weekly newsletter and placing an occasional phone call home. Meeting early and meeting often will help you to “recruit” parents to your vision for the classroom. And, make no mistake, you need to convince parents to join your team. In my experience, meeting your child’s new teacher in September is terrifying, like you are about to throw your child into the river. It is hard to pass over custodianship of a vulnerable child’s academic and social needs to a stranger. Parents are, quite rationally, reluctant to trust you. Communicating effectively with parents is important because they need to know that you are capable, willing, and dedicated to the cause.
Here are the types of things that you can say during the first meetings to recruit parents to your side:
“I’ve read over your child’s reports and spoken with some of his former teachers, and now I’d like to hear from you. Tell me about your child.”
“Besides academic outcomes, what are your goals for your child this school year?”
“What are some of your anxieties about this year?”
You will also need to communicate throughout the school year. Be sure to set up a two-way system of regular communication. Establishing a “best time and method” of communication gives parents and teachers optimal access to each other when communicating.
Because parents of students with special needs often do their own research and come prepared with pointed and clear questions, it can be intimidating to discuss accommodations with parents. There may be no more passionate scholar of mild intellectual disorders than the mother of a student with a mild intellectual disorder. That said, it is a mistake to use edubabble as a defense tactic. Edubabble is the acronym-heavy and overly technical language we use to communicate a lot of information efficiently with other teachers. And, as you may have discovered, edubabble also has the adverse effect of shutting down parents by confusing them with unfamiliar language.
Parent: “Yes, but the new diagnostic tools have eliminated that criteria from the condition. I can’t believe you didn’t know that.”
Teacher: “Well, that issue is more of an IPP issue so it will be more relevant on the IPRC than the PAT. If you check out the TPA, you’ll see that I’m right.”
Without formal training in education, parents may be unfamiliar with the specialized terminology often used by teachers – but they will recognize and resent when it is used tactically to assert authority. Whether the discussion is about identifying a child as exceptional, developing an individualized plan, or giving more information about a project, the purpose of the conversation between the parent and teacher is about sharing information so that they can work together to better support the child. With this in mind, technical language should be avoided or defined clearly.
Power When tensions arise between parents and teachers, they tend to be about power. Who knows best? Who makes the decisions? Parents and teachers contribute different areas of expertise: teachers tend to be the experts on learning and classroom policy in a general sense (“I know how children learn”) and parents are experts on their son or daughter (“I know how this child learns”). It is important to recognize that both parents and educators offer important contributions to the discussion. Additionally, educators and parents should avoid making one-sided decisions and then forcing them on the other side. Arriving to a meeting with a list of demands may inspire resistance rather than cooperation. What is the solution? Instead of prescribing, try describing. When parents and teachers describe the situation, power is shared.
“You need to use a different math technique.”
“You need to change how you get Sandeep ready for school in the morning.”
“I’ve noticed Sandeep often becomes distracted during my lessons – have you ever noticed this type of thing at home?”
“Do you have any ideas about what the issue might be for him, or what I can do help him stay focused?”
When we use description-based statements, we are agreeing that both sides are equipped to recognize the situation and evaluate the solutions.
Avoiding tensions related to communication, power, and access is an important first step to working with parents of students with special needs, but we may need to do more. For example, working relationships with parents of students with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASDs) may require a gentle touch. There tends to be a lot of stigma related to being the parent of a student with FASDs, particularly for mothers. Also, family breakdowns are common when children with FASDs are involved; many children with FASDs come from single-parent homes. The stigma and family pressures related to FASDs compound the difficulties we face when trying to develop positive relationships. It is important to consider the perspectives of these parents – potentially feeling guilty, judged by others, overworked, and alone – and to appreciate that in order to support students, we may also need to be a support for parents. We can do a lot to support families that are struggling, but we also have to recognize our limitations. Teachers are not therapists, and sometimes we help the most when we point parents to family services and other appropriate professional supports.
The purpose of this piece was not to suggest that parents of students with special needs are only ever Summer Bears or Winter Bears. I also don’t mean to say that these parents are caught in a cycle of yo-yoing between those two archetypes. I single these two patterns out because, in my experience, these responses are widely misunderstood and can ruin home/school relationships.
Look, it can be really tough being a parent of a child with special needs. That is just the truth of it. Parents don’t need your pity, though; they need educators to be understanding and to let them have some space to not be at their best. By supporting the parents and helping when possible, educators are building teams. After all, students only have two allies: parents and educators. If educators allow power struggles and the intensity of parental responses to deteriorate working relationships, the student suffers the most.
In closing, let me leave you with this advice: don’t fight the bear. Rather than resisting parents, find ways to be supportive. When we can work together, we do a better job of protecting the cub.
Even when teachers and parents agree on what needs to be done, funding can be a confounding tension. Schools are often asked to do more with less, so allocations of educational assistant funding and school resources may be shifted suddenly. From a school perspective, triaging funding to support the greatest need may make sense, but those funding changes can feel like a catastrophe to parents. I remember how hard I worked to secure the resources and support my daughter needed and how terrible it felt to have it all taken away. “Look how well she is doing,” I was told. “She no longer needs full-time educational assistant support. It’s good news.” As a parent, I was unconvinced. Losing the supports that helped her to be successful seemed like a pretty unfair reward for her finally doing well.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, December 2017
Like all school boards in Ontario, my local public school board has a student trustee (some larger boards have more than one). This is an initiative aimed at bringing student representation to the governing table, and I don’t mean to dismiss it as an insignificant gesture – it’s not. The student trustees I have met are competent, impressive people who take their role seriously and do it well.
But it’s an awfully limited way to build in student input. If we are serious about really listening to students’ concerns and really including them in decisions that impact their present and future lives, student trusteeships are not half enough. In a sea of adult voices, how much influence can one student exert? How much time is actually carved out of busy school board agendas to specifically listen to student concerns, and how often are they acted upon?
Moreover, student trustees are not really the students we most need to listen to. In most cases, they are the kids who excel at school – and who like it enough to take on more school-related work in their free time. We need to hear from the students for whom school is a struggle, the students who feel alienated, disengaged, even unsafe. And we need to be talking to all students about the things that are most meaningful to them, in their classrooms, in their schools, in their future plans.
In this issue we explore the “why” and “how” of student voice. Sean Lessard’s “The Red Worn Runners” (pg. 26) is a moving account of how having a personal conversation with every Indigenous student in his school revealed their aspirations and challenges, and led to a creative solution that took both students and teachers to unexpected places. Kate Tillczek shares two projects that “place the voices of youth at their core” (p. 34). Susan Groundwater-Smith, in her overview of the challenges and advances in student voice work, argues that this is a human rights issue with a moral imperative (p. 30). And Madeleine Villa shows us the work of three student activists who stepped up and made things happen in their schools (p. 21).
I hope after reading these articles, you’ll spend some time thinking about your own students, school and district. Could we do more to invite student input and share decision-making with them? Should we?
P.S. In other news, we had an anniversary! 2016 marks CEA’s 125th year. Check out “Education Nation” (p. 56) to trace the path that brought us to our present-day identity.
Photo: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, December 2016
Write to us! We want to know what you think. Send your letters or article proposals to editor@cea-ace.ca, or post your comments about individual articles on the online version of Education Canada at: www.cea-ace.ca/educationcanada
This book, co-written by four professors of Education from across Canada, asks pre-service teachers “to rationally construct and critically reflect upon the principles that inform their own conception of the nature and scope of educational practice.” (p. xiv)
It is organized around six questions:
Each section provides an introduction to enduring issues within the domain of the organizing question, but does not present answers and, in fact, intends to provoke reflective thinking so that readers can develop their own informed and considered opinion which they can articulate and explain. Readers are encouraged to reconsider their own assumptions and to critique conventional wisdom and taken-for-granted positions in order to develop the disposition and abilities of a principled, fair and critically reflective educator.
In order to achieve these objectives, the authors believe that a problem-based approach to the philosophy of education should replace the traditional canonical approach. Thus, the text is sprinkled with case studies, problems and vignettes labelled “Pause for Thought.” Each chapter concludes with review questions that invite further reflection on key issues. The intention is not to convince the reader of anything but rather to help him or her “to see the complexity of issues that make teaching so incredibly wonderful, challenging, and at times, difficult to negotiate.” (p. xx)
This book is current, accessible and thought provoking. From a distinctly Canadian perspective, it examines such diverse issues as the commodification of knowledge, teaching controversial issues, the pros and cons of choice, place-based education, education for Canadian identity, residential schooling and traditional justice, parental rights and professional autonomy. Individual readers will find these sections informative and constructively provocative, but a class or study group format would greatly enrich the experience.
While this book was specifically written for pre-service teachers, I cannot imagine any educator, trustee, politician or parent who would not find it engaging, challenging and beneficial.
Photo: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, December 2016
Oxford University Press, 2016 ISBN: 978-0199010035
As a fun formative activity, I once asked the students in my two Grade 12 Physics classes, who had just finished a unit on relativity, to write a poem on topic(s) from the unit. More than a year later, as a PhD student in a Curriculum Theory class, I wrote the following piece describing what transpired.
You can perform the following rap song with this accompanying backbeat: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DtgXdOYbq8
My head grew warm, thought “do no harm,”
tried to stay calm, cause no alarm.
I let it go, told them to go,
but just to write a Haiku would it have hurt you so?
Yeah, I should have had some moral agency,
So now in retrospective hermeneutic philosophy,
I look for messages, uncover baggages,
Unwrap the words that hold the vessels of my consciousness.
And I realized that they were tired,
high marks they did desire.
The schooling ethos had a faster than the fastest pace.
Writing a poem might just bump you from scholarship race.
Slowing down the school curriculum…
How do you do it when the smartest brain is going numb?
With tests, reports, and academics?
With writing essays on things like moral ethics?
And here comes the generative lesson,
It goes deeper than I think I have you guessin’
Because, my friends, I have a quick surprise
Something that happened after – you don’t realize.
You see, I had another Physics bunch.
Goofier, but they were going through the same crunch.
I wasn’t hopeful, of this I was aware.
“Anyone with a poem that they would like to share?”
Yes! Most did! The best ones were long.
And two wrote it as a genuine rap song.
It goes to show, given same opportunities
Some fly, some sink – depends on personalities
Of the kids, of the class,
of the school, of the entire world mass
That weighs down on each and every one of them.
Makes it hard to pin the reason or just to blame.
Perhaps the lesson is one of fun.
To enjoy the work, not to “just to get ’er done.”
To share a poem, or any creative craft
It’s something special, it’s a virtuous act.
For it is done with the unselfish intent
To bring joy and rhythmic attention to the moment.
And so with that poetic reconstitution
I’d like to leave you with two considerations:
Has this process increased my durability?
Do I feel lighter and poised with self-assurety?
I don’t know but as this poem’s been heard,
I’ve had a lot of fun and that’s my last key “word.”
Note: This poem plays with concepts from two texts used in my course. The phrases moral agency, hermeneutic philosophy, generative lesson, and ideas like having a lighter and durable teaching self are taken from L. Fowler’s “Narrative Plains of Pedagogy: A curriculum of difficulty,” found in E. Hasebe-Ludt & W. Hurren (Eds.), Curriculum Intertext (NY: Peter Lang, 2003), 159-72. Vessels of my consciousness, slow schooling, rhythmic attention to the moment, and ideas like virtue and unselfishness connected to the aesthetics of curriculum are from R. Luce Kapler’s article, “Orality of Poetics of Curriculum,” in the Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies 1, no. 2 (2003): 79-93.
Collage: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, December 2016
Why should we be concerned about student voice? In an introduction to one of Paulo Freire’s later works, Henry Giroux argued that “all human beings perform as intellectuals by constantly interpreting and giving meaning to the world.”1 In his own conclusion to the same publication, Freire maintained that in seeking to transform society in the interests of a more habitable, democratic and liberated world, the task ahead is “not to take power but to reinvent power.”2
Young people in schools are indeed intelligent beings who live their lives in these often highly regulated spaces and constantly interpret and give meaning to their lives, but whose interpretation and meaning-making is often marginalized at best and even frequently ignored. For many it is the case that they can neither take nor make power in any reinvented form.
Pessimistic as these words may seem, there is clearly change afoot. First of all, the rights of young people to be heard and for their voices to be listened to in the context of schooling and research in education now has a host of advocates, such as the late Jean Rudduck and Michael Fielding. This wave of interest, policy and activity finds its motivation in the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention is comprehensive and entitles children to a broad range of rights, including the right to have their best interests treated as a primary consideration in all actions concerning them, including decisions related to their care and protection (such as their education). In particular, Article 12 states that children have the right to say what they think in all matters affecting them, and to have their views taken seriously.
One outcome of the widespread ratification of the Convention has been that the perception of autonomy and participation rights for children has become the new norm.3 Even so, perception is one thing, actualization is another. Participation, that is the exercise of authentic agency, must address matters of power.
Power over others is never equal, even among young people themselves. However, power in schools and school systems is increasingly centralised, governed by rules and regulations as part of a competitive global scenario over which students have no control. As Taylor and Robinson have observed, there is “an uncritical view of the entrenched, hierarchical power relations in schools,”4 with the result that student voice activities are often little more than tokenistic interventions serving established power. Typically, student representative groups are enabled to run charity events or social occasions such as school assemblies, rather than have an input into the ways in which teaching and learning are conducted. There is an unfortunate tendency to reduce concepts of “voice” to nominal engagement that co-opts student voice to legitimate the entrenched interests that inform the design and enactment of schooling practices.5
There is also a growing acknowledgement that young people in schools are the “consequential stakeholders” who bear the brunt of decisions made on their behalf and thus should be participative in making those decisions. However, many of the arguments are of an instrumental kind, seeking to “improve” student learning outcomes within the existing frameworks of practice. There is an emphasis upon responsibility, accountability and a sense of autonomy, but little space granted to allow for the possibility of questioning the curriculum or the organization of schooling itself. As Prout has recognized, “Listening to children’s voices has become so ubiquitous that is has become part of the ‘rhetorical orthodoxy’.”6
What is it, then, about the nature of schooling that mitigates against the possibility of a re-imagined place for young people’s learning? Is it that having evolved thus far, the bones and form of the classroom are now given? In 1969 Edward Blishen launched The School I’d Like, a book based upon the huge range of entries to The Observer newspaper’s invitation the previous year for young people to submit their thoughts in a variety of media regarding the school that they would like, but which revealed most insistently what they did not like. The exercise was repeated in 2001 and again in 2011 by The Guardian. Burke and Grosvenor reviewed the collection and reported that the students’ views reflected the most human of needs related to the social and environmental contexts for learning, rather than what is to be learned. Children perceived that they were confronted by “a closed social order.”[7] So what are the factors that constrain an engagement with student voice that is of an authentically satisfying and transforming kind?
Certainly these variables are significant, but do they constitute a complete paralysis? The burgeoning of literature on student voice advocacy and research, including young people being engaged in participatory research, argues that there is some movement of a positive kind.
So, what is to be done? Is it possible to identify modest but compelling examples that demonstrate the potency of reinventing power in the relations between young people in schools and those who teach them?
A recent international conference held in Cambridge, U.K., part of a series held in honour of the contribution of the late Professor Jean Rudduck, demonstrated the extent to which a range of schools and academic communities have engaged with the notion of student voice in both celebratory and critical fashions. Sessions focused on areas such as the co-creation of learning and teaching; the ethical implications of eliciting young peoples’ voices; an exploration of conceptual and empirical ambiguities; emotional and empathic understandings; and consulting young people in the context of cultural institutions.
A notable feature of the conference was the participation of teachers and students from a range of settings well beyond the academic community, demonstrating the power of voice when groups that are normally excluded from established structures are enabled to take and express a stance both controversial and confronting. For example, Norwegian students discussed the capacity of Norway’s School Student Union, a national organization for students 13 to 18, reporting that Union members were able to attend meetings with senior policy figures such as Ministry officials to discuss issues of relevance to them.
Encouraging consultation with and participation of children and young people as a means of commenting on their circumstances has become, in some cases, the province of employing authorities themselves. For example in Ontario, student voice has been nominated as a tool to be employed in school improvement.8 Through a pedagogy of listening and inquiry, it is argued that a responsive learning environment may be co-created. A framework was constructed to develop student voice work progressing from expression, to consultation, to participation, to partnership and to, at the apex, shared leadership, where students are seen as “co-leaders of learning and accept mutual responsibility for planning, assessment of learning and responsive actions.”9 While the document aims to improve rather than critique, nonetheless it provides an example of an authority taking a positive stance in relation to interacting with young people within a framework that would permit their voices to be heard.
While there are many studies that relate to issues affecting children, there are few that directly present the young person’s point of view. In one of them, Sargent and Gillett Swan10 posed open-ended questions to participants from a range of primary and secondary schools in Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Italy and England (mean age 11). Among them were two that they perceived to be of particular interest: “What is the question that you have for adults?” and “What is the one thing that you would like adults to learn?” Page after page of responses expressed the dissatisfaction and frustration that the young people felt:
They (adults) tell you to do stuff because they feel that’s the right way, but they never actually ask you what you think is the right way.
“The one thing that I’d like adults to know is that us children can have our own opinions and we can do things on our own but we also need a lot of help so they should support us and not make us feel small.”
”There are things that they (adults) don’t think about, coz if we do something that they tell us to do, it might affect us later in ways they don’t know and they can’t help.
There are also examples of more extended engagement with student voice to be found. In a four-year longitudinal study, conducted by Mayes11 in one of Sydney’s most challenging secondary schools, a cohort of young adolescents acted as co-researchers, investigating a series of matters, year by year. The four research areas were: The school I’d like; The teaching I’d like; The learner I would like to be; What I would like to learn.
The study was groundbreaking in its length, scope and the extent of risk-taking on the part of both the young people, as apprentice researchers, and their teachers. It is particularly noteworthy because it engaged a cohort of young people as a community in liaison with their teachers, rather than as individuals endowed with agency. Currently, there is a problematic neo-liberal ensnaring of the notion of “agency” that frames that attribute as a property of the individual, with the implication that teachers can gift agency to their students as a form of individual empowerment. Under the aegis of neo-liberalism, education becomes a commodity that benefits individuals, with little consideration for the communal and public good. In contrast, the Mayes study captured the collective of voices, rather than those of privileged individuals. In effect, it was created to permit those with the least power to speak.
Fostering student voice in schools will remain a challenge in relation to matters of power and agency. In his concluding essay published in the book cited in the introduction to this piece, Freire argues that a profound transformation of education can only take place when society itself is transformed. This can be achieved, not just by revolution, but by a series of smaller steps, one of the first being a recognition that education is both a political enterprise and a moral project. Throughout this article I have argued that education cannot be thought of as independent from the power that constitutes it, but it can be acknowledged as a springboard that allows all who participate in it to be recognized as functioning members of that power base. Reinventing education through the participation of those it most affects may take time, but measure for measure is an investment without parallel.
En Bref: Dans cet article, Susan Groundwater-Smith se penche sur le potentiel qu’ont les voix des élèves de réinventer la nature du pouvoir en classe. De nombreux obstacles se dressent sur la voie d’une nouvelle façon d’imaginer l’école en tenant compte des perspectives des enfants et des jeunes qui en sont les parties prenantes corrélatives, en tenant compte d’aspects tels que l’accès et la légitimité. L’auteure présente néanmoins plusieurs cas où les élèves ont non seulement été consultés au sujet de questions scolaires, mais ont également participé à la recherche et à l’élaboration de politiques. S’appuyant sur le cadre de la Convention de l’ONU sur les droits de l’enfant, elle soutient qu’il n’est pas que pragmatique d’encourager la voix étudiante en éducation, c’est aussi – et surtout – un projet moral.
Photo: Dean Mitchell (iStock)
First published in Education Canada, December 2016
1 H. Giroux in P. Freire, The Politics of Education: Culture, power and liberation (Hampshire: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1985), p. xxiii.
2 Freire, p. 179.
3 D. Reynaert, M. Bourverne-de Bie and S. Vandevelde, “A Review of Children’s Rights Literature since the Adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Childhood 16, no.4 (2009): 518–534.
4 C. Taylor and C. Robinson, “Student Voice: Theorising power and participation,” Pedagogy, Culture and Society 17, no.2 (2009): 166.
5 N. Mockler and S. Groundwater-Smith, Engaging with Student Voice in Research, Education and the Community: Beyond legitimation and guardianship (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015).
6 A. Prout, “Participation, Policy and the Changing Conditions of Childhood. In Hearing the Voices of Children: Social policy for a new century, eds. C. Hallett and A. Prout (London: Routledge Falmer, 2003), p. 11.
7 C. Burke and I. Grosvenor, The School I’d Like Revisited (London: Routledge, 2015), p. 96.
8 Student Achievement Division, “Transforming Relationships,” Capacity Building Series (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2013). www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/CBS_StudentVoice.pdf
9 Student Achievement Division, “Transforming Relationships,” p. 8.
10 J. Sargeant and J. Gillet-Swan, “Empowering the Disempowered through Voice Inclusive Practice: Children’s views on adult-centric educational provision,” European Educational Research Journal 14, No. 2 (2015): 177–191.
11 E. Mayes, “Students Researching Teachers’ Practices: Lines of flight and temporary assemblage conversions in and through a students as co-researchers event (paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education, Adelaide, December 2013).