Students as researchers: Engaging unheard voices

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Students as researchers Engaging unheard voices
Dr Derek Bland Queensland University of
Technology Brisbane, Australia Presentation
delivered to the Continuum Centre seminar,
Engaging the disengaged and disadvantaged -
Experience of working with younger learners from
Australia, UK and Sweden. University of East
London 2 April, 2008
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Overview

• The SARUA project
• Student myths about uni
• Working in the margins
• Re-engaging with education

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The SARUA Project(Student Action Research for
University Access)

• Students
• investigate local barriers
• implement and evaluate school-based projects
• Action research cycle
• Training
• planning implementation - evaluation -
  presentation

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Barriers to University

• Systemic
• Monetary
• Travel
• Entry requirements
• Symbolic/cultural
• Habitus
• Myths

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Student myths about uni

• Lack of Knowledge
• Cultural Gaps
• Efficacy and Agency

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Lack of knowledge

• We thought that university was just for smart
  people
• No-one to ask what its really like
• Some teachers just see you and like dont expect
  much
• Quit school and dont even think about going
  to uni

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Cultural Gaps

• daunting
• intimidating
• scary
• it is not for me
• We also thought that you had to be a particular
  race to attend University

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Efficacy and Agency

• I cant do it
• students of ethnic backgrounds are usually
  represented as a minority within our school
• Now I know I dont have to do five more years of
  high school

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What worked?

• Trust and collaboration
• Skills developed in a real world context
• Training on uni campus
• Opportunities for critical imagination
• Exposure to discourse of university
• Conscientisation

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Some outcomes

• Access constructed as one of social barriers
  rather than as a personal problem
• If youre disadvantaged you can still get into
  most unis
• I can picture myself there
• Tertiary education is not a bad thing

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Marginalisation

• Option of choice
• Resistance
• A badge of honour
• A safe haven

• At-risk
• Disengaged
• Disaffected
• Disadvantaged

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Interventions

• Systemic
• eg, Learning or earning Queensland
• Keeping NEETs at school UK
• Deficit-based
• Condemned to mediocrity
• School-based
• eg, Responsible Thinking Centres (RTCs)

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Moral exclusion

• Labelling
• Demonising discourses
• Undeserving of fair treatment

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Working in the margins

• New collaborations among questioners as teachers
  and students both engage in perceptual journeys,
  . undertake common searches for their place and
  significance in history to which they too belong
  and which they invent and interpret as they live
  (Greene, 1991, p. 38).
• Margins - spaces of creative change in which the
  first fruits and inklings of novel insights and
  radical revisions can appear (Gould, 2001, p.
  92).

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Working in the margins

• voices of possibility and hope (Butler, 1998,
  p. 108)
• University/Schools SaR project
• Example
• DVD created by disengaged students
• Achieved film industry awards
• Key student now School Captain

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Students as researchers and the role of
imagination

• Opportunities for imagination to be released
  (Kincheloe Steinberg, 1998)
• Imagination
• Fantasy
• Creative
• Critical
• Empathic
• Conscientisation

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Bridges to the mainstream

• Agency coming to power (Lankshear, 1994, p.
  68)
• Immersion in the discourse of education
• community of research
• parity of esteem
• real life, relevant issues
• ownership
• cooperation in teams
• conscientisation
• Learning from mistakes
• scaffolding

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Openings and opportunities

• ..it takes imagination on the part of the young
  people to perceive openings through which they
  can move (Greene, 1995, p. 14).
• at the root of anti-oppressive pedagogy is the
  vitality and art of imagining different ways of
  being in the world, and finding opportunities for
  their realization as lived (Swanson, 2005, p. 5).

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Student Voice

• insider knowledge
• new understandings
• disengagement can be reversed

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Destination Uni Way to Go!

• http//www.leo.eq.edu.au/podcasts_kylie/trailer2.m
  p4

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At risk students?

• disadvantaged
• disengaged
• disaffected
• no-hopers
• losers

• alienated
• marginalized
• dissatisfied
• devalued
• bored
• disappointed

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Project outcomes

• academic skills
• confidence
• team work
• critical reflection
• increased knowledge of university

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Essential elements

• community of research, mutual respect, parity of
  esteem
• real life, relevant problems
• ownership of the process
• ownership of outcomes
• Cooperation, teamwork
• learn from mistakes, take risks
• have fun
• conscientization
• immersion in education discourse

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Pedagogy of hope (hooks, 2003)

• We need to find ways to make student knowledges
  the basis of school direction and curricula If
  we care about larger issues of justice and
  liberation, we must listen to our students. They
  have voices of possibility and hope
• (Melissa Butler, 1998, p. 108).