Education Commons^™

Testimonio And Counterstorytelling By Immigrant-Origin Children And Youth: Insights That Amplify Immigrant Subjectivities, Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Wendy Barrales

Publications and Research

This article seeks to amplify our scholarly view of immigrant identity by centering the first-person narratives of immigrant-origin children and youth. Our theoretical and methodological framework centers on testimonio—a narrative practice popularized in Latin American social movements in which an individual recounts a lived experience that is intended to be representative of a collective struggle. Our goal is to foreground first-person narratives of childhood as told by immigrant-origin children and youth in order to gain insight into what they believe we should know about them. We argue for the power of testimonio to communicate both extraordinary hardship and everyday experiences …

Participatory Action Research In Schools: Unpacking The Lived Inequities Of High Stakes Testing, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Tabatha Cortes, Israt Hoque

Publications and Research

Purpose – This paper aims to examine a school-based Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project on educational inequity and high stakes testing.

Design/methodology/approach – A former high school teacher (currently a university professor) and two former students (currently research assistants and university students) take up a youth studies framework to collaboratively resee multimodal artifacts from a tenth-grade course in qualitative research.

Findings – Findings illustrate the power of finding allies in peers and educators; the transformative power of deep participation; and the longitudinal nature of social change and action. Thus, this research demonstrates that when students are positioned as researchers, …

Transforming School Hallways Through Critical Inquiry: Multimodal Literacies For Civic Engagement, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Christopher Curmi-Hall

Publications and Research

The authors examined the research and activism of 10th graders (ages 15–16) involved in a youth participatory action research project in a course in qualitative research at their small public school in New York City, New York. The authors, a classroom researcher and a high school teacher, looked closely at how the youth researchers used photography, collage, and videography to transform their school hallways into a space for critical conversations about race and gender. The authors examined how the hallways became a civic space shaped by collective youth resistance, multimodal counterstories, and negotiated civic engagement.

School Optimism: Fast Life And Slow Debt In The Financialized University, Mark Alan Porter Webb

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the past two decades, educational debt has quickly transformed US colleges and universities into spaces of cruel optimism: the higher education that students desire is all too often an obstacle to their flourishing. This study maps the contours of the white, middle-class attachment to the college dream, paying particular attention to the moments when the optimism surrounding higher education turns cruel. As this optimism wanes in the face of mounting educational debt, students deploy a myriad of fast life strategies—a flurry of actions that include work, activism, protest, leaving school and/or satirical critique—with the hope of mitigating the impact …

Critical Youth Participatory Action Research To Reimagine Environmental Education With Youth In Urban Environments, Marissa E. Bellino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work addresses ways to actively engage youth, particularly those growing up in urban contexts, in the rapidly expanding field of urban environmental education (EE). By inviting youth into the urban EE discourse, this study created opportunities to redefine what EE could look like when it is built on relevance to youth daily lives and is locally situated in urban settings. A critical urban environmental pedagogy, as conceptualized in this dissertation, brings together critical pedagogy and youth participatory action research to investigate the diversity of urban neighborhoods by youth who live there. These investigations reveal neoliberal urbanization processes and their …

A New Charter Challenges Popular Paradigms, Levi Sharpe

Capstones

Many popular charter schools in New York City, which are highly rated, are known for being heavy on test prep and rigid in structure. Success Academy, the largest charter network in New York City, is the paragon of this type of model. But these models, known as "no-excuse" charters can burn out teachers. Critics also say they squelch students' creativity and their desire to be in class. A New York Times article from April 2015 described Success’ “polarizing tactics," which lead to high teacher turnover. Six months later, The Times also reported on a Success Academy charter in Fort Greene …

‘‘Where I’M From’’ And Belonging: A Multimodal, Cosmopolitan Perspective On Arts And Inquiry, Tiffany A. Dejaynes

Publications and Research

The paper draws upon a year-long practitioner inquiry with adolescents who conducted auto-ethnographies as part of a research course in their urban public high school. Through ethnographic data collection, youth researched their own lives, cultures, and beliefs with the end goal of producing multimodal films that represented their embodied senses of ‘‘Where I’m From’’, broadly defined. As youth collected and interpreted culturally and personally meaningful artifacts, stories, memories, and family discourses, the cosmopolitan habits of mind and heart that it is argued are important for nurturing reflective citizens of the world. In the process of video production or self-curation, youth …

Youth As Cosmopolitan Intellectuals, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Christopher Curmi

Publications and Research

Two high school teachers examine classroom moments that position youth as cosmopolitan intellectuals and invested community members as opposed to disengaged and disaffected adolescents.

Coming Of Age In Neoliberal New York, Jennifer Hope Sugg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Thirty years of neoliberal policies have left New York a divided city, with ever-rising rates of income inequality and widening social disparity. Structural transformations associated with global capitalism have led to divergent experiences for male and female youth coming of age in the 21st century. Girls are experiencing greater social integration and social mobility whereas, boys are facing social exclusion and limited opportunities. As young men precariously forge new transitions to adulthood, young women are constructed as ideal flexible subjects, benefiting from feminist achievements, and advancing in the new service economy. Yet in reality, girls continue to face gendered base …

The Goals Of The Youth To Youth Guide To The Ged®, Tasos Neofotistos, Travion K. Joseph, Jovon Smith, Joni Schwartz, John Powell, Eve Tuck

Open Educational Resources

This is a youth to youth guide to the GED. Written for and by youth it is a learner-centered tool for understand choices and options around the GED.

What Do Youth Know About The Ged® Before They Join A Ged® Program?, Joni Schwartz, John Powell

Open Educational Resources

This is a youth to youth guide to the GED. Written for and by youth it is a learner-centered tool for understand choices and options around the GED.

The Difficulty Of The Ged® Exam, Tasos Neofotistos, Jovon Smith, Travion K. Joseph, Joni Schwartz, John Powell, Eve Tuck

Open Educational Resources

This is a youth to youth guide to the GED. Written for and by youth it is a learner-centered tool for understand choices and options around the GED.

Conclusion [To The Youth To Youth Guide To The Ged®], Tasos Neofotistos, Jovon Smith, Travion K. Joseph, Joni Schwartz, John Powell, Eve Tuck

Open Educational Resources

This is a youth to youth guide to the GED. Written for and by youth it is a learner-centered tool for understand choices and options around the GED.

Advice From A Ged® Educator, Joni Schwartz

Open Educational Resources

This is a youth to youth guide to the GED. Written for and by youth it is a learner-centered tool for understand choices and options around the GED.

Cookie Monsters: Seeing Young People’S Hacking As Creative Practice, Gregory T. Donovan, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

This paper examines the benefits and obstacles to young people’s open-ended and unrestricted access to technological environments. While children and youth are frequently seen as threatened or threatening in this realm, their playful engagements suggest that they are self-possessed social actors, able to negotiate most of its challenges effectively. Whether it is proprietary software, the business practices of some technology providers, or the separation of play, work, and learning in most classrooms, the spatial-temporality of young people’s access to and use of technology is often configured to restrict their freedom of choice and behavior. We focus on these issues through …