Perceiving Learning Anew: Social Interaction, Dignity, and Educational Rights

Abstract

What are the origins of educational rights? In this essay, Espinoza and Vossoughi assert that educational rights are “produced,” “affirmed,” and “negated” not only through legislative and legal channels but also through an evolving spectrum of educational activities embedded in everyday life. Thus, they argue that the “heart” of educational rights—the very idea that positive educative experiences resulting in learning are a human entitlement irrespective of social or legal status—has come to inhere in the educational experiences of persons subjected to social degradation and humiliation. After examining key moments in the African American educational rights experience as composite historical products, the authors determine that learning is “dignity-conferring” and “rights-generative.” They revisit African slave narratives, testimony from landmark desegregation cases, and foundational texts in the history of African American education where they find luminous first-person accounts of intellectual activity in the shadow of sanction, suppression, discouragement, and punishment. They conclude by outlining an empirical framework for studying the nexus of learning, dignity, and educational rights from a social interactional perspective.

Participatory Design Research and Educational Justice: Studying Learning and Relations Within Social Change Making

“…Jurow et al (this issue) end their article by raising a cautionary tension: "sometimes work accomplished 'under the radar' or on the margins of official practice could be more powerful than it might otherwise be (see Hooks, 1994). " In line with research on "hidden transcripts" (Scott, 1990), dangerous or hidden forms of learning (Espinoza & Vossoughi, 2014;Gundaker, 2007), subversive discourse and embodied practice (Erickson, 2004;Kelley, 1996), we believe it is important to attend to the ways visibility may at times threaten or compromise creative design and pedagogical practices that take shape "under the radar. " As Jurow et al suggest (this issue), the forms of social change making and learning that are nurtured on the margins or in the borderlands may, at times, afford greater room for self-determined intellectual and relational activity.…”

Writing Toward Justice: Youth Speculative Civic Literacies in Online Policy Discourse

“…Looking at schools as often adult-dictated spaces, speculative civic literacies must be rooted in exploring legitimate opportunities for students to imagine and name aspects of their sociocultural world. Composing against is built on a critical tradition that re-centers whose voices count (Luke, 2012), that questions the epistemological assumptions of knowledge (Bang, 2015; Espinoza & Vossoughi, 2014), and that seeks to decolonize traditional learning and research approaches (Patel, 2015; Smith, 2012). Particularly as we focus on in the remainder of this article, composing against is an imaginative practice that questions how schools and civic life could be and fosters civic reasoning from a stance of “what if.”…”

Principios, aplicaciones y retos del aprendizaje conectado

“…Otro aspecto vinculado con los procesos de apoyo y promoción consiste en la conexión del aprendiz con los recursos, servicios y actividades en curso de la comunidad a través de mostrar públicamente su trabajo, o contribuir a procesos de cambio y transformación social (Pennuel y O'Connor, 2018). Ello puede conferir dignidad a los propósitos de aprendizaje, legitimando sus intereses, valores y prácticas (Espinoza y Vossoughi, 2014 Desde la perspectiva que adoptamos, el aprendizaje es un proceso que se desarrolla a través de la participación en distintas actividades socioculturales, en distintos momentos temporales (Esteban-Guitart, Coll y . Lo que nos lleva a la noción de itinerario, no entendida como la unión de un punto inicial y uno final, sino más bien como el transcurso de situaciones que se desencadenan en dis(continuidades) entre distintas experiencias de aprendizaje.…”