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Lessons That Last: FormerYouth Organizers’ Reflectionson What and How TheyLearnedJerusha Connera

a Department of Education and Counseling, VillanovaUniversityAccepted author version posted online: 10 Jun2014.Published online: 25 Jul 2014.

To cite this article: Jerusha Conner (2014) Lessons That Last: Former YouthOrganizers’ Reflections on What and How They Learned, Journal of the LearningSciences, 23:3, 447-484, DOI: 10.1080/10508406.2014.928213

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THE JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES, 23: 447–484, 2014Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1050-8406 print / 1532-7809 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10508406.2014.928213

LEARNING OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL STRAND

Lessons That Last: Former YouthOrganizers’ Reflections on What and How

They Learned

Jerusha ConnerDepartment of Education and Counseling

Villanova University

This study examines the learning outcomes and learning environment of a youthorganizing program that has been effective in promoting individual as well as socialchange. Drawing on interviews with 25 former youth organizers from the program,this study explores the lessons that stay with them as they transition to young adult-hood and the factors they believe facilitated this lasting learning. Results show thatthe learning outcomes and the features of the learning environment that the partici-pants identify reflect key tenets of Freirean critical pedagogy. As young adults, theparticipants indicate that they continue to draw on the critical thinking, introspec-tion, communication, and interpersonal skills they developed as youth organizers,and they highlight the value of relevant content, an open atmosphere for discussionand debate, and peer education in promoting such durable learning. The relevanceof critical pedagogy to the learning sciences is discussed.

In 2007, Sasha Barab and his colleagues observed that learning scientists andinstructional designers have not always articulated the social agendas embeddedin their work, but “this does not mean that our developed lessons, technologies,and even theories are somehow neutral or apolitical” (Barab, Dodge, Thomas,Jackson, & Tuzun, 2007, p. 265). Since then, other learning scientists have raised

Correspondence should be addressed to Jerusha Conner, Villanova University, 302 St. AugustineCenter, 800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, PA 19085. E-mail: jerusha.conner@villanova.edu

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similar concerns (e.g., Roschelle, Bakia, Toyama, & Patton, 2011), and some havetaken up Barab et al.’s (2007) call to develop interventions that advance a criticalsocial agenda, promoting not only individual but also social change (e.g., Basu,Barton, Clairmont, & Locke, 2009; Tan & Barton, 2010). Nonetheless, diversityconcerns, social justice issues, and critical theory remain largely on the marginsof the learning sciences (Barton & Tan, 2010). Despite the limited attention ithas received from the community of learning scientists, critical theory can offer auseful perspective on learning environments, raising important considerations forinstructional designers, learning scientists, and practitioners.

In what follows, I draw on Freirean concepts of critical pedagogy to interpretformer youth organizers’ accounts of what and how they learned through partici-pating in youth organizing. Their words, when viewed through the lens of Freireancritical theory, offer insight to those who seek to design the types of learning envi-ronments that Barab et al. (2007) advocated when they wrote, “The communityof learning scientists is well-positioned to build transformative models of whatcould be . . . and to develop sociotechnical structures that facilitate individualsin improving and critiquing themselves and the societies in which they function”(pp. 263–264). Because youth organizing programs engage youth in improvingand critiquing themselves and society, they offer a rich context in which to explorethe outcomes and features of such learning environments.

YOUTH ORGANIZING: AN OVERVIEW

Definitions

Youth organizing programs train young people to engage in collective action toimprove the institutions that directly affect them. Trainings may be facilitated byadult staff members; however, more typically, youth who have been involved fora year or more train youth who are new to the group (Delgado & Staples, 2008).Through political education workshops, campaign planning, and public actions,middle and high school youth learn to analyze the sociopolitical conditions in theircommunities, to identify problems as well as solutions that will better address theirneeds, and to leverage instruments of power to make their demands heard. At thesame time, participants support one another in developing their own capacities asleaders. As Rogers, Mediratta, and Shah (2012) observed, “The work of youthorganizing groups is guided by developmental aims, even as the groups focus onsocial change goals” (p. 48). Therefore, many youth organizing programs providesupports, including academic counseling or tutoring, and engage youth in iden-tity exploration and cultural expression (Torres-Fleming, Valdes, & Pillai, 2010;Weiss, 2003).

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Although young people have long been leaders in social change efforts, con-temporary youth organizing programs involving early and middle adolescentsemerged in the early 1990s and gained traction in the past decade. Recent esti-mates put the number of youth organizing groups at 180 nationally (Braxton,Buford, & Marasigan, 2013). Youth organizing participants can focus on anynumber of issues, including environmental justice and criminal justice, buteducational reform is an increasingly popular focus because education so directlyimpacts youths’ everyday lived realities as well as their long-term prospects.Participants tend to be between the ages of 13 and 18 and are largely low-incomeyouth of color (Braxton et al., 2013; Delgado & Staples, 2008).

Learning Outcomes in Youth Organizing

Over the past decade, research has found that participation in youth organizing cansupport important learning outcomes. Although much of this research is producedby foundations and nonprofit agencies (e.g., Cervone, 2001; Ginwright, 2003;Listen, Inc., 2003; Shah, 2011; Zeldin, Petrokubi, & Camino, 2008), a growingnumber of peer-reviewed studies have found that youth organizing helps partici-pants to develop an understanding of social systems and structures (Christens &Dolan, 2011; Larson & Hansen, 2005; Mediratta, Shah, & McAlister, 2009) andto build their facility with critical social analysis as they learn to examine the rootcauses of inequalities and oppression (Kirshner, 2007; Watts & Flanagan, 2007).Youth organizing can also strengthen participants’ development in two closelyrelated areas: interpersonal skills, which include learning to listen to and learnfrom others, to bridge differences, and to build relationships (Cervone, 2001;Christens & Dolan, 2011; Ginwright, 2003; Lewis-Charp, Yu, Soukamneuth, &Lacoe, 2003; Warren, Mira, & Nikundiwe, 2008; Watkins, Larson, & Sullivan,2007); and communication skills, which include effective public speaking andfacilitation (Christens & Dolan, 2011; Ginwright, 2003; Kirshner, 2007; Larson& Hansen, 2005; Listen, Inc., 2003; Mediratta et al., 2009; Zeldin et al., 2008).Other learning outcomes highlighted by researchers studying youth organizingcontexts include improved research skills, strategic planning skills, leadershipskills, civic knowledge and skills, and self-knowledge or identity development(Cervone, 2001; Christens & Dolan, 2011; Ginwright, 2003; Larson & Hansen,2005; Lewis-Charp et al., 2003; Listen, Inc., 2003; Mediratta et al., 2009; Rogerset al., 2012; Rosen, 2011).

Learning Environments in Youth Organizing

The extent to which young people benefit from their participation in organizedactivities depends not just on the quality of the instructional program but alsoon the breadth, intensity, and duration of their involvement in it (Kane, 2004;

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National Research Council, 2000). Therefore learning and other developmentaloutcomes can vary as much within as across organizations. Nonetheless, vari-ous researchers have begun to identify the features that distinguish the learningenvironments of effective youth organizing groups. Jennifer Vadeboncoeur (2006)suggested a framework for analyzing the features of informal activity contextsmore broadly. She cited location, relationships, content, pedagogy, and assessmentas five important features of informal learning environments. Those who havestudied the learning environments of youth organizing groups have tended to con-centrate on content and relationship features, devoting less attention to pedagogyand assessment.

In terms of content, scholars agree that the youth organizing space is marked bya dual emphasis on both sociopolitical issues and personal identity development.Weiss (2003) highlighted political education and personal development as impor-tant features of youth organizing. Similarly, Rogers et al. (2012) asserted thatamong other features, the critical orientation and developmental focus of youthorganizing groups “make them potent learning environments” (p. 52). Combiningthese two domains, Kirshner (2007) argued that sociopolitical identity explorationis a central focus of youth activism organizations.

Relationship-building is a key goal in community organizing. As a result, itis cited by some researchers as a fundamental feature of the youth organizinglearning environment. Weiss (2003) drew attention to interpersonal and coalitionwork and Kirshner (2007) to collective or joint work as important elements ofthe youth organizing learning environment. Kirshner (2007) also pointed to theimportance of youth–adult relationships in this context. Indeed, a focus on the roleof adult staff members, many of whom are young adults themselves, is commonin studies of the youth organizing learning environment. In some of the earliestliterature on contemporary youth organizing, youth–adult partnerships have beenhailed as a “guiding principle” (Listen, Inc., 2003, p. 12) and as one of threeessential elements of a unifying framework for the emerging field (HoSang, 2003).Zeldin et al. (2008) identified youth–adult partnerships as the key factor that hasenabled youth organizing groups not only to influence the youth involved but alsoto have a positive impact on the larger community.

A few studies that examine the role of adults in youth organizing also takeup questions of pedagogy. For example, Larson and Hansen (2005) found thatthe adult leader in one youth activism program scaffolds the youth in a cycle oflearning by structuring training sessions, shepherding campaigns, and establishinga culture and community of strategic action. Kirshner (2008) observed that youthin another organizing program learn about effective public speaking and problemframing through an apprenticeship experience in which adult staff model for them,coach them, and then assume a less visible role, offering them support only whenspecifically requested.

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Little work has specifically examined assessment, Vadeboncoeur’s (2006)fifth feature of informal learning environments, within the context of the youthorganizing. Certainly, youth organizing is action oriented, and the actions thatyouth stage, whether they are protests and marches, press releases, creative per-formances such as street theater or poetry slams, or speeches in front of citycouncil and local school boards, amount to what Vadeboncoeur characterizedas “authentic assessments” in that they provide youth access “to relevant publicfeedback” (p. 268). Some scholars have discussed how adult staff in youth orga-nizing groups engage youth in processes of reflection and evaluation followingactions (Christens & Dolan, 2011; Larson & Hansen, 2005); however, few haveexamined these debriefing sessions either as a form of assessment or in relation tospecific learning outcomes.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Despite a rapidly expanding scholarly base, questions remain about youth orga-nizing and its impact on young people. Most of the existing research has focusedon short-term gains and benefits. Little work has followed the youth over time toexamine whether what they learned stays with them and, if it does, how it informstheir lives as young adults.

Aware of the importance of these questions, a youth organizing group, thePhiladelphia Student Union (PSU) asked me to explore this question withtheir alumni. The research agenda I subsequently co-constructed with the youthmembers of PSU generated the following research questions:

1. What do alumni of PSU believe they learned from their experiences asyouth organizers?

2. How, if at all, do they use that learning today?3. How did they learn? What features of the learning environment do they

credit for facilitating their learning? How, if at all, did these features varyover time?

In this study, I examine what stays with the youth as they enter into adulthood.The knowledge and skills they identify having learned and the structural or pro-grammatic features they highlight as central to this learning are likely to be thosethat have had the greatest impact on them. Recognition and understanding ofthese features can help to strengthen practice within youth organizing programs,raise implications for learning environments more generally, and deepen experts’understanding of the factors that can make learning last.

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK(S)

In co-constructing this study with PSU and in analyzing the data, I drew ontwo different but related theoretical perspectives: critical pedagogy and studentvoice. Whereas critical Freirean pedagogy helped frame how I conceptualized thelearning processes, learning outcomes, and learning environment in this study, thelens of student voice informed my methodological approach.

Critical Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy is a method of teaching that aims to validate students’ lifeknowledge, develop their sense of critical consciousness, and empower them totake collective action to end systems of oppression and bring about a more justsociety. Critical pedagogy recognizes that education is an inherently political pro-cess, and any schooling practices that are considered neutral are actually a meansof maintaining the status quo. Therefore, critical pedagogy seeks to disrupt manytraditional educational practices.

Much of critical pedagogy finds its roots in the works of the Brazilian educatorand theorist Paulo Freire. Although Freire’s writings are based on his experiencesworking alongside adult Brazilian farm workers learning literacy skills, his ideashave been widely applied to American educational contexts, particularly by edu-cators interested in social justice (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Irwin, 2012).With few exceptions (e.g., Basu et al., 2009; Seiler & Gonsalves, 2010; Turner &Font, 2003), these scholars are not writing or conducting research within the fieldof the learning sciences. Indeed, neither the Cambridge Handbook of the LearningSciences (Sawyer, 2006) nor the National Research Council’s (2000) How PeopleLearn include Freire in their references or critical pedagogy in their indexes.

Freirean pedagogy rejects the “banking” model of education in which teachers“deposit” knowledge into passive students (Freire, 1972). This banking model,Freire contended, is responsible for maintaining oppression and for anesthetiz-ing and domesticating students, inhibiting their creative power as well as theircollective power. Critical pedagogy aims instead to empower students to liberatethemselves from the structures, norms, and beliefs that oppress them as they worktogether to recognize, resist, and reform these societal forces. Freirean pedagogysees social change as the end goal but understands individual transformation as animportant forerunner to that goal.

Because the learning sciences are “centrally concerned with exactly what isgoing on in a learning environment and exactly how it is contributing to improvedstudent performance” (Sawyer, 2006, p. 10), it may seem that learning scientistsstop short of asking the broader questions about social change that concernedFreire; however, social change can occur within a range of contexts, from the

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microlevel of the classroom to the macrolevel of society. Therefore, learning sci-entists who study the social elements of learning environments might profit fromconsidering the applicability of Freirean concepts to their analyses of how andwhy students learn in certain contexts; that is, they can draw on Freire to explorethe pedagogical, relational, and even sociopolitical factors that appear to matter tostudent learning. Indeed, critical pedagogy rests on many assumptions about learn-ing that are consistent with the approaches, frameworks, and findings of prominentlearning scientists, including James Greeno (2006), Barbara Rogoff (2003), JamesBanks and his colleagues (2007), and Reed Stevens (2010). For example, bothFreire and many learning scientists, including those cited previously, have arguedthat learning is more effective when it engages students as active as opposed topassive participants, and both have conceptualized learning as a social activity andas a developmental process that occurs in a wide range of formal and informalsettings across one’s lifespan.

Despite the common ground critical pedagogy shares with many traditions inthe learning sciences, including sociocultural learning theory, the situative per-spective, and the communities of practice framework, critical pedagogy raisesmoral and political considerations about power and social change that have notyet been fully taken up by the learning sciences field. In critical pedagogy,the student and teacher learn from each other, simultaneously, through dialogue(Freire, 1972), but this pedagogical approach is as much about politics and poweras it is about understanding learning as a collective process. As Shor (1992)explained, “The learning process is negotiated, requiring . . . mutual teacher-student authority” (p. 16). The vertical hierarchies of status and power thatcharacterize student–teacher relations in a banking system of education dissolve ina Freirean context. As students and teachers engage in problem-posing education,they learn from one another, experience conscientização (consciousness raising),and generate a new epistemology within one another. Freire believed that educa-tion should be neither excessively political nor apolitical, as the former runs therisk of facilitating propaganda and the latter runs the risk of perpetuating the sta-tus quo (Irwin, 2012). Instead, the political vision guiding Freire’s pedagogy wasopen to change and informed by dialogue but tethered to ideas about distributiveexpertise, joint responsibility, and collective power.

Critical pedagogy is appropriate to this study of the learning environmentof youth organizing for reasons of both content and design. Because criticalpedagogy was not developed specifically in the context of formal schooling, it isespecially well suited to the informal, out-of-school context. Furthermore, becausemany community organizing groups use Freirean tools in their political educationand relationship-building work (Su, 2009), it seems a likely site in which to findevidence of the tenets of critical pedagogy. Indeed, youth organizing groups worktoward Freirean goals, striving to liberate students and empower them not justto recognize but to challenge the forces of oppression through their collective

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actions. Although I knew that PSU’s current and former executive directors werewell versed in the work of critical pedagogues, including Freire, I did not knowto what extent the accounts of alumni would reflect the outcomes or pedagog-ical principles associated with this approach. Nonetheless, the Freirean lens waswell suited to the retrospective and longitudinal design of this study because Freireunderstood learning to be a developmental process that can be assessed throughoutone’s lifespan.

Student Voice: Learning, From the Students’ Perspective

Freirean notions of learning and pedagogy are also consistent with a growingbody of research on learning processes and learning environments that high-lights students’ perspectives on the factors that matter most to their learning(rather than offering only the perspectives of the instructor/facilitator or theresearcher/theorist; Chadderton, 2011; Cook-Sather, 2002). And as with criti-cal pedagogy, there are both philosophical (or moral) and pragmatic reasons toattend to student voice (Cook-Sather, 2002). Students’ accounts of their educa-tional experiences can yield valuable insights into not only the conditions that theyfeel support and facilitate their learning but also the quality of the learning theyare doing (Cook-Sather, 2009; Rudduck & Flutter, 2004; Silva & Rubin, 2003;Wilson & Corbett, 2001). Students’ descriptions of what they believe they havelearned, can do, or now understand can generate useful data for those seeking toimprove curriculum and instruction (Mitra, 2008; Rudduck, 2007).

The theoretical orientation of student voice allows me to fill gaps in the fields ofboth youth organizing and the learning sciences. Several studies have consideredwhat youth learn from their involvement in youth organizing or activism, andsome of this research has allowed the student participants to identify the outcomesthat matter (see Larson & Hansen, 2005; Shah, 2011; Zeldin et al., 2008); however,few studies have examined the perspectives of these students after a span of severalyears, raising questions about the ecological validity and durability of learningoutcomes. As Rogers et al. (2012) stated, “We need longitudinal studies of youthorganizing groups that shed light on the long-term impact of this work, and . . .

illuminate how groups build their capacity to produce . . . learning” (p. 62).Furthermore, student voices have been relatively underrepresented in the learn-

ing sciences literature. Learning scientists tend to privilege more seeminglyobjective measures of student learning than self-report, such as artifacts of studentwork, digital recordings of interactions, or differences between pretest and posttestscores. Nonetheless, there is increasing recognition that critical design workcan profit from deep relationships between researchers and research participants(Bardzell, Bardzell, Forlizzi, Zimmerman, & Antanitis, 2012), and design-basedresearchers have acknowledged that “this work happens most powerfully in thefield—in . . . interactions between research goals (and researchers), design goals

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(and designers), and practice goals (and practitioners)” (Joseph, 2004, p. 241).Although students’ goals are left out of this interaction, some learning sci-entists have begun to include students’ voices not only in the data collectionprocess (Barab, 2006; Kirshner, 2008) but also in the analysis and writing ofthe research. For example, in their study of the development of critical scienceagency, Basu et al. (2009) enlisted “the voices of the research participants—theteacher and the students—in order to challenge traditional power differentials inscience classrooms and keep our stories from propagating the status quo” (p. 349).A potentially exciting new frontier for the learning sciences may be the integra-tion of students’ perspectives into the design as well as the study of learningenvironments.

METHODS

In conducting this research, I used individual interviews in a retrospective, cross-sectional design. My data collection methods honored the voices and perspectivesof the participants, mirroring the goals of the organization of which they had beenmembers. Furthermore, I chose to interview alumni, rather than current mem-bers, because I sought to explore lasting learning: the skills, strategies, values,and understandings that are learned at one point in time and not only retained butalso applied years later.

Research Site

PSU is one of the oldest and most well-respected youth organizing groups in thecountry (Rosen, 2011). Its mission is twofold:

to build the power of young people to demand a high quality education in thePhiladelphia public school system . . . [and to] work toward becoming life-longlearners and leaders who can bring diverse groups of people together to addressthe problems that our communities face. (PSU, 2010)

Campaigns have addressed such issues as school funding, teacher equity andeffectiveness, and privatization, and PSU members have used both conventionaland new organizing strategies, including rallies, testimonials, street theater, andmovement music, to effect change in school-level, school district, and stateeducational policies (Conner & Zaino, 2014).

Founded in 1995 by a group of 12 mainly middle-class, White studentsfrom magnet high schools who were troubled by the quality of education inPhiladelphia, the organization has grown to include chapters at eight schools (sixof which are neighborhood schools serving mainly low-income youth of color)

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and a Youth Leadership Team that coordinates citywide campaigns and runs week-end trainings for student members. The majority of the PSU members are highschool age; however, some members are middle school students. There are noprerequisites to joining PSU or requirements for maintaining one’s membershipin the organization. Youth can choose which meetings to attend and the level ofinvolvement they wish to have.

As the youth who founded PSU in 1995 grew older, young adults began to playa role in the organization; however, PSU’s organizational model has remainedyouth led, which means that “youth are in charge and adults play supportive rolesas needed and defined by the youth” (Delgado & Staples, 2008, p. 70). Youthare the central decision makers of the organization: They choose the organiza-tion’s goals and campaign foci, develop the organizing strategies, and facilitatethe weekly workshops and support groups. The paid adult staff organizers offersupport and scaffolding to the youth while managing certain organizationaldetails, such as maintaining and seeking new funding streams, arranging trips andretreats, and coordinating resources. As Rosen (2011) observed, “PSU is decid-edly youth-led . . . PSU staff make purposeful efforts to privilege youth voices. . . and try not to trump the needs, thoughts, and experiences of youth members”(pp. 52–53).

From its founding to the time of this study, PSU has had two executive direc-tors, with the second taking the helm in 2006. PSU’s curriculum has alwaysbeen designed to liberate and empower youth; to develop their collective effi-cacy; and to build their capacity to understand, critically analyze, and change theeducation system through organizing. However, in 2006, the curriculum becamemore explicitly grounded in the theoretical works of Ella Baker, Martin LutherKing, Jr., Antonio Gramsci, and Myles Horton. A newly hired curriculum direc-tor worked with the youth to develop and introduce some new workshops, suchas workshops on consumerism and “the spiral of oppression,” while updating thecanonical workshops that had been developed by the youth founders of PSU, suchas “the ideal school workshop.” Furthermore, in 2006 the summer and weekendleadership programs became infused with media training through partnership withthe Media Mobilizing Project; men’s and women’s identity support groups wereinstituted; academic supports were increased; and the organization became moreconnected to local, national, and international efforts to build a movement to endpoverty. Although these changes were initiated by adult staff members, the youthof PSU continued to be in charge of facilitating the political education workshopsand the support groups, and they decided how to use the new media tools in whichthey could now receive training.

PSU has changed its headquarters several times over its 15-year history. Whenthe group was first founded, members met at a local restaurant. Currently, PSUmeetings and workshops are held in a two-story apartment building in WestPhiladelphia sandwiched between a thrift shop and an Indian restaurant. If they

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are not working in the new media lab, which houses several new computers andprinters, the youth sit on metal folding chairs around a collapsible table or in alarge circle, with a facilitator positioned in the middle or standing with pen inhand in front of a piece of butcher paper tacked to the wall. The space feels infor-mal and warm, with mismatched, worn couches and chairs clustered in a cornerand handmade signs taped to the wall, artifacts of past workshops or campaigns.Meetings and workshops are often accompanied by pizza and soda.

Participants

Participants were recruited for this study in one of two ways. First I sent a generalmessage to all 93 members of the Alumni of the Philadelphia Student Union groupon Facebook, inviting them to participate in an interview with me in exchange for$25. In this message, I indicated that I was eager to learn about alumni’s experi-ences with PSU—good, bad, and otherwise. I did not signal that I wanted certaintypes of alumni. Twelve alumni responded to my Facebook request and agreed toparticipate. Eight of these 12 were White. Knowing that my sample did not reflectthe demographic makeup of the organization, I asked my initial respondents attheir end of their interviews to recommend other non-White alumni who theythought might be willing to be interviewed. Following the snowball procedure, Ithen called or sent personalized requests to take part in the study to the specificindividuals who had been suggested, most of whom were not connected with theFacebook site. I also sent follow-up requests to individuals who had contacted mebut who had not yet participated in an interview.

In the end, 25 former PSU members participated in lengthy, detailed interviews.This group included 14 females and 11 males. Eleven of the participants self-identified as White, 10 described themselves as African American or Black, threedescribed themselves as Asian, and one self-identified as biracial. They rangedin age from 18 to 34, and they can be roughly divided into two groups: 15 grad-uated from high school before 2005, and 10 graduated from high school in orafter 2005. I use 2005 as the dividing line for these two groups of alumni not justbecause the younger respondents were 1–4 years removed from high school butalso because they experienced PSU under new leadership. Of the group of olderalumni, 60% self-identified as White; however, over the time span that they wereinvolved in PSU, White students constituted approximately 20% of the member-ship. The sample of younger alumni in this study was more representative of thedemographic profile of PSU’s membership during the years they were involved inthe organization, with 80% identifying themselves as African American.

Interviews were conducted during lunch breaks and in the evenings to accom-modate the schedules of those participants who were working. Of the 15 olderalumni, nine were working full time, four were enrolled in graduate school, andtwo reported being currently unemployed. Nine out of the 10 younger alumni were

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enrolled in college, and many reported holding part-time jobs as well. Althoughall participants were paid $25 to compensate them for their time spent interview-ing, some participants indicated that payment was not necessary, whereas othersexplained that the compensation was what had drawn them to the opportunity toparticipate in the first place. The compensation was included as a recruitment toolin part to diversify the sample and guard against the tendency to attract only thosealumni who did not require a monetary incentive to participate.

Data Sources

Interviews lasted between 1 and 3 hr, depending on the amount of time the respon-dent had available. All but one interview were tape recorded and transcribed.The interviews followed a semistructured protocol. Participants’ responses to thefollowing questions proved most useful to the focus of this particular inquiry:

What did you learn as a member of PSU?

How did you learn this?

How would you describe the learning environment at PSU in comparison to thelearning environment of your high school classrooms?

In addition, as participants described the work they had done as members of PSU,the culture of the organization, and the issues that they cared about most now, asyoung adults, they touched on lessons they had learned in PSU and the factors thathad facilitated this learning.

Analytic Approach

Data analysis followed an iterative process, as I read, interpreted, and reread theinterview transcripts, noting patterns, identifying themes, and categorizing keypoints for the meanings they generated (Patton, 2002; Strauss & Corbin, 1998).Looking across and within interview transcripts, I generated and refined codespertaining to what and how former student organizers had learned. My first-passcodes captured general descriptions of learning outcomes and the learning envi-ronment and included any mention of the word learn that was linked to PSU (asopposed to high school, college, or other learning contexts) and related phrasessuch as “PSU made me realize . . . ,” “PSU helped me to understand . . . ,” “I thinkthe thing I took away from PSU was . . . ,” as well as the respondents’ responsesto follow-up questions that began with “How did PSU . . .?” After several itera-tions of constant comparison and both focused and axial coding, my final codingschema consisted of five learning outcome categories: critical social analysis,

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which included subcodes pertaining to social structures, issues of oppression, rootcause analysis, systems thinking, and critical thinking; interpersonal skills, whichincluded discussion of learning how to relate to, listen to, understand, respect,or work collaboratively with others; communication skills, which included pub-lic speaking, persuasive writing, discovering one’s own voice, and raising up acollective voice; organizing, which included learning how to run and manage cam-paigns, get groups of people to come together around a shared vision, influencepolitical processes, build power, and demand change; and self-knowledge, whichincluded discovering one’s strengths, developing certain values or ideologies, andexperiencing personal transformation. In addition, the coding schema establishedfive main learning environment codes: relevant material, which pertained to theconnection between the content discussed in PSU and the participants’ personalexperiences or lived realities; open atmosphere, which included the respect, accep-tance, and authority granted to students, as well as the freedom to debate issuesand voice different perspectives; peer education, a code I used anytime the respon-dent mentioned either learning from their peers or the positioning of students oryouth as teachers or workshop facilitators; learning by doing, which included anymention of learning by acting in the world, by engaging in hands-on work, or bydoing something meaningful or consequential; and workshops. The most preva-lent of these codes, along with the subcodes that comprised them, are discussedin more detail in the Findings section. To enhance the reliability of the codingschema and the validity of the findings, I recruited another researcher to apply thecodes to the data. Interrater reliability analyses of the learning environment codesgenerated a Cohen’s kappa of .75, which indicates substantial agreement and isconsidered a robust measure of reliability (Viera & Garrett, 2005).

As I coded and interpreted the data, I engaged in constant comparison acrosscohort groups, sensitive to the fact that not only did the organization change overtime, as it matured, took on new campaign issues, and experienced leadershipchanges, but also the recollections and reflections of alumni changed as they grewolder. As one of the older respondents pointed out, “My perspective now is prettydifferent than when I was freshly out of PSU.” To determine and track emergentpatterns, I reduced the data into matrices and charts (Huberman & Miles, 1994).

I also explored differences in emergent themes and perspectives by genderand race. I note these differences when they are salient and particularly strongin the Findings section; however, because race and age were somewhat conflatedin my sample, with more White participants making up the older (less demo-graphically representative) cohort, these results should be interpreted with caution.Nonetheless, because PSU deals directly with issues of race and gender in itscurriculum and organizing work, it is important that this research follow suit.

In research of this nature, the potential exists for nonrespondent and self-selection bias. It is possible that those who participated in this study were thosewho felt most strongly influenced by PSU, those who were most proud of their

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current levels of achievement, those who were most able to spare the time to talkto a researcher, or some combination of these factors. Because I cannot know thereasons the nonparticipants might have had for not participating in an interview,I cannot make definitive claims about the uniqueness or representativeness of thesample of participants whose words form the basis for the claims in this study.Nonetheless, I can say that the sample included young adults who felt a mix ofemotions toward PSU, not all of which were positive. Not all respondents werecurrently employed or enrolled in school, and not all had ample free time to spendrecollecting, although those who were in undergraduate or graduate programs didappear to have more free time to devote to the interview than those who wereemployed. In other words, even within this self-selected sample, there was greatvariation in terms of past and current experiences.

To enhance the validity of my findings, I shared emerging propositions as wellas drafts of this article with interview participants, PSU staff, and any interestedmember of the Alumni of the Philadelphia Student Union Facebook group. Thosealumni—both participants and nonparticipants in the study—who read an earlierversion of this article confirmed that its findings rang true and offered clarifyingdetails as needed.

FINDINGS

Repeatedly, in the interviews, I heard the following refrain: “I learned so muchfrom PSU.” In this section, I present and describe the themes that came up mostconsistently in the interviews relating to what and how the participants learnedduring their time in PSU, viewed through the lens of critical pedagogy. Wheremeaningful distinctions by cohort, age, gender, or race occurred, I note thesepatterns (see Table 1 for frequency counts).

What They Learned

In critical pedagogy, conscientização is a key term used to refer to theconsciousness-raising process, which enables individuals not only to think crit-ically about oppression and the social structures and systems that perpetuateit but also to see themselves differently and undergo a personal transformation(Freire, 1972). Two of the themes most present in the respondents’ discussions ofwhat they learned, critical social analysis and self-knowledge, illustrate Freireanconscientização.

Critical social analysis. Nearly all of the respondents (n = 21) asserted thatthey had learned about issues related to the educational system, urban living, andpoverty through their experiences in PSU and that they learned to think critically

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TABLE 1Learning Outcomes and Descriptions of Learning Environment by Age, Race, and Gender

Age Race Gender

Outcome orDescription

Pre-2005(n = 15)

Post-2005(n = 10)

White(n = 11)

Non-White(n = 14)

Male(n = 11)

Female(n = 14)

Total(N = 25)

Learning outcomesCritical social

analysis12 9 10 11 10 12 21

Interpersonal skills 9 6 9 6 6 9 15Communication

and publicspeaking skills

7 4 4 7 3 5 11

Introspection andreflection skills;self-knowledge

3 7 3 7 5 5 10

Learning environmentRelevant material 8 4 7 5 7 5 12Open environment 6 8 6 8 7 7 14Peer education 10 8 9 9 9 9 18

about issues of power and oppression in relation to these issues. They discussedinstitutional systems, social structures, and root causes. For example, a femaleparticipant from one of the older cohorts recalled the following:

I learned about everything that was going on systemically with my education andin relation to the city of Philadelphia and the country—why my school didn’t havecertain resources and other schools across the city border did. I learned a lot aboutthe reason communities in Philadelphia are so poor and the way that education wascreated to really help those communities just produce effectively in their factoryjobs. With all of that gone, you really have a large problem in the country. So Ilearned a lot of large systemic issues.

In explaining what they learned about “the effects of poverty” and “thenature of oppression,” several participants highlighted having learned about var-ious “-isms.” A participant from one of the recent graduating cohorts offered arepresentative comment: “We were learning about oppression, racism, sexism,capitalism, globalization, all these different kinds of things. That’s political edu-cation. That’s enhancing your mind to learn about the world and it’s just reallycool.” The enthusiasm he expressed for learning was also characteristic of otherrespondents’ comments.

As they became more acquainted with sociological theory and ideas abouthow social structures reproduce and reinforce inequality, the youth organizers felt

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that they developed their critical thinking skills. In fact, learning how to analyzeand think critically about issues and information was the most prevalent responsegiven by participants in all age groups to the question of what they had learned.One young woman explained, “I think the most important thing I learned was tothink critically about things, not to just like accept the first layer of informationor even emotions about something, to look further.” Another young man echoed,“PSU is the place that really helped me to think critically.”

Many participants mentioned the PSU framework as a tool for supporting criti-cal thinking or as a lens that “altered [their] way of thinking.” The framework wasparticularly invoked by participants in the more recent graduating cohorts and bythe members of the older cohorts who currently work for PSU. Although each per-son described the framework in a slightly different way, their definitions sharedtwo elements: systems thinking and root cause analysis.1 One male participantfrom a recent cohort explained the framework this way:

PSU’s framework is that we need systemic change and that it’s multilayered. One isthat we need systematic change to fix anything or any issue, or any major issue inthis country. To fix education, to fix healthcare, to fix workers’ issues, to fix poverty,you have to address everything in this whole systematic thing.

A female from a recent cohort explained how the PSU framework helped herto “understand the things poverty does in a less abstract way.” She offered thefollowing illustration:

In terms of education, if you’re poor, you go to a neighborhood school. And schoolsare funded based on property taxes. So that school gets less funding and that equals aworse education. So if you don’t have enough textbooks, if you don’t have adequateteachers, if you get pushed to the next grade without mastering the subject, thenyou’re going to be in a much worse place than someone whose experience was muchbetter. And that realization was huge, I think, because I think before, the stereotypewas these poor Black kids are really stupid. And the root causes are never talkedabout because nobody ever wants to talk about that. So to talk about that: the waythat poverty affects education, the way it affects everything. It affects education; itaffects health; it affects everything. That was a pretty big realization that StudentUnion gave to me.

1Systems thinking refers to analyzing the relationships among various parts of a whole, whetherthese parts are the levels of a system, such as school, district, state, and federal levels of the educa-tion system, or types of institutions that constitute the social infrastructure of a community, such asthe criminal justice system, the education system, and the health care system (Hung, 2008; York &Kirshner, in press).

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Not only did this young woman learn to rethink stereotypes or assumptions shehad made about her peers, but she also learned to recognize the interconnectionsamong issues, agencies, social policies, and social systems.

The issues and ideas PSU introduced to its members and the ways of think-ing in which it engaged them appear to have worked hand in hand to supportthe development of a critical social “consciousness and sense of responsibility,”which, once activated, “can’t be turned off” for many alumni, framing the waythey perceived and made sense of the world around them and their place in it.In fact, many of the participants’ accounts of this learning outcome were sugges-tive of lasting learning. Several participants described how they continue to applythe analytical strategies they learned in PSU in other contexts. For instance, onealumnus explained,

The thing that I really took back from it is the framework, being able to frame yourmind to be able to catch good ideas and be able to know what sources to examine. . . It’s kind of is a filter for things now—things I consume and what I think aboutthem afterwards, the way I understand things.

Similarly, an alumna observed the following:

I think it has to do with the way that I analyze the world . . . I do feel [the influenceof PSU] when I read the news, or walk down the street in New York. Every piece ofanalysis that I have about urban society is rooted in that training.

Whereas alumni like these described using the analytic frames and strategies theylearned in PSU later in life, other alumni suggested that PSU altered their funda-mental values and ideologies, shifting the way they see and think about the worldaround them. As one alumna put it, “A lot of my framework comes from PSUand a lot of the teaching has really stuck with me—my thinking pattern and how Ithink about things now.” Another echoed, “I learned a lot. It’s framed a lot of theway that I see the world still.” When asked to explain further, she elaborated onher dissatisfaction with simply providing people with services: “I don’t see it asthe type of work that addresses the root problems and the type of work that I wantto devote myself to.” She identified PSU as having awakened in her an awarenessof the difference between treating people “as objects to be served [versus] as sub-jects who can act.” As she continued to describe how she applies “that point ofview in my work now,” work that is focused on empowering youth, she offeredexamples of lasting learning. The lessons in how to think critically “about powerand privilege” and how to analyze causal forces in society made deep impressions,what one respondent referred to as a lasting “imprint,” on many of the PSU alumniparticipants in this study, sparking for some a personal transformation.

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Self-knowledge. Self-knowledge and the habits of introspection and self-examination were highlighted as important learning outcomes by several alumni,though they were especially pronounced among the younger Black males. Oneput it simply: “What did I really learn though? I learned about myself.” Anotherechoed, “I learned a lot about, I guess, how I look at myself.” A third commented,

I’ve learned so much from Student Union. I’ve learned so much about myself, aboutmy capabilities, how I can be a leader, how I can be someone who can changesomething. . . . I’ve also just learned why I should be involved in this kind of move-ment, and I’m still learning what I need to do in the movement, what are my skillsin the movement.

Voicing a similar perspective, another respondent explained his developing self-awareness in relation to his civic commitments:

Student Union really showed me how I can use my strengths to be part of somethingbigger and how I can contribute myself to making this world a better place, not offin some distant future, but now in the present.

These quotations speak to the personal transformation goal of critical pedagogy.According to Freire (1972), social change must take place in individuals beforethose individuals can take action on broader social planes. Freire argued thatpart of this mental transformation, part of this process of becoming “morefully human,” is recognizing one’s own part in “the struggle” not as “pseudo-participation, but [as] committed involvement” (p. 56).

Though not necessarily coded as a stated learning outcome, commitment to thecause of education reform or commitment to the movement to end poverty was atheme that surfaced in many of the interviews. For example, one young womanexplained,

It [PSU] really made me open up my eyes to see that I could help make that change. . . I really didn’t care about school, but now I really do. I care about my commit-ment and the change that needs to come with education. My goal in life, like I said,is to become a teacher so I can empower students to think differently than how a lotof students usually think at this moment in time.

For this young woman, PSU had changed not only how she thinks and what shethinks about but also her values, her goals, and her vision for herself.

As they graduate from high school and begin higher education or enter theworkforce, young people are confronted with numerous choices, all of which holdconsequences for the lives they will go on to lead. Learning to be introspective andself-aware can help youth to navigate these transitions. For example, one young

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man who described how PSU taught him to examine his values and goals notedthat he continues to engage in self-reflection even though he is no longer an activemember of PSU. “It makes you think more consciously of your role, yourself,and whatever you may go into . . . What am I really looking to do in life? Andwho am I really?” The insight they gained into themselves and the habit of self-examination they cultivated in PSU were not only empowering for some of theyounger respondents in this study but also life altering. Many participants felt thatPSU prompted them to examine their values, goals, ideologies, and, as a result,their life choices, including decisions about whether to complete high school,which college to attend, what type of job or career to pursue, and whether and howto continue to participate in their communities as young adults (Conner, 2011).In PSU, they developed habits of introspection and self-reflection, which left themfeeling like they knew themselves—their strengths, talents, beliefs, values andcommitments—more fully. As participants became more aware of themselves,their actions, and their roles, they also learned to voice their opinions, to expressthemselves and their ideas.

Communication and interpersonal skills. Expressing “to ourselves andothers how we feel and what we believe” (Banks et al., 2007, p. 13) is a keylearning outcome and a fundamental goal of critical pedagogy. In fact, the closelyrelated skills of communication and collaboration are in some ways the bedrockof critical pedagogy. Without the ability to voice one’s own perspective andexperiences, without the confidence to speak up and contribute, dialogue is notpossible, and, according to Freire (1972), critical thinking and consciousness rais-ing can only come about through dialogue. Similarly, the ultimate goal of criticalpedagogy is collective action to transform the world; however, such collectiveaction is only possible when individuals learn to work together.

Communication and collaboration skills were often mentioned in the samebreath by many of the participants; however, the theme of communication wasespecially prevalent in the older respondents’ interview transcripts. Several sit-uated the communication skills they learned within the parameters of PSUmeetings. For example, one young woman in her mid-20s recalled,

I think I learned about addressing a group of peers and effective communication—definitely. And how to communicate a point, or a disagreeing about a point in a waythat was still going to be received with respect and listened to. And that goes bothfor talking to peers and for talking to people who might have been my superiors orpeople whose minds I wanted to change. I think that was really important.

Others remembered learning to speak publicly by standing on the street cornerand talking to passersby or by speaking at a school board meeting or to legislatorsin Harrisburg.

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Not everyone, however, acquired the public speaking skills they would haveliked. One young woman in her mid-20s reflected, “I’ve thought about skills thatI haven’t learned that I wish I had gotten more of. I didn’t really get very good atpublic speaking.” She acknowledged, however, that “some people got that andbecame amazing,” and she also pointed out that through PSU, she sharpenedher facilitation and listening skills. A young woman from a recent cohort simi-larly noted that although she still does not like to speak in front of groups, sheappreciated learning in PSU that “being a good listener” and “being supportive ofothers” is also a “form of leadership.”

Many of the former youth organizers felt that PSU taught them how to interacteffectively with others. They described learning how to listen to, learn from, andwork with their peers. They talked about developing common goals and visions,engaging in collective effort, and supporting each other’s learning.

The White participants from the earlier cohorts were especially likely to com-ment on learning how to work with peers whose backgrounds differed from theirown. For example, a White male noted that PSU presented “opportunities for meto have contact with a lot of people that came from pretty different places thanI did. Even though we shared a lot of the same views, our life experiences werevery different.” A White female echoed, “Working in Student Union was reallygood for me to work with kids from all different backgrounds across the city andreally work towards a common goal with students who had such a different lifeexperience than me.” Respondents commented on how these interactions openedtheir eyes, widened their perspectives, and deepened their understandings of thecircumstances faced by others, making them less judgmental.

Young adults from the more recent cohorts similarly mentioned learning torefrain from the rush to judge others. As they articulated these lessons, theystressed having learned the value of friendship and love. As one African Americanfemale explained in response to the question about what she learned in PSU,

I would highlight learning the importance of friendship. In order to be a part of agroup and be friends is a major thing. You can’t really do work with someone youdon’t get along with. So having friends and being friends in an organization likeStudent Union makes it more powerful.

Learning how to communicate across lines that typically divide them (neigh-borhood, school, race, and class), learning to trust and help one another, andlearning to strive together “toward a common goal” were key themes the formeryouth organizers expressed in these interviews. Again, such learning outcomes arereflective of critical pedagogy, which is “driven by principles of love” (Rodriguez,2011, p. 89).

Demonstrating the staying power of these lessons, respondents described howlearning to work with others in PSU helped them to become less judgmental, to

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recognize and reject stereotypes, and to treat strangers with greater empathy andsensitivity in their daily interactions with others in college, the workplace, and intheir communities. For example, one respondent commented,

I have noticed that I am better than some people I interact with [now] in regards tolistening to someone who is different from me or has a different perspective fromme and really trying to get it and take that in on its own terms.

Another credited PSU with turning her into “a social butterfly.” She explained, “Ilearned to reach out to more people. I learned to talk to everyone.”

Similarly, several respondents felt that the communication skills they learnedin PSU served them in good stead as young adults. One young woman reflected,

They just get you to open up somehow and to state your opinions. They kind of coachyou into public speaking . . . And now that I’m here in school, I’m more outgoingand it’s easier for me to state an opinion and to talk to somebody.

Another recalled that during her time in PSU,

You turn the street corner and they tell you to speak your mind, and if you do thatfor so many years, there’s nothing you can’t go out there and just say. That’s justhelped me tremendously in my personal life and in my education, my job.

A third reflected,

It [PSU] taught me how to speak to my issue and what I know and always bring itback to that point. And I can say that it helps me now in law school because rightnow, I’m writing a moot court brief and I’m going to be arguing in front of a judge.And there were several occasions when people would ask me questions about thingsthat I wasn’t sure about in Student Union and we always were taught never to speakabout anything you didn’t know about. And I think that that’s what I really followtoday. And so now I’ll say, “I’m not sure about that point, I’ll have to get back toyou.”

Comments like these offer strong evidence of the durability and developmentalnature of the learning that began in PSU. Three, five, and 10 years after theirinvolvement with PSU, many alumni participants indicated that they still felt theinfluence of PSU in how they view the world around them, how they think aboutthe life choices they are making, and how they communicate and interact withothers. By their own accounts, these lessons appear both lasting and useful in avariety of other contexts.

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In summary, the alumni’s descriptions of what they learned in PSU clusteredinto four general categories: critical social analysis, self-knowledge, commu-nication skills, and collaboration skills (see Table 1). Some patterns emergedindicating variance in learning outcomes: Younger alumni were more apt thanolder alumni to use the term framework when discussing critical social analy-sis, males were more likely than females to discuss learning as introspective, andolder White alumni were more prone to discussing the value of learning to workwith others from different backgrounds than their younger Black alumni counter-parts. These differences may be related to differences in the participants’ ages andthe fact that some lessons or learning outcomes may come to feel less relevantor salient as participants grow older, or they may be reflective of differences ingender and race. For example, the value of self-knowledge may be gendered andthe value of cross-group collaboration may be racialized. Just as males might bemore likely than females to find salience in learning to be introspective, Whitestudents may be more likely than youth of color to feel and express the valueof working with others from different backgrounds. These different patterns mayalso stem from differences in the organization the alumni experienced, as PSU’smembership, curriculum, and support structures shifted over time. The next sec-tion explores the extent to which this latter possibility was borne out in the data,as alumni explained how they learned what they learned in PSU and recountedfeatures of the PSU learning environment.

How They Learned

When asked to describe PSU, its structure, and its culture at the time that theywere a part of the organization, respondents gave widely different accounts; how-ever, when asked to identify the features that enabled them to learn in PSU, theirresponses were remarkably consistent. Almost to a person, the 25 respondentspointed to the workshops and Saturday meetings that PSU hosts rather than high-lighting the campaigns they designed or the public actions in which they tookpart. And in their descriptions of how these workshops and meetings sparked andsupported their individual process of learning, three factors surfaced repeatedly:relevant content, an open atmosphere, and peer education. These three factorsalign closely with the tenets of critical pedagogy.

Relevant content. In contrast to the banking model of education in whichknowledge is deposited in individuals, Freire (1972) recommended a problem-posing method of education that emerges from, validates, and complicates theexperiences and realities of the people involved. He described how students are“increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and withthe world” (p. 68). In other words, the educational content to which students are

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introduced relates directly to their lives; it is relevant, known, and experienced,not abstract and disconnected from their daily lives.

As if echoing this principle of critical pedagogy, nearly half (48%) of therespondents attributed the power and durability of the lessons they learned in PSUto the connections the workshops made between their everyday experiences andbigger societal issues and ideas. A current staff member and former PSU organizerexplained this approach to education:

We believe that a lot of these ideas that people are being exposed to—especiallypolitical ideas about wealth and about racism and about oppression—are things thatpeople experience and that they know more about it than they can access. But ifwe just give them the opportunity to really talk and think about it, then they candraw on their own learning and experiences to understand these pretty complexissues.

Corroborating his account of the curriculum, a female in her mid-20s recalled,

The meetings where we were doing teachings and where we’d learn about differentissues were just so relevant, but in a context that I could really understand. I wasable to grasp really large issues that some people might say are too complicated forstudents of my age at that time because they were pointing right to my life and theway that it was affecting my schooling.

Another young woman similarly explained that although she did not have a con-ceptual framework or “the names for a lot of what I was experiencing in school,”she did know what she was experiencing. To be able to talk about her experiencesand to compare them to what students at other schools were experiencing helpedher to make sense of her educational experiences as well as the larger educationalsystem.

Several respondents mentioned how facilitators asked “the right questionsinstead of telling you what you needed to know,” questions that elicited per-sonal experiences, feelings, and interpretations. In addition to remembering thesequestions, respondents recalled having the opportunity to “discuss things anddebate things based on where we were coming from and on our life experiences.”Whether they were responding to questions, engaging in a debate, or simplysharing their personal experiences in a workshop, the subject matter always feltrelevant and “very focused on our lives.”

Many respondents drew contrasts between the content they were exploring inPSU and the content they were taught in school. A male from a more recent cohortcommented, “That was like, ‘Wow! People are asking really important questionshere,’ and I was thinking ‘Why don’t we talk about this at school?’” Anotheryoung man explained,

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The things we were learning—they were a lot more interesting. I mean, in schoolyou don’t hear about, “Tell us how your community is?” You won’t get that typeof dynamic. You’ll only get, “Let’s talk about the war of such and such.” But not“What’s going on in your community? How can we try and make some positivechanges in your community and your education?”

Because it was directly connected to their lives, their personal experiences, andtheir neighborhoods and schools, the content analyzed and discussed in PSU feltimportant and meaningful to the participants.

Open atmosphere. In addition to highlighting the relevance of the con-tent they were learning, more than half of the respondents (56%) discussed howPSU provided an atmosphere that was accepting of different perspectives and con-ducive to debate and disagreement. Many used the term open to refer to these twofeatures of the learning environment. One older alumna described the learningenvironment as “pretty open to everyone’s point of view.” When asked to expandon what he meant by an “open atmosphere,” another alumnus described having“freedom to express yourself whenever, however.”

Freirean problem-posing and Socratic exchanges, though not named as such,were often implied as the pedagogical tools associated with the establishment ofthis open atmosphere. As one respondent explained, “With Student Union, havingit be this open conversation and dialogue back and forth between adult staff mem-bers and the people that really were doing the work, the student members, was[what made] the education experience even more productive.” Respondents alsoused the terms interactive and dialogue based when describing the PSU learningenvironment.

As with the relevant content, when discussing the open atmosphere of PSU andthe problem-posing method, respondents often drew contrasts with their schoollearning environment. One alumna from an older cohort, who described PSU as“great and open,” recalled the following:

Student Union would ask us a lot more things, rather than just [have us] sit thereand simply tell us or lecture like you would at school, when you have to sit thereand listen to teachers for hours and you’re bored. They would ask us questions, like“What do you see in your neighborhood? What do you see in your schools? Howdoes that make you feel?” And we would answer these questions, and based on theseanswers that’s where we pulled our ideas for protests and things that we wanted togo about changing.

A female from a recent cohort drew a similar contrast between the openenvironment of PSU and the more constricted learning environment of herschool:

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Learning at school isn’t really “learning.” It’s put into your head. . . . You learn fromthe textbook, so you can’t really bring your own opinions or anything to the table.It’s just whatever is in the textbook is right—no matter what you say.

But with Student Union, you can do your own research and if you find somethingwrong, and it’s something [the facilitator] says or an article they present, or if youfeel like it’s from the wrong point of view, you can go against it. And you can putvalid reasoning behind your answer. It actually makes you think, and you can formyour own opinions and questions to make you think about it more. That was thedifference to me.

Because her own opinion was considered legitimate and important, this respon-dent felt more connected to and invested in learning in PSU than she did in school.She indicated that she worked harder to learn, to think, and to do research in PSUthan she did in school. And as was the case for many of her peers, she felt thatthe lessons she learned in PSU lasted well beyond the school year, unlike most ofthe material she learned in school, which she “studied for the test, and then afterthat, it was completely gone from my head.” While the knowledge her teachersdeposited in her had evaporated, the PSU discussions and workshops piqued hercuriosity and engaged her in an ongoing process of inquiry and analysis.

This quotation also draws attention to the respondent’s perception of the PSUenvironment as welcoming of different perspectives and divergent information.Her description, corroborated by many other respondents, contrasts with someoutside adult observers’ concerns that the learning environments in youth orga-nizing groups involve manipulation and coercion of the youth by the young adultorganizers, trying to convert them to a particular doctrine or way of thinking(Conner, 2014). Although I did not consistently ask all participants to speak tothis issue of manipulation, several did mention that they never felt pushed to thinka certain way. As one young woman explained, “I think there were definitely lead-ing questions at times, but never pressure.” In fact, another alumna from an oldercohort offered several examples of times when the youth members disagreed withan adult staff member’s perspective during the development of campaigns andduring the implementation of particular workshops:

[The executive director] said something when he thought [the workshop] wasn’tgoing the way he thought it should, and we confronted him about it. You teachyoung persons to think critically about what adults are telling them to do and theywill fight back at you if they perceive your coaching or your assistance as an attemptto control what they’re doing or trying to take over.

Suggesting that this sense of empowerment and agency continued over time forthe youth in PSU, an alumna from a younger cohort explained that she initiallyfelt misgivings when the youth of PSU confronted the adult staff members in acontentious way:

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I was taken aback. Like, “You can say that around here?” Because in my head, itdoesn’t show respect for adults. But the way we were talking, we were talking tosomebody on our level, and we didn’t have to censor what we say. So we couldreally say anything, any opinion. And if it was challenged, it was challenged withanother opinion, not like “Oh, you shouldn’t have an opinion about this stuff.”

Group-think, coercion, indoctrination, and manipulation were not issues thealumni raised when describing the learning environment of PSU, unless they didso to explain them away.

For several respondents the power they felt to speak their minds was rooted ina culture of respect. Alumni recalled feeling respected not only by their peers butalso by the adults in the organization. The open atmosphere of PSU derived fromboth the freedom they felt to express their opinions, even when they disagreed,and the bedrock expectation that every individual would be treated with respect,regardless of his or her views. As one younger alumnus put it, “The learning envi-ronment was much more about, ‘OK, we’re going to respect each other’ and ‘weare going to understand that students deserve to be respected just as adults.’ Thatwas a big part of it.”

Again, as they spoke about the salience of respect in PSU, many respondentsdrew contrasts between the way they were treated at school and at PSU. A femalefrom an older cohort noted, “The fact that it was so youth-oriented, that made usbelieve that we were respected, and we were. We spoke up and we spoke back.I felt like that was a real difference, where at school you’re told to be quiet.”Another young woman remarked, “I don’t think anybody ever felt talked down tolike sometimes in high school.” Although some respondents recalled passionatedisagreements, heated exchanges, and emotional outpourings, respect remained adefining feature of the PSU learning environment.

The contrasts the participants drew between the hierarchical and hegemoniclearning environments of their schools and the open atmosphere of PSU arereminiscent of the contrasts Freire (1972) drew between the banking and problem-posing methods of education. Because “vertical patterns” of authority and statuscharacterize the banking method, which is so often practiced in schools, the moreflat or egalitarian relations that characterize the interactions between adults andyouth in PSU stand in sharp relief. In this environment of reciprocal learningand teaching, where the lines between student and teacher are blurred, “argu-ments based on ‘authority’ are no longer valid” (Freire, 1972, p. 52). Instead,participants are encouraged to form and express their own opinions, to debateand disagree, and to put “valid reasoning behind your answer,” thereby becom-ing “critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher [who] . . . reconsidersher earlier considerations as the students express their own” (Freire, 1972, p. 53).In critical pedagogy, not only is knowledge collaboratively constructed by theparticipants, all of whom have “valuable things to contribute,” but also debate is

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encouraged. Freire believed that education should fight the arrogance and one-sidedness of sectarianism by respecting the different positions of people (Irwin,2012, p. 158). Freirean pedagogical and philosophical principles align clearly withthe two dimensions of an open atmosphere discussed previously: inviting differentperspectives to be voiced and rooting disagreement and debate in respect for allopinions and forms of knowing.

Peer education. A related but distinctive feature of the PSU learning envi-ronment highlighted by most of the respondents (72%) was the fact that the youthtaught one another rather than being taught by an adult authority figure. A maleparticipant described PSU as a place “where you get to be a teacher as well as astudent.” Another alumnus explained,

In terms of the political education, it was all about students teaching each other. Thestaff was definitely a big help and they’d support us a lot, but I think the politicaleducation was where we really taught each other.

An alumna echoed, “During our Saturday meetings, students would come togetherand teach each other workshops . . . student to student and peer to peer.” Nearly allof the respondents recalled having facilitated a workshop at one point or another,and their accounts suggested that the curriculum was handed down from cohort tocohort, with each facilitator adapting and adding his or her own personal stamp toeach workshop over time, rather than being developed and overseen by an adultleader.

As they described peer education in PSU, many respondents again drew con-trasts with the learning environments of their schools. Several observed that the“egalitarian structure” of PSU stood in sharp relief to the hierarchical organiza-tion of their schools. One young woman explained, “I felt like peer education wasmuch more allowed in Student Union than it would have been in high school.” Shecontinued, “If somebody felt like they’d done the research or had some connec-tion to the issue, they were always encouraged to share, and we definitely learnedfrom each other a lot. I think that was really beneficial.” Another recalled,

In a classroom, the desks are set up and the teacher is at the front. In high school,generally you raise your hand to talk and are quiet and listen to what the teachersays. In Student Union, we’re sitting in a circle and having a discussion, and mostlywe’re throwing ideas off of each other and discussing. In a workshop, students leadand it’s really helping each other out, as if we are on the same level. I think thatmakes a much more positive environment in general because you don’t feel thatyou’re below anybody . . . The interactiveness of the workshops [was unique]. Mostclassroom activities are not like this.

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In addition to encouraging interaction, the peer education component of thePSU learning environment encouraged interdependence. A former PSU organizerand current staff member explained how the “popular education pedagogy” usedin the organization “mirrors the organizing work”:

It’s the idea that everybody can play a part and everybody can contribute to some-thing. And your part is not enough on its own, but when joined in with everyone elseplaying their part, it is a powerful force. So in our learning environment, you mayhave some insight about the history of public schools, and if everybody has someinsight, that’s a lot of knowledge about the history of public schools. Every studenthas an experience in this system and their experience alone is interesting, but whencompiled along with all of these other experiences, it’s a really valuable source ofinformation and knowledge. Same thing about organizing work . . . The sum of allof our parts is greater than the whole.

One important lesson PSU instills in youth through this pedagogical approachis that not only do they have the power to act, but they also have the power toconstruct knowledge.

The members of the post-2005 cohorts described a learning environment thatwas warm, supportive, nurturing, and family-like, where peers tended to oneanother’s needs to learn, understand, and grow. One young alumnus explained,

Student Union is a lot more personable [than school], a lot more, “We do this becausewe care about each other.” In Student Union if you don’t understand, people arewelcome to be like, “Oh, what don’t you understand? What can we help you with?”And classrooms aren’t like that. Classrooms are like, “This is the information . . .

and that is about it,” whether you learned anything or not.

A female from a recent cohort echoed, “Because you get along, you’re willingto help each other.” She continued, “If they don’t understand, you’re willing tohelp them. If they need help, you know, making something or getting somewhere,you help them.” In addition to learning from one another directly, the respondentsrecalled learning from their peers in less direct ways.

Across all age groups, respondents mentioned peers who served as role modelsand inspirations for them. One young woman said, “I wanted to be Kim Murray.I wanted to talk like her and have her critical thinking ability.” A young man froma recent cohort explained how listening to his peers speak “was really useful, and Ijust got to look at how polished and how cool looking your own self could be. I justtook those models and rolled on with it.” Several respondents indicated that theysat in silence for their first few PSU meetings, simply observing and absorbingthis new way of interacting with adults and with peers, this new language, andthis new way of thinking, before trying to take it up themselves.

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Others remarked that they were not allowed to sit quietly; their peers pulledthem right into the conversation and then helped them learn the PSU languageand analytic approach by coaching or prodding them to think more thoughtfully.For example, when asked how she learned critical thinking skills in PSU, onerespondent explained,

I almost want to say embarrassment, which sounds bad, but you see it all the time.Like someone will say something that’s very ignorant. And then someone else willsay, “Oh, why do you think they do that? ‘Cause they’re not a bad person. Don’tyou think that comes from somewhere?” And from that, and when you see theinformation, it almost feels like you’re being too shallow, if you don’t look further.

The problem-posing method of asking questions that try to root out assumptionscompelled this young woman to begin to “look deeper” into matters, to think crit-ically about issues, and to do her own research into the topics discussed in PSU.She explained that she wanted to feel deserving of the respect that youth wereshown in PSU and capable of participating fully in the organization by assum-ing the role of workshop facilitator, being the one who poses the questions andthereby contributes to the learning processes of others. In other words, peer pres-sure spurred, supported, and sustained her interest in learning and teaching withinPSU.

DISCUSSION

The former youth organizers who participated in this study described havinglearned many things from PSU. In addition to learning tools for critical socialanalysis, the participants highlighted learning valuable interpersonal and intraper-sonal skills through their PSU training. These results are quite consistent withextant research that finds that youth organizing can support youth in learningabout various issues and developing certain skills, including critical social analysis(Cervone, 2001; Ginwright, 2003; Shah, 2011), interpersonal skills (Watkins et al.,2007), communication skills (Kirshner, 2007; Larson & Hansen, 2005; Zeldinet al., 2008), and self-knowledge (Ginwright, 2003).

This study builds on existing research by showing that these lessons can persistfor several years after participation. Because what they were learning in PSU feltinteresting, important, relevant, and connected to their daily lives, it stayed withthem after they were no longer active members of PSU. Even when they do notcount themselves part of a similar community of practice and even when they nolonger interact with friends from PSU, the participants in this study made clearthat they retained much of what they learned in PSU. Their vivid accounts, theiradamant assertions that they learned a lot, and the facility with which they used

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words like systemic, social structures, framework, and social justice to explainthe lessons they learned demonstrate that the language and ideas they picked upin PSU continue to resonate. Many alumni commented that the frameworks andlenses they had acquired in PSU shaped how they viewed the world still. Othersobserved that the empathy, open-mindedness, and self-awareness they learned inPSU permanently changed how they interact with others and think about their ownlife choices. Not only did the lessons learned in PSU stick, they also influencedsome participants’ approaches to new situations and shaped the ideologies, beliefs,and values of many of those interviewed.

Skeptical readers might view participants’ claims as simply rehearsing the dis-course of the organization and wonder to what extent talking the talk translatesinto walking the walk. In a separate study, drawn from the same data, I examinedthe educational, professional, and sociopolitical trajectories of these alumni andshowed not only that 24 of the 25 participants hold (or are training for) prosocialjobs and 23 out of 25 are actively working to address the issues they care aboutmost in their communities but also that many directly credit PSU with directlyinfluencing their life choices and actions (Conner, 2011).

One surprising finding of the current study is that so few alumni discussedhaving learned anything about organizing or social action. Because organizingconstitutes the core work of the organization, perhaps the respondents thoughtthat this outcome was self-evident; or perhaps organizing was not at the tips oftheir tongues when they were confronted with the question about what they hadlearned from PSU. Indeed, an important limitation of this study is that simplybecause something was not mentioned in an interview does not mean that it didnot happen or that it was not significant. Because a large number of respondentscontinued either to work as organizers or to see themselves as activists, changeagents, and leaders in their communities and because so many of them attributedthese professional choices to their experiences in PSU (Conner, 2011), it is hardto imagine that they did not learn some organizing skills in PSU; nonetheless, thefew mentions of this outcome remain intriguing.

Similarly, it is striking that, when describing how they learned, so many respon-dents pointed to workshops rather than campaigns, actions, or experiences outsideof the PSU headquarters. Perhaps the focus on workshops and discussions wasan artifact of the question asked: When respondents were asked to describe “thelearning environment” of PSU, they might have felt restricted to describing thefeatures and feel of the physical space of the PSU offices. Nonetheless, the ques-tion “How did you learn that?” posed in response to respondents’ descriptionsof what they learned from PSU, only generated codes pertaining to learning bydoing or action-based education for a third of the respondents, and even amongthese, this code was usually connected to a mention of PSU workshops and notthe organizing campaigns. This finding might also say something about howparticipants understand the term learning. Even when applied to an informal

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learning environment, learning may be more readily apparent to participants inthe context of formal structures, like workshops, than it is in the context of whatJoel Westheimer (personal communication, April 15, 2012) has called “collectiveprojects of consequence,” such as planning or enacting a campaign.

Rather than drawing attention to social action projects and opportunities forhands-on learning or learning by doing in the PSU learning environment, theparticipants highlighted the importance of relevant content, an open atmospherefor discussion and debate, and peer education. These three features track withVadeboncoeur’s (2006) identification of content, pedagogy, and relationships askey features of the informal learning context. According to the alumni, the PSUlearning environment consisted of peers of equal status (relationships) engagingone another in discussion and debate (pedagogy) about their experiences in schooland in the community (content).

This account of PSU’s educational model also reflects Freirean conceptions ofcontent and relationships as they relate to pedagogy and learning. Whereas othershave discussed the applicability of critical pedagogy to youth organizing (Dolan,2010; Su, 2009; Taines, 2011), this study builds on that work by showing howparticipants’ accounts of the learning environment align with Freirean concep-tions. In critical pedagogy, facilitators “pull” knowledge out of participants byasking them questions and encouraging everyone to contribute to the construc-tion of collective understanding. Many respondents in this study explained thatbecause the questions facilitators posed to them focused on their lived experiences,the content of the workshops felt relevant and important. As Freire (1972) wrote,“Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves. . . will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge”(pp. 68–69). In addition to connecting real-life experiences to larger social under-standings, engaging participants in dialogue is a sine qua non of critical pedagogy,as dialogue and debate give rise to the opportunity to “re-form [one’s] reflections”and “reconsider [one’s] earlier considerations” (Freire, 1972, p. 53). Numerousrespondents described how various perspectives were solicited, interrogated, andeven challenged in PSU, as participants sought to collectively develop deeperunderstandings of issues. Finally, in critical pedagogy, the lines between teacherand student become blurred, as all participants assume joint responsibility forteaching and learning. The youth of PSU taught one another by sharing theirexperiences, by asking tough questions of one another, and by modeling acceptedpractices. Indeed, many respondents singled out peer education as the most dis-tinctive and powerful feature of the workshops they experienced in PSU, andthough they did not talk explicitly about assessment, which is another featureof the learning environment highlighted by Vadeboncoeur (2006), there was asense that peers held one another accountable for participating thoughtfully andauthentically.

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The importance of relevant content in facilitating student learning is wellknown, and many scholars champion collaborative learning (National ResearchCouncil, 2000); however, egalitarian learning structures that position students asauthorities, possessing equal status to adults, and encourage their engagement inrespectful discussion and debate about issues that matter to them may raise newconsiderations for the field of the learning sciences, signaling pedagogical andrelational features of an effective out-of-school learning environment that havebeen heretofore relatively unexplored. In fact, much of the existing scholarship onlearning environments, both in and out of school, focuses on the role of adults inconstructing, monitoring, and maintaining those environments. In youth activism,youth organizing, and student voice contexts, considerable attention has beenpaid to the responsibilities of adults relative to the youth. How can adults offer“directivity and freedom” (O’Donoghue & Strobel, 2007)? How can they “leadwhile getting out of the way” (Mitra, 2005)? How can they “balance youth agencyand adult direction” (Larson et al., 2004, p. 553)? How can they negotiate pro-ductive youth–adult partnerships with the youth (Camino, 2005; HoSang, 2003;Listen, Inc., 2003; Zeldin et al., 2008)? Similarly, the field of learning sciencesrarely conceptualizes students either as designers and stewards of the learningenvironment or as teachers and arbiters of knowledge.

In this study, the participants directed attention to peer relations both as a fac-tor facilitating learning and as an important learning outcome. Although adult staffmembers were frequently invoked and described as influential figures, integral tothe organization, they seemed to assume a secondary position in the respondents’reflections on what and how they had learned. In the participants’ recollections,the intense relationships they developed with peers took center stage. This find-ing is interesting given the various ways in which the adult staff reshaped thecurriculum of PSU after 2005. It is also particularly salient because much of thecriticism directed at youth organizing groups focuses on the ways in which adultstaff members might manipulate or use youth to realize political agendas (Conner,2014). Not only did the alumni in this study downplay the influence of adults,but they also described an environment that encouraged, indeed embraced, differ-ent perspectives, experiences, and research findings. The power of this learningenvironment, for many respondents, seemed to stem from the fact that the youthcollectively felt empowered to generate their own questions, to debate and discussvarious findings with one another, to follow the learning where it led them, andfinally to act based on what they had learned.

Of course, it is important to qualify these findings by noting the limitations ofyouth (or young adult) self-report. Many scholars have highlighted the “limitedvantage point of the student” (Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, & Bransford,2005, p. 367) in observing and making sense of pedagogical practices (Lortie,1975). Not only do students lack frameworks for understanding pedagogy, butthey also have a partial view of it. Participants can only describe what they

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are positioned to see, and it is plausible that many forms of adult structureswere not apparent to the youth members of PSU, despite the youth-led, youth-focused nature of this space. Although the respondents in this study did not directattention to the role of the adult staff members in shaping the learning environ-ment, it would be a mistake to interpret this lack of data as evidence that theadult staff were not involved in the design and maintenance of this environment.Future research might paint a more complete picture of the learning environmentof PSU specifically or youth organizing more generally, and in turn corrobo-rate, challenge, or extend the propositions of this study, by triangulating datasources, including observational data and interview data from adult staff mem-bers as well as interviews with the youth participants. Such research can alsolead to the development of robust grounded theory focused on the actual mech-anisms and processes of learning and growth for youth organizers. Such theorycan then be tested with large-scale survey research that engages a broader sampleof former youth organizers, addressing the limitations of generalizability found inthe current study.

At the same time that they acknowledge the limitations of relying on youthself-report, researchers seeking to develop grounded theory or test theoreticalpropositions through survey research should realize that their adult vantage pointsmay be partially obscured as well. When they observe from the wings, interviewonly adult practitioners, or predetermine survey answers, they may fail to see whatmatters most to the students or they may diminish the importance of those factors.This study raises the importance of further conceptualizing learning environmentsby eliciting youths’ perspectives on their learning experiences: what they learn aswell as how they learn it. Future design-based research might consider incorpo-rating student perspectives into both data collection and data analysis processesin an effort to deepen understanding of what constitutes an effective learningenvironment across multiple perspectives.

CONCLUSION

In their 2007 article in this journal, Barab and his colleagues called on learn-ing scientists to develop transformative models and interventions that advance acritical social agenda. This study aids in that project by starting with an exist-ing model that has been shown to be effective in promoting both social change(Conner, Zaino, & Scarola, 2012) and individual change (Conner & Slattery, 2014;Rosen, 2011) and mapping backward to identify the key features of its learningenvironment from the vantage point of the participants. These features (relevantcontent, open atmosphere, and peer education) can now inform the designs ofthose working to create new transformative models.

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The contributions of this study are not merely practical, however; they arealso theoretical. I map the data not only to the framework Vadeboncoeur (2006)developed to clarify the macrofeatures of informal learning environments but alsoto key Freirean constructs such as conscientização. I explain how participants’accounts of the PSU learning environment as egalitarian, open to debate, andgrounded in their everyday realities reflect the emphasis Freire placed on mutual-ity, dialogic processes, and inquiry into “students’ daily life experiences” (Shor &Freire, 1987, p. 20).

Just as Barab et al. (2007) anticipated that some learning scientists and instruc-tional designers might chafe against their suggestion to “embrace an ideologicallens” in their work (p. 267), so too some readers might feel, as one reviewer putit, “queasy” about the application of Freire to the study of learning outcomesand learning environments. Certainly, there are important tensions between Freireand the mainstream learning sciences community that are worth acknowledging.For example, Freire (1972) saw the teacher and student as “jointly responsible”(p. 56) for learning from and with each other; however, the “entrenched infras-tructure” (Stevens, 2012) of schools means that even in the context of innovative,student-centered, project-based learning or design-based learning interventions,students experience limited degrees of power, authority, and autonomy relative toadults, and rarely do they have opportunities to see how they have contributedto their teachers’ learning and development. Furthermore, Freire developed crit-ical pedagogy to advance a moral agenda linked to ending oppression, whereasmost learning scientists explore what they might see as agnostic research agendasfocused on questions of how best to promote learning.

Even some of the constructs examined in this study do not fit comfortablywithin the Freirean framework. For example, Freire might question the use of theterm content. He might wonder whether it is really possible to separate pedagogyfrom relationships, as Vadeboncoeur’s (2006) framework and my codes of openatmosphere and peer education imply. Similarly, he might ask whether it is possi-ble to detach learning and empowerment goals from social change goals to focusonly on the former. Whether working to end oppression is an element that must beadded alongside incorporating relevant content, establishing an open atmospherefor discussion and debate, and enabling peer education as key features of effectivelearning environments remains an open question.

Nonetheless, this study suggests that Freirean critical pedagogy can be a soundstrategy for promoting personal agency and lasting learning in domains many edu-cators care about: critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. So whileinstructional designers might use Freirean approaches as a means of achieving thelearning ends they value, Freirean theorists might use learning science data as arationale for implementing and institutionalizing Freirean practices. Such effortscan help bridge the ideological divides that sometimes separate not just theoryand practice but also pragmatic and political concerns, potentially leading towardgreater mutual understanding and collective benefit.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank six anonymous peer reviewers and Ben Kirshner, PeterLevine, Connie Titone, and Nijmie Dzurinko, who provided thoughtful and con-structive comments on earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thankAmanda Slattery for her assistance in the data analysis.

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