1. Suggesting a shared and meaningful definition for critical participation.
Data analyses suggest that there are three different kinds of participation according to students, teachers, AP’s managers and scholars. The whole sample including all these individuals was considered in just one group in order to achieve a shared definition for all of them.
This typology has been constructed in relationship with four different topics related to participation: (1) the purposes, (2) the aims that people have when decide to participate, (3) the mechanisms or kind of actions that people use when they participate and (4) the participation’s assessment in relationship with democracy and the ones who participate in it.
Following data analyses and these four different topics, I suggest naming each of these types in accordance with the participation’s purpose: (a) Participation Oriented to Stability, (b) Participation Oriented to the Improving of social and individual welfare, and (c) Participation Oriented to Change and social justice (critical participation).
The first type, Participation Oriented to Stability, is mostly defined by students and it can be defined as “The act to intervene – through any kind of action which is legal, institutionalized and doesn’t violate human rights - in the conflict regulation process which affects any sort of community and which encourages people to give their own points of view in order to solve conflicts and to contribute to stability”.
Teachers and students define the second type of participation that data analyses suggest as “The act to intervene - through any kind of action which is legal and doesn’t violate human rights - in the conflict regulation process which affects any sort of community and which promote democratic values and capacities and
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involvement in society in order to contribute towards easing conflicts and to contribute to social and individual welfare”.
Finally, the entire collective who took part in the research has defined the critical participation: some students, some teachers and the three scholars and the two AP’s managers who were interviewed. According to them, critical/radical participation is the “the enlightened act to intervene –through any kind of action which doesn’t violate human rights- in the conflict regulation process which affects any sort of community and which contributes to empowerment and to highlighting these and others conflicts in order to fight for social justice”. I must identify that the fourth and fifth objective of this research is based on this definition.
2. Identify how teachers teach participation in the AP context and why they do it like this.
In order to identify the teaching practices done in all the AP’s context, I gathered different kinds of data: from teaching materials, from classes and from the meetings where students take part.
In relation to the contents selected with the purpose to teach engagement, data analyses suggest that:
(1) Contents are mainly selected by didactic materials. Teachers and meeting organizers select the contents and skills that already appear in these materials.
(2) Some content related to controversial issues, politics and power appear in the classes and in the students’ meetings without a systematic approach. It means that students introduce the contents and teachers and meeting’s coordinators give their own opinions about them, without having planned it before.
(3) Some skills are taught in order to teach participation, especially communication skills and solving problems skills. However, few teachers teach critical thinking skills to their pupils.
(4) Teachers don’t teach attitudes and values as contents, but they do teach in the sort of classroom climate they generate. Most of the time, teachers are awarded in this kind of teaching, but sometimes they aren’t taken into account, especially because of time and discipline limitations. The most taught attitudes are sense of duty and political efficacy.
According to our data analyses the main teaching practices used by teachers are:
(1) Class discussions. Teachers and students’ meetings coordinators use class discussions in order to know the previous knowledge, attitudes and values that their pupils have.
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(2) Students’ expositions. Teachers and students’ meetings managers use students’
expositions in order to improve students’ communication skills.
(3) Masterclasses. Teachers use masterclasses mainly to introduce new content.
(4) Community learning. Some teachers try to teach through community learning activities, although they don’t have the resources and the tools to do it. In most of these cases, teachers promote that some interesting person from the community speaks to the students and it become a masterclass.
3. Identify students’ learning.
I have done a bivariate analyses using data from the two students’ surveys (one of them was done in October 2011, before the AP, and the other one was done in May 2012, after the AP). The data analyses suggest that:
(1) All the students increase their political knowledge and decrease their political trust. There are no significant changes in political skills, other political attitudes (as political efficacy, sense of duty, community concern and political interest) and expected participation.
(2) Only the males increase the expected information participation and also their political knowledge while only females increase their internal political efficacy, but even though like this, their internal political efficacy is lower than that of the boys.
(3) The youngest students (aged 11 and 12) learn more political knowledge and skills. The students who are aged 13-14 are the ones who have a biggest decrease in their political trust. The oldest students (aged 15-16) learn something that makes them have less expected electoral participation.
(4) The students who went to the AP students’ meetings learn more political skills and increase their political interest. The students who didn’t participate in the AP students’ meetings learn more political knowledge and they decrease external political efficacy and political trust.
Using this data analyses, I decided to ask students, teachers and AP’s managers about the reasons they thought might explain these findings. Then, I also analysed their answers in order to have a more interpretative approach. According to this second analysis:
(1) Students learn political knowledge because of: (1) the classes they have been studying in order to prepare AP’s meetings –which involves content as controversial issues, politics and power, and where they use class discussions-, (2) the social, political and economic context where they live, (3) the economic effects of Spanish crisis in the schools, and (4) the news in media related to Spanish crisis.
(2) Students decrease their political trust because of: (1) the social, political and economic context where they live, (2) their increase in political knowledge, (3)
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their participation in the AP project where politicians say something beautiful that is not proved later in their actions.
(3) Male students learn more political knowledge and their expected informative participation is higher because of: (1) the survey has been done in relation with male assessment, and (2) there are fewer females participating in political activities.
(4) The youngest students learn more political knowledge and skills because their level was lower before and so they have more chances to improve it.
(5) Students aged 13-14 decrease their political trust in a more evident way because at this age their general trust is decreasing and they are more sceptical.
(6) Some students lean more political skills because of their participation in AP students’ meetings.
(7) Some students increase their political interest when they follow the media in class and then discuss it.
4. Analysing how critical participation may be taught.
I also interviewed teachers, students and AP’s managers in order to understand their proposals to promote critical participation learning. Their perceptions were contrasted with others’ group perception by means of dialectic analysis. My data analyses according to this dialectic analyses suggest that:
(1) In relation to the content:
a. Teachers should teach content as participation (mechanisms, causes and consequences of the use of these mechanisms), politics (not so related to the political system and more related to current politics), power (from a conceptual point of view but also in trying to empower students) and controversial issues. All these contents should be taught from a deep approach, which means that students should learn how to identify, analyse, value and act in relationship with every content.
b. Teachers should also teach skills, mainly communication skills (to allow students to understand political messages and to give their own opinions), critical and creative skills (in order to achieve a critical understating about politics and participation mechanisms), problem solving skills (which means knowing how to deal with conflicts without understanding that conflict is something negative) and participation skills (how to organize themselves in order to participate in society as individuals or as community).
c. Teachers should try to teach some political attitudes as internal political efficacy (in order to empower their students) and also teach community concerns (related to the social justice values). But teachers
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shouldn’t try to teach political trust or external political efficacy without a critical approach related to the reality.
(2) In relation to the didactic strategies/activities:
a. Teachers should promote class discussions related to current, social, economic and political topics. This strategy would contribute to the students’ learning of communication skills.
b. Teachers should use community-learning activities, mainly related to going out from the school and they should become more engaged in the students’ community.
c. Class discussions and community-learning activities could be related to each other. By this I mean, teachers could teach using class discussions some contents related to the students’ community and they could later use community-learning in order to encourage this learning and critical participation.
(3) In relation to the school culture:
a. Teachers should be seen by their students as political activists and they should try to overcome the discouragement related to the crisis context.
b. Teachers and students should try to have more confident relationships.
5. Analysing who citizenship education projects, school organization and teachers’ education can contribute to critical participation.
I also interviewed teachers, students, scholars and AP’s managers in order to know which were their proposals to promote critical participation in a wider approach.
The data analysis also was done using the dialectical analyses already mentioned.
My data analyses suggest that:
(1) In relationship with educational projects as the AP, stakeholders think that these projects should:
a. Incorporate contents directly related to participation contents (power, politics, participation, participation skills, political interest, etc.).
b. Try to link students’ previous participation with the contents selected.
c. Allow policymakers, teachers and students to work cooperatively in order to create and develop these projects.
d. Incorporate not only students’ education but also teachers’ professional development.
(2) The schools should try to:
a. Improve the democratic culture inside the schools. This means allowing the students to decide about what will happen inside the schools and the classes.
b. Open the school to the community and try to have more input from this or these communities.
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(3) Teacher education should try to:
a. Use more consciously the previous research in order to teach teachers what scholars already know about participation teaching and learning.
b. Engage future students in society because they also teach by example themselves.
6. Contribute to teachers and AP managers’ emancipation in order to teach critical participation in the AP’s context.
Using the dialectical inquiry, I have tried to contribute to the improvement of critical participation teaching and learning in AP’s context. This means that most of the investigated individuals have received some proposals from other individuals who also take part in the AP project. According to this process and the proposals done in this research’ context, AP’s managers have decided to incorporate news elements to the AP project. Mainly, they have decided:
a. Incorporate contents directly related to participation contents (power, politics, participation, participation skills, political interest, etc.) in the next AP.
b. Incorporate students’ associations and trade unions into the project.
c. Incorporate not only students’ education but also teachers’ professional development in the project in order to improve participation teaching.
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