Am I an Educator?

By: Jennie Fleming
Publication: The Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 3
Date: 2003

Summary: In recent years, the National Writing Project has developed a collaborative relationship with the Centre for Social Action (CSA), a rights-based organization in England that works with communities to create change. As a member of the CSA team, Jennie Fleming has been intimately involved in these collaborative efforts—a journey, of sorts, exploring the nature of education and learning. As a result, she has found herself on a parallel personal journey exploring the same issue and, specifically, her role as an educator.

Education is something we have all experienced and something, then, about which we all have an opinion. As for many people, my most formative educational experience was my own time at school. An unrecognized dyslexic, I failed my 11 plus—a selective test taken in the United Kingdom in the 1960s that determined to what type of school a student could go.

Fortunately I had parents who could afford to send me to an "academic" private school. Unfortunately this was probably the most miserable time of my life. The endless put-downs and comments such as "Could do better," "Doesn't try," or "Why don't you stop wasting my time and just leave school?" took their toll. I read somewhere that it can take twenty years to recover from this sort of experience.

For many years education and schooling were the same thing in my mind; any thought I gave to either was critical. A project I undertook at university, for example, was based on the writings of people like Ivan Illich who believed that people's right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school. Illich says schools are "inefficient for the production and consumption of education," adding that "schools have made `learning' a specialised activity" (1973, 48). I avidly read John Holt who suggested schools are jails and that far from encouraging a natural inclination to learn, they stifled enthusiasm. "You might say that school is a long lesson in How To Turn Yourself Off," Holt writes (1970, 26), and in the same chapter describes schools as "these dull, ugly, and inhuman places, where nobody ever says anything either very true or truthful, where everybody is playing a kind of role, as in a charade, where the teachers are no more free to respond openly and honestly to the students than the students are free to respond to the teachers or each other" (31).

For many years, I'd maintained my separatist view. After university, I began working with young people who had also had a poor experience of education. There I prided myself on developing techniques and methods that did not require young people to use, let alone develop, any literacy skills. And later I found myself at the Centre for Social Action, at De Montfort University, in Leicester, England. This organization works with young people and disadvantaged communities directly and also those training and supporting workers who work with them. Our work, done predominantly in the United Kingdom and Eastern Europe, is meant to create change. Despite the educational leanings of my experience, I still did not consider myself an educator. I was a facilitator, or perhaps a catalyst, but I was not an educator. For me, education continued to be defined by schools, teachers—something with which I did not want to associate myself. It would be years before that view would change.

Developing the Social Action Approach

At the Centre for Social Action, my colleagues and I developed a philosophy and practice known as social action. The social action approach grew out of a community development theory based on the premise that change can happen, but only if the people concerned own it and are involved in creating the changes they want. The social action approach is made up of two essential and inseparable elements—the principles and the process. The principles are the key, as they determine how the process is used. Using the principles to underpin my practice as a social action worker means I talk with young people in a particular way, work with young people as partners, and reject treating them as problem individuals. As a social action worker, I know other social action workers will behave in a similar way, as their practice is informed by the same set of principles. The philosophy and value base of social action works for the empowerment of young people.

In a report on one social action project, a youth worker explains why his team of youth workers chose to use a social action approach. "We sought an approach which would unite young people, value the power of groups exploring the real reasons for their situations, working on their agendas, and taking action to bring about real change external to themselves. An approach which not only recognised power imbalances on personal and society wide levels, but which worked to equalise power and combat all forms of oppression" (O'Neill 1997, 10).

The Principles

Six principles underpin all social action practice. (See below; also see the Centre for Social Action's website, for a full version of these principles.) These principles encompass a commitment to promoting social justice and antidiscriminatory practice, the recognition of the skills and experiences that young people have, and the realization that people have the right to be involved in things that affect them and to have their views heard. Social action uses the insights and knowledge young people possess to enable them to bring about changes in their own lives. Social action principles acknowledge that injustice and oppression are complex issues rooted in social policy, the environment, and the economy. Social action also recognizes the power of group work; that people working collectively can be powerful; and finally that as a social action worker, we are not leaders but facilitators. Our job is to enable people to make decisions for themselves and take ownership of whatever outcome ensues.

The Process

These principles alone do not help social action workers know what to do with young people. This is where the process comes in. The process provides the framework for facilitating problem identification and solution. Combined, the principles and process form an effective approach for working with people and a powerful force for change.

The role of the social action worker is to facilitate the group through a five-stage process. The intention is to change the traditional relationship between young people and the professionals employed to work with them. A social action worker is a facilitator, not a provider. In this process young people are not just consumers, they are active agents for change. Working alongside young people in this way requires the ability to plan and prepare well, to be creative, to listen actively, to be patient, to be disciplined, and to be interested in people's lives. The five stages of the social action process are as follows:

What. This stage is all about discovery, finding out what issues, problems, and concerns people are facing. What makes them angry, frightened, happy, or frustrated? What occupies their thoughts? The social action worker designs ways in which young people can express all this, creating as comprehensive a picture as possible of what is going on in their lives at present, without interpretation and without (at this stage) worrying about what to do with the information. This is often the longest stage of the social action process. Video, role-play, photography, drawing, and discussion are all used during this exploration of life in the community or school.

Why. Once the issues have been identified, it is important to identify the reasons why they exist, so that any solutions devised will attack root causes and not just symptoms. Asking "Why?" helps people examine their troubles in the wider context. It provides them with a deeper understanding of the causes. This is necessary if young people are to go on to create and own positive social change. This stage of the process allows the community members to engage in analysis and to present their understanding of the problems facing them. It also helps the community discover the most effective point of intervention; the place at which it is possible to make changes that will affect the final outcomes. This analysis is accepted by the social action worker, again without interpretation, reinforcing one of our basic beliefs: people are experts in their own lives.

How. So what do we do with this understanding? How can young people change things in a meaningful way? Here the role of the social action worker changes. The responsibility now is to create safe spaces where the group can test out their ideas for change before putting them into practice. It is vital that the community members are not set up to fail and that their ideas undergo a rigorous examination before taking them to the world outside the group. Which ideas will be taken forward is the group's decision, but the social action worker must question each idea's viability without crushing enthusiasm.

Action. The group members then put their ideas for change into effect. They should by now have a realistic sense of the possible outcomes, whether the action will solve their problem or simply be the first stage in a longer struggle. Even if the action disappoints, as sometimes happens, the legacy of the work is that the group members now have an understanding and practical experience of the tools needed for dealing with problems that they will face in the future.

Reflection. The fifth stage is for the group to come together and ask: "What happened? Now that we have carried out our action, are the issues, problems, and concerns the same?" This critical reflection enables young people to learn from their experience and to plan future actions for change. The what, why, and how stages of the process begin again.

Three main points distinguish social action from other approaches:

1. It is underpinned by the recognition that all people have the capacity to create social change and should be given that opportunity.
2. 2. Professionals work in partnership with young people.
3. The agenda is handed over to the young people themselves.

The CSA/National Writing Project Collaboration

The beginning of my change of heart about education—and my role as an educator—grew out of the intersection of the Centre's work with that of the National Writing Project. For some years, the two organizations—who share similar values and beliefs about the need to engage with underserved and marginalized young people—had been developing a collaborative relationship. The collaboration is based on the premise that teachers have a responsibility to young people who are excluded, uncomfortable, or having difficulty in school to the point of nonattendance and that social action has a philosophy and working methods that might be helpful in the classroom and outside the curriculum.

I must confess I was initially skeptical about the value of this collaboration—after all the NWP is an organization of teachers in schools. What could this organization have in common with my work? However, because of my own experience, I had also always been committed to the notion that schools should be better places for young people to be. As well, by this time, I was now a parent of children at school and a governor of their secondary school; I was interested to see how far toward social action teachers could go within a school environment.

The CSA/NWP collaboration started with visits to see each other's work and attendance at different events. In 2000 my colleague Ian Boulton and I ran four two-day institutes for interested NWP teachers, focusing on social action and its application in the classroom, the school, and the community. It was the most exhausting and stimulating two weeks of my working life. The teachers' interest, enthusiasm, and probing questions brought a new dimension to our work and challenged me personally, as the institute participants contradicted everything I believed about teachers. From 2000 to 2002, the collaboration gained momentum through continued contact with teachers at NWP conferences, as well as two five-day institutes in 2001. In 2002, four NWP network teachers traveled to England to attend the Centre's summer school, visit local schools, and talk with teachers. In July of that year, an advanced institute for "graduates" of previous NWP/CSA events was held in California at Lake Tahoe. Plans for 2003 include continued informal links and the creation of written material about social action and the NWP, the exact form of which is still being discussed.

This work with the teachers and the discussions we had with them gave me much to think on, not least the consideration of social action as an educative process and my role within it—dare I say it—as an educator. I began visiting the library to look at what education writers have to say about things that are essential to social action, such as empowerment, participation, collective action, reflection, or experiential learning. Some of the books and authors I found were familiar (although I was surprised to find them on the library's education shelves). Some were new to me but said things to which I could relate. I brought home piles of books; some of these I skipped through, and others I read from cover to cover, nodding my head and taking the odd note. I found my understanding of social action, education, and learning deepening and the connection between them becoming clearer.

Slowly I began to realize what was obvious to the NWP and its teachers—social action is an educative process. As proof, I needed look no further than to how the NWP teachers had responded to the social action training they had had, pulling social action into their classrooms and communities almost immediately. But equally important to my thinking was the realization of the impact that NWP and its teachers were having on the work of the Centre for Social Action. I could see our collaboration with NWP was beginning to create new knowledge. Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives (a concept reintroduced to us at an NWP workshop) talks of synthesis as "the ability to put parts together to form a new whole," but this was not a sufficient description of the creation of new knowledge that was happening through the training seminars. The new knowledge of social action was being synthesized with existing knowledge of teaching and learning, then this synthesized knowledge was applied, there was an evaluation of what happened, and then the review and discussion—all of which had created new theory and, therefore, new practice of social action.

As I examined what was unfolding before me, I first considered the teachers' responses to social action theory, then looked at how they put social action into practice, and finally examined how thinking about how social action practice, and indeed my own practice, had developed as a result of the dialogue with teachers.

The Impact of Social Action Training

The teachers, I noted, were quick to see both the links between social action and classroom practice and the potential for adapting social action exercises to their classroom work. At the same time, the training pushed them to think even more creatively, considering their class as a group, placing emphasis on the students as the decision makers, freeing teachers from being the fixers, providers, and rescuers. Typical comments included:

Social action pushed me to ask why these circumstances occur.

The progression of modelled activities created a framework for me to think of all kinds of personal, class, and community applications and implications.

Everything we did this week pertains to issues in our project, my school, and my classroom.

. . . we have come away enriched with new tools and renewed commitment to deepen our social justice work.

The importance of trusting the process, gaining tools that help identify deep issues and techniques to problem solve, and building relationships across sites were invaluable. Learning to respect the individual's right to . . . name and solve [his own problem] is an important paradigm shift for me.

The social action principles had given teachers a framework for thinking about educational practice and techniques of planning meetings and lessons. In workshops and informal discussion with teachers, they told us they had found many ways to use social action principles both inside and outside the classroom. One exercise that many of them introduced into their teaching straight away was an opening exercise used in the institutes to help groups agree on a common purpose and determine acceptable/unacceptable language for the course of their work. Others talked of how their classrooms began running more smoothly when they gave students choices; still others examined the realization that social action is not about providing but, rather, about helping groups of people find their own solutions and become agents of change for themselves.

"I used to think I needed to solve all the problems in the class," one first grade teacher remarked, "but I was never very successful at this. I now know [that the students] have to be involved in sorting things out for themselves. They discuss how to sort things out and try things themselves." This teacher has since instituted a class community meeting each morning to identify issues the class is facing. The problems are the problems of six-year-olds, such as "What's a good name for a new puppy?" or "Where have all the pencils gone?" As a result of these meetings and the process the children engage in, the teacher is noticing an increase in the students' verbal skills as well as their problem-solving and negotiating skills, all of which is reflected in a greater use of language in their journals.

Another elementary teacher talked of how her students were upset when their free choice of books from the school library was curtailed. When they complained to her, she recognized this as an opportunity for her class to use the social action process. Together they considered the what, why, and how stages of the process and then took action by writing to the principal, explaining how they felt and why they preferred free choice of books. Eventually, after further discussion, the library returned to a policy of free choice for borrowing books.

Another teacher told me of introducing social action to her fourth grade class of reluctant learners. She initiated the social action process by first having the students move their chairs into a circle rather than in rows before her. She then asked them to identify the what—the problems and issues they faced. In response, they offered many: "People don't listen to us," "We never make any choices," "People tell us what to do," and "Lessons are not interesting." Full of ideas, the students went on to explore why. They had thorough discussions of why things were a problem and what caused them. Then the class moved on to consider the how and action steps. Through this process, the young people became involved in planning lessons and setting assignments, and soon the teacher noted an increase in assignments completed. She reported an 80 percent return on assignments compared with 40–50 percent previously.

The NWP teachers, I noted, talked like social action workers, discussing ideas such as the one that defines learning as what you take with you, the need to have faith in your students, that each student is a valuable contributor, the need to turn ownership of learning over to students. They talked of needing to take an inquiry stance—asking questions and constantly rethinking one's professional identity. Much of this was common ground for these teachers before they were introduced to the social action principles and process. But, as they told us, social action had pushed their thinking. Through it, they recognized that participation is not an end in itself and that it is important that students are engaged in real action rather than classroom simulations.

Taking these ideas to another level, one teacher was guiding a group of students working toward running their own youth center. She was clear that while the young people are definitely doing social action, all their work relates to the curriculum and more conventional school targets. At a presentation of her work, she posed the question "Where does this fit with the curriculum?" and produced a poster showing how the students' work related to English (letter writing, fundraising forms, note taking), social studies (government structures, social issues, history), math (problem solving, budgets, cost and profits, market research), research (internet searches, newspaper records, phone book), and visual arts (posters, publicity, presentations).

The NWP has supported the development of social action by teachers who have attended the institutes through a program of minigrants. The grants have helped teachers explore a wide range of ideas for how and where they want to explore the development of social action in their work, including such areas as political literature; basic literacy; after school clubs; work with young homeless people; environmental justice; the integration of social action into all classroom teaching; civic leadership; citizenship; young people's service learning; helping young people have a voice in their families, schools, and communities; bilingual parents, and inservice training for established teachers and preservice teachers.

In one project developed as a result of the minigrants, two teachers developed a collaborative ecological project between a high school and a middle school. The project had at-risk high school students working with gifted middle school students making bat boxes for a local park. The array of such projects, which will be evaluated later this year, will certainly make a contribution to an understanding of what social action can look like in a school environment—as well as what it can do for students.

Collaboration Changes Practice and Perception

The CSA/NWP collaboration led not only to the development of CSA's social action work but also to my own personal and professional development; the journeys were closely linked. While the training events enriched the social action process and brought much to us as trainers, they also, of course, contributed to my thinking about education, learning, and my place within this framework.

As a result of the discussions with the NWP teachers, we at CSA refined our theory and practice. For example, because of a reader-response exercise we did with institute participants, we reworded our six principles. The discussion that took place during the exercise made us realize that by changing wording, we could deepen and clarify the meaning of the principles.

As noted above, the social action process emphasizes the exploration of why problems exist. For many years we used an exercise called "But why?" to encourage the analysis of problem situations. Originally we used the "But why?" exercise—as outlined in Training for Transformation (Hope 1984)—as a linear process. Over the years, however, groups found this too constraining. The teachers' challenging questions and their active struggle to understand the purpose and potential of the exercise encouraged us to see that in fact we were trying to do two things at once—and that it would be better to separate them out.

The essential purpose of the exercise remains the same: to promote analysis of issues by the continual asking of the question "But why?" But now we use this exercise as a two-stage exploration of why problems exist. In the first stage we construct a complex web of what happens if we do not address the problem—the consequences. The second stage is a linear process in which people examine one of the consequences from the web, for example drug use. The following exemplifies how this works:

"Drug use is a problem, but why?"

"Young people may get addicted."

"Young people being addicted is a problem, but why?"

`They may steal to be able to buy drugs."

"Young people stealing is a problem, but why?"

And so on until a comprehensive analysis of the problem has been created. The next stage is to look for a point where people can intervene and start tackling the issue.

So the collaboration between the NWP and Centre for Social Action has led to a number of transformations, both for the two organizations and, personally, for me. I understand now that NWP teachers and social action workers (including me) believe the process of learning is every bit as important as the outcomes—it is the ability to learn that matters, not the knowledge itself. For this view of learning to take hold, the relationship between teachers and students needs to change; teachers cannot be seen as the fount of all knowledge. To quote Freire: "Through dialogue, the teacher of the students and the students of the teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student and student-teacher. This relationship is based upon mutual learning where the teacher recognises that he learns from the students just as much as they learn from him, both growing as part of this process." This is what I had always tried to do through my social action work, this is what the teachers we have worked with are trying to do, and this is most definitely how we at the Centre for Social Action see our relationship with the NWP. We both learn and grow from the interaction.

The writing of this piece, I have come to realize, was the final step in my coming to terms with what I was learning—that social action is an educative process. To accept that, however, meant that I also had to accept myself as an educator—and for years that was a much greater obstacle. But writing this article was also the final step in that personal journey, and I have taken that step. I now recognize that I am an educator; I am comfortable with that identity. Fortunately the journey is not over; with collaborations like that we have experienced with NWP, I have much learning ahead, and I look forward to continuing that journey as an educator.

Endnote

State schools in England are managed by a board of governors. The governors are lay people drawn from the parents, the local community, and interested parties. Whilst the day-to-day running of the school is the responsibility of the headteacher, the governors are responsible for the broad direction of the school, setting policy, and monitoring performance.

References

Boulton, I. 2001. "Social Action Workshops Inspire Teachers." The Voice (6) 4.

Holt, J. 1970. The Underachieving School. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Hope, A. and S. Timmel. 1984. Training for Transformation: A Handbook for Community Workers Vol 1 (reprinted 1999). London: Intermediate Technology Publications.

Illich, I. 1999. Deschooling Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Illich, I. 1973. After Deschooling, What? London: Writers and Readers Publishing, Inc.

O'Neil, N. 1997. "The Bierley Youth Action Project – A Journey Through the Joys, Sorrows, Celebrations, Learning, Achievements and Philosophy of a Young People's Social Action Project in Bradford." Bradford Metropolitan Council.

Overley, N. 2001. "Undrowning—A Rediscovery of the Power of Student Voice." The Voice (6) 1.

Peterson, A. 2002. "Youth Dreamers Put Social Action Principles to Work." The Voice (7) 2.

Peterson, A., Soloman, A., and B. Young. 2000. "CSA Offers Teachers Powerful Tools." The Voice (5) 5.

Solomon, A. 2001. "Social Action Summer Institutes Prompt Minigrant Proposals." The Voice (6) 5.

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