Theorizing Learning in the Context of Social Movements.

Studying learning in social movements is important for Learning Sciences researchers because it can help us (a) understand how learning occurs at and affects multiple levels of historical, cultural, and social activities and (b) how marginalized communities participate in framing problems and their solutions. The four papers in this symposium present empirical research from diverse international movements, including the local foods movement in Colorado, youth organizing for educational equity in South Africa, school food reform in Spain, and nationalism in Libya and Italy. Each of the papers address how local actors exercise agency in relation to complex, dynamic, contested social movements. Implications discuss how social movements collectively organize just social futures and the role that learning scientists can play in lending analytic precision to these processes. General Introduction Learning scientists, particularly those working from situated or sociocultural perspectives, have argued for several decades that research on learning must attend to the ways that learning environments are mediated by culture and history. Classic learning sciences texts, including Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (1999), and Sawyer (2006), include sections devoted to explaining how cultural practices outside of school influence learners’ experiences in school and how classroom and school contexts shape opportunities to learn. We worry, however, that research on learning too often foregrounds dynamic learning trajectories against a presumed stable or static context. We take the position, consistent with social practice theory, that just as individual learners may be changing and growing, so too are cultural practices. Such practices are challenging to study, however, because the pace at which they change is typically much slower than microgenetic or even ontogenetic change (Rogoff, 2003; Wortham, 2005). Despite the challenge, we need to figure out ways to study learning as a form of cultural or social organizing aimed at developing new social futures (Penuel & O’Connor, 2010). Social movements provide a particularly helpful example of this. Social movements are valuable sites for investigating processes of learning and becoming because as part of them, groups of people are explicitly attempting to change and challenge the structures that shape their actions and those of their communities (Holland, Fox, & Daro, 2008). Studying social movements could be advantageous for Learning Sciences researchers because it can help us understand (a) how learning occurs at and affects multiple levels of historical, cultural, and social activities and (b) the greater inclusion of marginalized communities in framing problems and their solutions. We frame our research within a social practices perspective that argues for the importance of studying the organizing processes involved in learning and social change (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). A key assumption of this perspective is that researchers of learning should attend to the active and often contentious work of organizing people, things, and ideas to create access to valued social futures (Hall, Wieckert, & Wright, 2010; Nespor, 2004). Building on this perspective, Penuel and O’Connor (2010) have argued that scholars interested in learning should focus on activist projects, as these involve not only the purposeful organizing of new forms of practice and knowledge, but also of linkages between prior forms of practice and knowledge across settings. The “historically new forms of activity” that emerge from these projects often challenge those developed within and rewarded by dominant social groups, and expand opportunities for action, especially among non-dominant communities (Engeström, 1987; Gutierrez, 2008). In this symposium, we bring together four research studies that examine the relationship between dynamic societal change and individual learning "with the goal of supporting new forms of learning": ● Jurow, Teeters, Shea, and Severance examine learning and social change in the local food justice movement in the western United States. ICLS 2014 Proceedings 1302 © ISLS ● Torralba and Guidalli study examines the eating experiences of children in Spanish schools as forms of activism against a reductionist school food reform. ● Kirshner, Dutilly, and Griffin-EL investigate how an educational equity movement in South Africa coordinates local youth participation with national strategy. ● El Taraboulsi studies the structures that facilitate and impede the development of citizenship in the context of nation building in Libya. In an increasingly interconnected world, our studies of learning and becoming must account for localglobal interactions. Each project highlights the agency of people as they are mobilized by and create new forms of practice through social movements. Each site under study has a unique history, patterns of immigration, geographic organization, and economic development, which is critical to how each of the researchers conducted their analyses. The purpose of our symposium is to draw out common issues shaping learning and becoming as people engage in re-assembling scales of practice and their relations to each other. In his role as discussant, Rogers Hall (Vanderbilt University), will use his expertise in studying learning across multiple scales in the context of shifting cultural practices at work, in schools, and communities to provide critical commentary and raise implications for the learning sciences. Some of the questions that we hope our cross-context and crossmethodological studies raise include: ● In communities facing social upheaval and social injustices, how do people organize new ways of participating in civic society? ● What methodological tools and insights could learning scientists productively employ for examining learning across local and global contexts? ● What are some of the tensions for researchers studying activist projects? Expansive Learning in the Urban Food Justice Movement A. Susan Jurow, Leah Teeters, Molly Shea, and Samuel Severance This paper examines social processes of learning in the local food justice movement. Our project is situated within collective efforts of private, non-profit, and governmental organizations to transform how food is produced, distributed, and consumed in the western United States. Many of these organizations focus on increasing food access for the most vulnerable populations in the state where we conducted the research; some center on food itself as a core component of promoting community health, while others use food as a means of working for social justice. As we have found through our ethnographic and participatory research, this movement has provided a means for communities to resist, transform, and learn in the “tight circumstances” in which they live (McDermott, 2010). Our findings come from a two-year, ongoing study of community organizing led by a non-profit organization working closely with residents in a largely Mexican immigrant community. The neighborhood has been designated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a food desert because there are a large number of people living in poverty with limited access to healthy foods (USDA, 2012). The non-profit has the dual aim of empowering residents and improving food access. It uses an approach that relies on promotoras, i.e., residents hired to facilitate links between the non-profit and the community. The promotora model originated as a Latin American public health strategy; it was developed to help institutions like hospitals capitalize on the shared cultural practices and language backgrounds between promotoras and residents to facilitate desired health goals (Elder, Ayala, Parra-Medina & Talavera, 2009). In the focal neighborhood, promotoras act as community connectors between the non-profit and the community. A central part of the promotoras’ work involves teaching residents to grow their own backyard gardens, which can provide them with fresh, organically grown food. The backyard garden program has created new connections between people, practices, and values and has expanded possibilities for learning and action (Engeström & Sannino, 2010). Our first finding reveals that through their compassionate and sustained engagement with community members, promotoras have developed a critical perspective on the needs of residents, the inequities facing their community, and a sense of responsibility as emerging civic leaders. Our second finding documents how the promotoras’ changing sense of who they are becoming has affected their actions in the community. Their initial aim of growing gardens has grown to include a desire to challenge inequitable relations of power through reorganizing residents' access to social, educational, and economic resources. In collaboration with the non-profit leadership and residents, promotoras are now deeply engaged in developing a community-owned food cooperative and a commercial and educational kitchen. Our study underscores the need to develop ways of theorizing learning as it is situated in intricately tangled networks of practice. Promotora learning, for example, took shape in relation to historical patterns of immigration, the uneven development of educational and health resources in the city, and changing conceptions of food production and community. To create greater equity within and across these networks of practice, we need to examine efforts that aim not only to reveal their tensions, but also strive to transform them (Avis, 2007). Radical social movements like the local food justice movement provide a powerful avenue for studying social change and its implications for learning, becoming, and organizing a just and sustainable world. ICLS 2014 Proceedings 1303 © ISLS Examining Children’s School Eating Practices as Processes of Learning to Envision Alternative Forms of Social Participation: Im