AERA: Elevating Student Agency to Promote Equity and Authenticity in Student-Led Projects
8:00 AM - 9:30 AM PDT on Monday, April 25
Chair: David Kidd, Harvard University Graduate School of Education
Discussant: Vanessa Svihla, University of New Mexico
Authors: Alison Boardman, University of Colorado - Boulder; Emily Miller, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Chaebong Nam, Harvard University; Gavin Tierney, California State University - Fullerton; Benjamin Walsh, University of Colorado - Boulder
Researchers and educators informed by sociocultural theories continue to pursue pedagogies that re-imagine students as active learners and co-constructors of disciplines of study. Paradigm shifts are seldom simple, and efforts to prioritize student agency may push students and teachers into unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable roles. As educators work to expand powerful, student-centered pedagogies like project-based learning (PjBL) into more classrooms and disciplines, it is critical to understand the challenges these approaches may pose for all learners, but especially those often marginalized or traditionally underserved by schools. The five papers in this symposium address these challenges directly from different angles, together revealing a multi-dimensional picture of the role of student agency in project-based learning in language arts, science, and civics classrooms.
