Lessons That Last: Former Youth Organizers’ Reflections on What and How They Learned

Abstract

This study examines the learning outcomes and learning environment of a youth organizing program that has been effective in promoting individual as well as social change. 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 adulthood and the factors they believe facilitated this lasting learning. Results show that the learning outcomes and the features of the learning environment that the participants identify reflect key tenets of Freirean critical pedagogy. As young adults, the participants indicate that they continue to draw on the critical thinking, introspection, communication, and interpersonal skills they developed as youth organizers, and they highlight the value of relevant content, an open atmosphere for discussion and debate, and peer education in promoting such durable learning. The relevance of critical pedagogy to the learning sciences is discussed.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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

Notes

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