Since the beginning of the movement to end racial segregation in the 1950s young people have increasingly been at the front of rallies, marches, and activism around the world. Children and youth organize, research, educate, analyze, and advocate for change around the world through local, national, and international movements. While this action is powerful and often effective, there has been one component that is usually missing: the intentional learning.

What does that look like? For several years the Olympia, Washington-based Freechild Project has been researching youth-led activism in several areas, including environmental activism. Using this research and our own experiences in activism, we have developed an exciting new model for youth engagement in social change work called "Activist Learning."

We define Activist Learning with young people as

An intentional strategy for creating knowledge characterized by taking action to realize just relationships that transform unequal power structures in our personal, social, political, environmental, spiritual, and economic lives.

Activist Learning is a process that

• develops communities as places that promote radical democracy, where diverse, consensus-based, non-hierarchical and non-discriminatory learning takes place.

• fosters critical analysis of institutions and social structures, takes responsive action to promote justice and equity, teaches the history of social movements.

• encourages learning to cross disciplines, issues, cultures and communities in order to foster knowledge creation, challenge and exploration.

• honors and accentuates life-long learning that engages learners through community-based, innovative and effective pedagogy.

• uses technology and media as liberatory tools to support community needs.

Elements of Activist Learning include shared assumptions and purposes; negotiated co-learning goals agreed upon among activists; common action and learning ("praxis"); continual critical reflection, and; emphasis on co-learner/community voice.

Activist Learning can be a youth-directed, youth-only activity that encourages self-direction and self-education through community activism. Activist Learning with young people can also happen in partnership with adult allies, although in this situation the emphasis should always be on youth-led action, with opportunities for adult-shared learning facilitation optional.

Why Activist Learning?

Activist Learning challenges the idea that educators can deposit knowledge into the empty minds of students by engaging co-learners as the co-creators of knowledge. It engages young people and educators as co-facilitators of learning, encouraging young people to become knowledge creators and adults to become allies. Activist Learning empowers young activist/learners to articulate themselves in a way that is relevant to their lives and their roles as agents of change. Finally, and most importantly to our work, it moves activist/learners from acts of charity and sympathy towards solidarity and allyship.

Lessons Learned

Recent studies have shown that Activist Learning can allow activist/learners to: Prioritize ethics and a work towards social justice; Challenge the ways schools perpetuate power structures in our society; Support teachers in reflecting on their complicity in this perpetuation; Show students that knowledge is socially constructed - and is not the 'truth'; Assist students in deconstructing knowledge to see how and why it is that way and whose purposes it serves, teaching them to "read the world differently" and "resist the abuse of power and privilege" that abounds (Henry Giroux, 1991, p. 49); "Create new forms of knowledge through ... breaking down disciplinary boundaries and creating new spaces where knowledge can be produced" (Henry Giroux, 1991, p. 50) [From Con/testing Learning Models by Gaell Hildebrand (1999).]
 

Where can I Learn More?

While taking action is powerful, learning from it is even more important. There are millions of people who are working to save the environment and change the world everyday - shouldn't you make your effort today?

Sources of Activist Learning Theory