I have been interested in studying the practices by which young people learn
about politics. I think this is an important area of study because fewer and
fewer young people know how to follow politics and fewer want to
participate. Yeah, they're volunteering more and they like environmental
and animal rights causes, but this is just a shred of the big picture, and
it's not clear to me that participation in such causes leads to political
participation -- although maybe it does... Anyway, it has been difficult to
design a sociocultural study because much of the work in this area
(political cognition, political socialization) comes from a cognitivist or
Piagetian perspective. My advisor is not an expert in sociocultural
studies, but she's turning down my various study ideas because they do not
seem sociocultural enough to her, but merely "traditional developmentalist."
I'm convinced that sociocultural theory is the right framework for the
political subject domain and also convinced that the theory offers something
powerful to political pedagogy that cognitivism and constructivism lack.
Specifically, I'm interested in describing the PROCESSES and PRACTICES and
CULTURAL TOOL USES that lead to effective, engaged, highly participatory
political understandings. And I want my study to say something that can be
generalized to everyday classrooms and schools so that this learning is
accessible to the broadest number of students possible.
The question is: What to study and where to begin? I've thought about
apprenticeship type studies that would examine how political novices enter
into formal political practice, but generalizability would be a problem
because these politically-motivated kids self-select into political
activities. I've thought about looking at how young people of different ages
use the cultural tools of political narratives, but this idea seems too
traditionally developmentalist. This type of study would probably wind up
saying that the youngest people get confused by political term, that they
enjoy talking about such political terms and manipulating them when they're
intermediate, and that they have "internalized" such political terms when
they're adult, and I might also be able to say something about the practices
used to evidence such development. I've also thought about comparing
novices and post-novices in different political activity settings, and
comparing their goals, actions and operations (Leont'ev) while engaged in
some political task. I've also thought about looking at how young people
use political tactics in informal play situations and then studying how
those same young people use those understandings (and develop them) in
formal civic, political learning settings (spontaneous to scientific
learning).
None of these ideas seems to be exciting to anyone in my research group
(only one other is a socioculturalist), and there's considerable doubt about
whether any of these ideas is truly "sociocultural." I'm starting to feel
discouraged. As a last ditch effort, my advisor has suggested that I find
four or five sociocultural studies (dissertation length) in ANY SUBJECT
DOMAIN and see if I can use them as models for how to design a study into
children's political learning.
This is where I could use the group's help. Can anyone out there point me to
studies that are dissertation length (no epics, please), that you would
consider the best examples of true sociocultural studies, that is, where
theory and methodology are richly entwined, and that might offer a nice road
map for my dissertation?
And of course, if anyone sees any hope in any of the above ideas, and has
some bright ideas for developing them, please let me know.
Thanks.
Louise