In this study I explored the research questions, how do students understand membership in a community and the responsibilities of our various locations and what pedagogical rationales and practices move students from awareness of social injustice towards acting to transform the societal structures that reinforce injustice? This project engaged in a critical and classroom action research using ethnographic tools with a class of Grade 7 students from a Vancouver elementary school. The purpose was to create spaces in curriculum for student initiated social justice oriented actions while testing a pedagogy founded in student inquiry, criticality and praxis. This was an experiment in applying critical discourse to instructional design. While teaching about social justice issues, the teacher- researcher sought to employ the principles of social justice in the pedagogy as well as the methodology of this study. The methodology sought to be consistent with the principles of social justice through attempting to create a collaborative critical research cohort with students through using data collection to foster a dialogic relationship between teacher- researcher and students. The data collection was in the forms of teacher and student generated fieldnotes, a communal research log, photography, questionnaires, interviews and written reflections. The findings from this research were analyzed through the themes of teacher tensions, constructs of student and teachers, and resistance. The analysis of the data provided opportunities for identifying power dynamics within the concepts being critiqued, exploring the makings of the cognitive unconscious and entering into a dialogic relationship with students about official and hidden curricula. Conclusions drawn from this research included that the experiment of teaching and researching for social justice in a socially just manner requires not only a grounding in theory and an awareness of the normative discourse, but an investigation of and critical reflection on those social constructions of teacher and student that are deeply embedded in the collective cognitive unconscious of the classroom. Teacher tensions and student resistance are productive as they provoke awareness of these constructions and their effects on the classroom.

In this study I explored the research questions, how do students understand membership in a community and the responsibilities of our various locations and what pedagogical rationales and practices move students from awareness of social injustice towards acting to transform the societal structures that reinforce injustice? This project engaged in a critical and classroom action research using ethnographic tools with a class of Grade 7 students from a Vancouver elementary school. The purpose was to create spaces in curriculum for student initiated social justice oriented actions while testing a pedagogy founded in student inquiry, criticality and praxis. This was an experiment in applying critical discourse to instructional design. While teaching about social justice issues, the teacher- researcher sought to employ the principles of social justice in the pedagogy as well as the methodology of this study. The methodology sought to be consistent with the principles of social justice through attempting to create a collaborative critical research cohort with students through using data collection to foster a dialogic relationship between teacher- researcher and students. The data collection was in the forms of teacher and student generated fieldnotes, a communal research log, photography, questionnaires, interviews and written reflections. The findings from this research were analyzed through the themes of teacher tensions, constructs of student and teachers, and resistance. The analysis of the data provided opportunities for identifying power dynamics within the concepts being critiqued, exploring the makings of the cognitive unconscious and entering into a dialogic relationship with students about official and hidden curricula. Conclusions drawn from this research included that the experiment of teaching and researching for social justice in a socially just manner requires not only a grounding in theory and an awareness of the normative discourse, but an investigation of and critical reflection on those social constructions of teacher and student that are deeply embedded in the collective cognitive unconscious of the classroom. Teacher tensions and student resistance are productive as they provoke awareness of these constructions and their effects on the classroom.

In this study I explored the research questions, how do students understand membership in a community and the responsibilities of our various locations and what pedagogical rationales and practices move students from awareness of social injustice towards acting to transform the societal structures that reinforce injustice? This project engaged in a critical and classroom action research using ethnographic tools with a class of Grade 7 students from a Vancouver elementary school. The purpose was to create spaces in curriculum for student initiated social justice oriented actions while testing a pedagogy founded in student inquiry, criticality and praxis. This was an experiment in applying critical discourse to instructional design. While teaching about social justice issues, the teacher- researcher sought to employ the principles of social justice in the pedagogy as well as the methodology of this study. The methodology sought to be consistent with the principles of social justice through attempting to create a collaborative critical research cohort with students through using data collection to foster a dialogic relationship between teacher- researcher and students. The data collection was in the forms of teacher and student generated fieldnotes, a communal research log, photography, questionnaires, interviews and written reflections. The findings from this research were analyzed through the themes of teacher tensions, constructs of student and teachers, and resistance. The analysis of the data provided opportunities for identifying power dynamics within the concepts being critiqued, exploring the makings of the cognitive unconscious and entering into a dialogic relationship with students about official and hidden curricula. Conclusions drawn from this research included that the experiment of teaching and researching for social justice in a socially just manner requires not only a grounding in theory and an awareness of the normative discourse, but an investigation of and critical reflection on those social constructions of teacher and student that are deeply embedded in the collective cognitive unconscious of the classroom. Teacher tensions and student resistance are productive as they provoke awareness of these constructions and their effects on the classroom. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

This research project uses the 2010/11 student protests in the UK as a case study to understand why certain individuals mobilise for forms of political participation and activism and why others do not. The student protests are ideal as a case study of participation and non-participation for a number of reasons. The UK Government’s proposal to treble the cap tuition fees for students in England represented an issue of widespread grievance for the student population, a grievance which was compounded for many by the Liberal Democrats’ decision to u-turn on its 2010 election campaign pledge. The student response featured large-scale regional and national demonstrations, as well as the formation of a network of simultaneous campus occupations across the UK, arguably presenting a greater scale and diversity of protest than had been seen for a generation. Despite these multiple participatory opportunities, however, student participation did not come close to matching the scale of opposition to trebled fees and university funding cuts as articulated in surveys. This raises fundamental questions about the social and political differences between participants and non-participants. Using original survey data of students from 22 UK universities, and 56 in-depth interviews with students from 6 universities, this research examines social and political patterns and relations between high, medium and low-cost/risk participants, and non-participants. Taking into account the idea of the university campus as a network of actors, the research posits that networks may preclude as well as facilitate participation. The research studies in detail the formation and maintenance of student activism networks – including their collective identifications and dis-identifications. Conversely, the study also looks at the social networks of non-participants, and how these may help to socially produce and sustain non-participation at an agency level. Finally, the research considers whether the protests against fees and cuts should be seen as a unified movement, and whether student attitudes taken together reveal a broadly-identifiable ‘participatory ideal’.

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This thesis presents an analysis of the political discourse and strategies of the MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi-Nationalist Movement Party) between 1965 and 1980. It particularly focuses on the role of young militants in the development of the nationalist movement in Turkey during this period. The 1960s and 1970s in Turkey saw military coups, street clashes, violence perpetrated by university students, and the rapid proliferation of civil organizations. Yet this turbulent period in modern Turkish history has received no systematic historical investigation. The MHP was one of the principal actors of this period. The study argues that the change in the profile of the CKMP-MHP leadership and the recruitment of young nationalist students, who became increasingly involved in physical confrontations with the socialists, had multiple effects on nationalist discourse and strategies. Retired soldiers involved in the 27 May 1960 military coup sought to develop a nationalist party based on secular-Kemalist principles, but those people who held conservative views of nationalism started to join the CKMP-MHP. The anti-Republican discourse of this current of thought involved the re-appropriation of Ottoman history and culture and certain religious themes into nationalist discourse. This ideological orientation appealed to most of young nationalists organized around the ülkü ocakları. However, the thesis demonstrates that there were various channels of ideological indoctrination in the nationalist movement, a diversity of positions that sometimes stirred conflicts among the nationalists themselves. The question of political strategy involved paradoxical aspects as well. Young nationalists were willing to take on the mission of becoming the future elites of the country yet were simultaneously involved in violent confrontations with socialists. Most of the party leadership, on the other hand, was preoccupied with parliamentarian goals and the long-term administrative success of nationalist activists in the state apparatus. The thesis shows that viewing the party activities and paramilitary operations in the same framework gave rise to serious tensions within the nationalist movement. The findings of this study also shed light on the institutional and ideological evolution of the nationalist movement after 1980.

Much of the extant higher education literature examining student activism and social movements in college is limited by both chronological time and physical space. In addition, very little is known about the ways in which technology generally and social media specifically are embraced in contemporary student organizing practices. Accordingly, my multi-sited ethnographic study focuses on the Dream Defenders, a Florida-based, racially and ethnically-diverse multi-campus social movement organization "developing the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise [their] independent, collective power; building alternative systems; and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress [their]communities" (Dream Defenders, 2014). More specifically, my study is intended to contemporize research on student activism in college by using robust, real-time ethnographic data to examine off-campus organizing undertaken by Dream Defenders' organization and their use of new and social media technologies. Drawing from and modifying resource dependency/resource mobilization perspectives and new social movement theories, I conceptualize the interactive use of the aforementioned technologies as mobilizing structures and in the construction movement frames–parts of the social movement repertoire (Tilly, 2004) of contemporary student organizers. The findings from my study indicate the use of alternative and activist new media in contemporary student organizing is part of a larger, dynamic interactive process of traditional organizing practices to include four primary domains: occupation and agitation, power building, political participation, and civic demonstration. More specifically, findings further indicate the use of 1) mediated mobilization, and 2) culture jamming (Lievrouw, 2011) as alternative and activist new media practices within the Dream Defenders' social movement repertoire. The former harnesses the power of social media to leverage new and existing networks of college student organizers in on-the-ground mobilization. The latter, however, utilizes the production of digital art for purposes of social and political critique, which also serve as a diagnostic frame by which contemporary student organizers are able to identify problems/issues of concern and attribute of blame to key political targets. Overall, my study makes scholarly contributions to the empirical, theoretical/conceptual, and methodological domains of higher education research generally and student activism scholarship in particular. First, the findings from my study challenge higher education scholars to consider the importance of moving beyond campus contexts to investigate students' lives, which are increasingly occurring off- and away from campus. Second, my findings expand understandings of the ways in which contemporary college students relate to technology and social media beyond social uses, entertainment purposes, and utility for the delivery of instructional content to include harnessing alternative and activist new media for creating social change. Lastly, my findings strongly counter the prevailing narrative regarding millennials' lack of awareness of their history. Through drawing from communities of memory, invoking traditions of non-violent civil disobedience, and leveraging relationships with historical civil rights icons to increase legitimacy, contemporary student organizers draw upon history as a non-material resource as part of their social movement repertoire.

Beginning in October 2015, student protests erupted at many U.S. colleges and universities. This wave of demonstrations prompted an ongoing national debate over the following question: what caused this activism? Leveraging existing theoretical explanations, this paper attempts to answer this question through an empirical study of the 73 most prominent college protests from October 2015 to April 2016. I use an original data set with information collected from U.S. News and World Report to determine what factors at these 73 schools were most predictive of the protests. My findings strongly suggest that the probability of a protest increases at larger, more selective institutions. I also find evidence against the dominant argument that the marginalization of minority students exclusively caused this activism. Using my empirical results, this paper presents a new theoretical explanation for the 2015-2016 protests. I argue that racial tensions sparked the first demonstration. However, as the protests spread to other campuses, they were driven less by racial grievances and more by a pervasive culture of political correctness. This paper concludes by applying this new theoretical framework to the budding wave of 2017 protests.

Master of Arts / Department of Anthropology, Sociology, and Social Work / Robert Schaeffer / This thesis examines Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (M.E.Ch.A), one of the oldest organizations of the Chicano movement. History shows that M.E.Ch.A has been able to reflect on itself and change accordingly; thus, it has been able to stay alive due to internal debates from the 1960s to the 1990s. In the 1960s, male, heterosexual Mexicans dominated the Chicano movement. In the 1980s, Xicanas challenged them to look past their privileges into more intersectional, inclusive identities. My research question is: in 2013, how do Californian MEChistAs view themselves, their political consciousness, and their social justice work? MEChistAs view themselves as an inclusive, diverse, and progressive organization. Chican@/Xican@ is a political identity and ideology that includes women, queers, and non-Mexicans. Women and queers took leadership of the organization, which shows that the revised historical documents made a difference. However, M.E.Ch.A continues a Mexican-centric organization that isolates Central Americans, South Americans, and Afro-Latin@s. M.E.Ch.A has changed since the 1960s in many ways, but the work continues. M.E.Ch.A still needs to address several internal debates as an organization, such as: Aztlán’s meanings, community versus campus organizing, generational gaps, and working with social organizations. Despite these debates, M.E.Ch.A has survived. Using 22 in-depth interviews with contemporary MEChistAs in California from 10 different universities, I examined the identities and politics of M.E.Ch.A activists. I enact Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill Collin’s standpoint theory to guide the research and apply third world feminism and ideology/utopia theories to analyze the ideas and concepts of the MEChistAs.

This dissertation examines student radicalism in Tennessee between Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) and the national backlash against the Kent State University shootings in Kent, Ohio in May 1970. As the first statewide study of student activism, and one of the few examinations of southern student activism, it broadens the understanding of New Left student radicalism from its traditionally defined hotbeds in the Northeast and the West Coast. It also argues for a consideration of student radicalism that incorporates white and black accounts, assessing issues surrounding civil rights, labour, the renegotiation of student roles on campus, and Vietnam on black and formerly all-white campuses. Three main arguments drive this dissertation. First, the notion of the New Left inhabiting only a brief moment in time, rising and falling in the 1960s—years of hope, days of rage, in Todd Gitlin’s influential telling—is problematic in the context of Tennessee. The location of Highlander Folk School in Tennessee created a strong connection to Old Left labour activism for the state’s New Left. Student movements both developed more slowly in Tennessee and fractured more slowly. My second argument is that forms of radicalism in Tennessee were distinctly southern. The region’s political order was more stifling than its counterpart in the North, and could easily turn more deadly. Students radicals in the South grasped this difference. Any left in the South had to address issues of race, but, in light of the danger, had to do so gingerly. Thirdly, race mattered a great deal to southern leftists, black and white, at first bringing them together and later driving them apart. Both black and white students viewed attempts to establish personal autonomy within campus and community organising as centrally important to their activities. Black and white students understood personal autonomy in a broad sense, conceptualised of as ‘student power’: it covered immediate concerns over universities’ assumption of parental power over students, as well as apparent infringements of civil rights and civil liberties. This dissertation reconstructs this pursuit of student power, both within campuses and beyond, and details the growing rift between black and white student interests.