ABS331 - Stories of youth persistence: How relationships sustain students’ participation in education through intrapersonal, interpersonal and community level engagement

How do relationships support students’ on-going generative and joyful participation in school and education? We draw on data generated by two non-profit organizations who collaborated to listen for and amplify youth’s voices in New Mexico in the US, through a community-based project called “Stories of Learning.” In our analysis, we seek to understand how these stories are explained in, and contribute to, current theoretical frameworks (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Stanton-Salazar, 2011; Vygotsky, 1978). To help us with this analysis we draw from and weave understanding with, Rogoff’s (1996) three planes of analysis, the personal, interpersonal and community.  Students in this study identify sources of emotional and academic supports that sustain their participation in school.  Our analysis focuses on describing how adults can and do empower students, and how students experience, accept and choose to live out that empowerment.  Thus, the story we tell is how relationships support students’ on-going and productive participation in school, in obtaining an education, and beyond. Our hypothesis is that Rogoff’s three planes are present in interactions that sustain students’ reported participation in schools.  Thus, in order to develop and sustain caring relationships, teachers/adults need to attend to these three levels, -- i.e. they need to see the student based on where he or she is now (personal), respond responsively and responsibly to where the student is and where he or she may grow (interpersonal), while leveraging current and future possibilities to which students have access inside and outside of school (community).