A room of one’s own

The consolidated research group Esbrina from the University of Barcelona has been working in educational environments for many years. The group has always maintained that educational research should be conducted with people (students, teachers, educators) and not about them. This premise informed our Critical ChangeLab first implementation and led us to design a lab open enough for young people to have a voice and make significant decisions on their own, such as choosing the topic to work on and what the result should be. 
 

Fostering student’s reflectivity

The Critical ChangeLab engaged students in critical reflection and collaborative problem-solving to address and rethink everyday democracy and intervene in their environment, producing small changes that would still significantly affect them. To achieve this, we used both reflective methods — such as speculative scenarios, timelines, meta-reflective discussions, and guided visualizations — and maker methods like performative still lives, collaborative murals and maps, and designing prototypes with craft and recycled materials to ultimately formalize the final product.  

Working with a high-complexity school    

Our first PAR cycle was implemented in a secondary public school on the outskirts of Barcelona. The school is classified by the Education Department of the Catalan Government as a high-complexity school. This classification indicates that the school hosts a big percentage of students in vulnerable situations. Particularly, we have been collaborating with a group of young people currently engaged in a service-learning program aimed at creating a conflict mediation team in the school. The group consisted of seven boys and girls aged 14-15.  

Challenges, learnings & feedback  

Adultcentrism was the topic chosen by the participants to focus on during this first implementation. In the speculative design phase of the lab, researchers realized that it was very hard for the group to move from reflection and critique to action-taking. From the researchers’ perspective, the young people’s main challenge was to see themselves as potential transformative actors and to go beyond class-assignment dynamics. Nonetheless, these initial impressions were dismissed as the sessions progressed. The group gradually took on the responsibility of the project, ending up with the ideation of ​​a tangible and real change for the school.  

Specifically, the group decided to design a relaxation room for the school’s students. In previous sessions, the school was identified as a place where adult-centric dynamics occur, and they agreed to propose a space designed by and for young people, considering their mental and emotional needs. Moreover, the proposal merged with their training as conflict mediators, as they decided to also use this space as a conflict mediation room. The students named their proposal FEM PAUSA (“Let’s take a break” in Catalan) and presented it to the school management team to check the feasibility of the project and see what the institutional response would be. 

The participants appreciated having the opportunity to work on a topic that affects and concerns them. Moreover, the educator leading the mediation learning service program pointed out that the work carried out during the project perfectly aligned with their syllabus and training process.  

The first implementation of Critical ChangeLab has been an enriching experience, where we, as researchers, have had the opportunity to share a space of reflection and action with a group of adolescents capable of articulating their desires and ideas through concrete designs and proposals.