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Professor Marcia Prieto Instituto de Educación Universidad Católica de ValparaÃso
Chile is coming out from a long period of dictatorship and the country is facing acute problems. Findings of the ' Paradoxes of Modernisation ' study (PNUD, 1998) revealed that two thirds of the population felt that they were either poorly informed or uninformed about many aspects that affected their lives. In the last election in Chile more than one million, two hundred thousand young potential electors did not enrol to vote, resulting in an important segment of the population not participating in the elections of the President. These results imply that Chilean people are not sufficiently interested in getting involved in what it is happening in their country and have a poorly developed democratic culture. In this sense, the consequence for government was clear - it needed to develop additional efforts to support civil society and increase participation and commitment to recover the practice of a democratic way of life.
One approach is to undertake a systematic invigoration of education for democracy in schools. School should be the best place to learn and live democracy, since its core principles of freedom, solidarity, equality and diversity should also be the central principles of an authentic pedagogic relationship. In fact, the values crisis of modern society and its effects have also reached schools. Schools in Chile are generally more preoccupied with achieving institutional aims than developing democratic values. In most schools it seems that individualism, consumerism and power are more obviously prominent than tolerance, solidarity, justice, respect and truth. If this is so, then, along with many other countries in the world, Chilean schools have neglected their public responsibility to develop democratic values and practices. As Andy Green reminds us, ' there is much less confidence in the ability of education systems to perform other developmental functions, such as the cultivation of social solidarity, democratic citizenship and national identity ' (Green, 1997, p.10).
Chilean educational reform is failing to develop what students need to know and understand in order to be able to fully participate in a democratic society. Education for democracy only exists at the level of what we call ' transversal ' aims, which means, in this country, that no statutory requirements have been set for curricular content and objectives or for evaluation as a real transversal policy demands (Reyzabal & Sanz, 1999). Too much depends on the knowledge or willingness of teachers to engage in this kind of work and, like teachers in the UK, they have many other tasks to fulfil and very little time.
In the light of this situation, the relationship between democracy and schools should be redefined. A shift of this kind will restore public trust in schools and provide a meaningful arena for student participation and the reinvigoration of democracy in the country. A renewed commitment to strong education for democracy and to a new partnership between schools and student democracy is required to move Chile in the direction of a revitalised democratic community.
NEW BEGINNINGS: STUDENT RESEARCH AS THE PRACTICE OF DEMOCRACY . In response to the challenges to democracy we face in our country an action research project was designed that operated with the active participation of students as the primary researchers, in order to raise some of the problems of contemporary democracy from their own standpoint, with their own voices. We chose this research design because it allowed us to incorporate the very practices, values and principles that inform democracy. Participatory action research can only be developed if the whole team participates, and participation is one of the basic pillars of democracy. Likewise, action research requires that all those involved can voice their suggestions and respond to those of others with respect and tolerance, both constituent principles of democracy.
In this context, then, student researchers were incorporated as fully fledged members of the team, whose brief was to design and develop an educational programme for democracy in their own schools. The research team included eight students from two secondary schools, four university lecturers, and an international consultant, Michael Fielding, from the University of Sussex, UK, who was particularly involved in developing the training programme for the students researchers.
Our first steps involved the joint construction of an environment for practising freedom, the free expression of ideas. In practical terms, this involved the development of an agreement which articulated a set of common values on the basis of systematic reflection and dialogue amongst all those involved. There was a shared sense that what we were trying to do was substantial and significant and that each of the contributory tasks were possible, if we lived out our value aspirations. The students wanted to achieve a number of things through the project. In particular, they wanted to improve the relationships between teachers and students in their school; to translate the alienating and confusing official language of democracy into the language of young people; to get to know their democratic rights and duties; to develop a shared commitment the expression of their views; to learn from each other and to offer their learning to their schools. But most of all, they wanted to construct a better society in which every one was committed to the rights, duties and responsibilities of democratic living (Fielding & Prieto, 2000).
DOING THE RESEARCH. Student researchers interviewed sixty-four peers from the two schools that were participating in the project. Once the information was analysed by the whole team, we discovered weaknesses in students' understandings of democracy and how the values and principles of democracy were distorted. On the basis of this data, we designed and developed a school programme in the form of ten workshops covering five main areas: the meaning of democracy, participation, human rights, free expression and tolerance. These workshops included a variety of activities like games, individual reading of documents related to the topic, group discussions, elaboration of proposals and a number of other activities, all of them implemented in a very flexible and participatory way. One of the key elements that we tried hard to incorporate was the constant link to the everyday lives of the students in schools, ' including the things that matter to young people, the things that can help them to understand their reality and give them a stake in the future that rightly belongs to them ' (Kennedy 1997, p.3).
Students working as equals with university staff, with the same rights to propose and to decide, was an essential feature of the team. However, while individual expression was essential, it was also important for students to discover that democracy is not about solitary processes. On the contrary, it is about persons in dialogue, articulating the values they share, understanding their differences and reaching towards conclusions, processes and commitments which are the essence of the type of democracy that we were trying to nurture. This had implications, not only for the communal nature of our work, but also for challenging the traditional privileged status of adults over young people.
The type of work we developed resulted in an invigoration of the research team. Through the emerging realities of joint enquiry, university lecturers discovered the potential of what students had to offer and made special efforts to generate a rich, dialogic environment. This inspired in students a deep sense of moral responsibility. As one of them said, ' We are completely aware that all of us are responsible for the research ' .
A genuine respect for each other's opinions was promoted: we strongly believed in the right and necessity of students speaking for themselves. We agree with MartÃnez ' s observation that we ' ignore what pupils think and say because we do not listen to them. They are continually expressing themselves and narrating their experiences in a natural way. However, we do not listen to what they say. We do not use approaches or strategic forms to help us decode the insights they are expressing and we end up ignoring its significance ' (Martinez 1998, p.56). When the student researchers perceived that they had achieved their right to talk, that their voices were taken into account and their contributions valued, they became motivated to make critical reflections and did not consider themselves as simple objects of experiments but reflexive, autonomous and solitary people.
We were aware that the processes that lead to integration had to be strengthened to arrive at common agreements. Thus, deliberate efforts to maintaining a fluid and steady communication within the research team were made. We worked hard at the development and practice of listening, inclusion, mediation, dialogue, reflection, and closure, each of which were recognised as a fundamental tool for the emergence of a strong and effective community. This helped us to understand that creative tensions were embedded in the project ' s most contentious issues. But tensions are the heart of democratic struggle and the source for the generation of a resonant and vigorous community. Thus, they had to be worked out in direct processes that engaged students and teachers in an open and creative dialogue.
This allowed us to recognise the difficulties presented during the implementation of the program, carry out the necessary modifications and consolidate a collaborative form of work contributing to a common good in an atmosphere of trust, respect and mutual tolerance. We developed a significant capacity to jointly construct common ground and incorporate the diverse, and sometimes opposite, solutions that sprang from our discussion.
In a way, it could be said that we achieved the construction of a community that resulted in the joint growth of the whole research team. As a result of the environment we had constructed, students started taking the initiative in promoting and developing activities rooted in their needs. They recognised that they had acted as autonomous persons, with the ability and responsibility to participate in decisions relating both to the project and to matters that affected their school life. In sum, each team member recognised the part that he or she had played in the construction of the community's democratic condition. The awareness that the community we had constructed was the sum of each of our actions definitively moved the research team beyond fractionary interests towards the common good and personal growth.
When we started our project, the expectations of the student researchers had to do with ' offering the school community motivating and engaging action and proposals so that everybody could then learn how to live democracy, grow as persons, and be committed to the society they are living in ' . Thus, we not only expected to increase students' knowledge about democracy, but also to enable them to learn and practice democratic living through collective reflection and collaborative work. In our view, this way of working would favour their personal growth and the development of both their self and social awareness.
We asked the participants to evaluate the programme so we could know from their own voices if these aims had been achieved. They said that the programme had ' helped us to know ourselves better ' ; that they had ' learnt to express our opinions freely. We are now able to outline arguments and defend them properly, without barriers or problems as we have learned how to share our own ideas, to respect the other's opinion and value those that thought differently ' , they said. All of this because they had ' learned how to argue, develop and defend our own ideas ' ; because the experience had helped them ' to grow as persons ' .
We also noticed that many of the students had begun to develop the ability to self-monitor behaviour in ways that took into consideration the actions and feelings of the others. One of the student researchers acknowledged, ' Sometimes I hadn't showed due respect to the others ' ideas ' . Another stated that ' even though my participation was good I had expected more from myself ' . The program seemed to have helped them to develop both their self-awareness and their self-governance, key aspects that constitute the base of living in a democracy.
The long process of working with students in this project suggests that it is possible to build new knowledge and solve problems working jointly in a community of equals. As John Dayton says, ' Education in democratic principles can lead to the exhilaration of discovery and the promise of hope for a better community ' (Dayton, 1995, p.137). It also allowed us to conclude that we had developed a certain expertise in working both with students and for them. Indeed, we learned how to design, develop and implement a programme of this nature, taking into account not only our own ideas but also incorporating those of students. We recognised the importance of including students in the solution of their own problems and challenges. Our evaluations also suggest that we have carried out successful work, not only for students but also for university researchers. In this sense, we see the development of this project implied the emergence of a ' radical collegiality ' (Fielding 1999).
Whilst 'partnership' is a buzzword of school improvement and a host of other initiatives within the social sciences, its meaning and substance are often elusive. This initiative broke new ground in a number of respects.
Firstly, it explored new kinds of partnership amongst students themselves. The students were used to working in their schools in a hierarchical and rigid atmosphere. Working in a flexible learning structure, completely different to the one they experienced daily, allowed them to realise that learning is a dialogic and interactive encounter that goes beyond a passive process controlled by adults. In fact, they discovered that there are ways of working that transcend adding individual contributions to each other. What really happened was a cross-fertilisation of their individual capacities. A student commented that ' together we work better and this way we support each other ' .
This mutual support resulted in a body of different knowledge that contained the individual contributions of all the members of the team, but integrated them into a more inclusive whole. The experience seemed to provide a cohesion and identity that it would have been difficult to achieve from individual practices. It provided a more substantial group sense, because they felt supported and confident that they would be able to respond to their own expectations (Fielding & Prieto, 2000). We could say that a confluence of each one of the individual efforts took place, promoting, in turn, the development of each one. All were compelled to contribute to the search for answers to the agreed problems. The discovery that it was possible to build new knowledge, starting from the activity and effort of each one, but used and understood by all, made a critical contribution to later action and the discovery of their own potential. They discovered the value of co-operating in a community of equals that had agreed on a series of values and understandings.
This approach has also allowed students to live the experience of learning how to manage their emotions. The expression of arguments respecting others ' ideas, learning how to listen, not feeling personally attacked when some has a different opinion: all these were important aspects of learning how to live with others in a democratic society. One student, referring to the group work she had experienced, said: ' With the kind of work we have done, the usual pattern related of “the one that knows speaks and the one that doesn't only listens†has been broken ' .
Secondly, it encouraged very different kinds of partnership between students and teachers. Present times invite us to look again at current notions of professionalism and seriously consider a 'radical collegiality' in which education is seen as a genuine, demanding partnership between teachers and their students, in which each learn with, and from, the other. Teachers were learners, as well as teachers; learners were teachers, as well as learners. Each needed the other in much more searching and exhilarating ways than we currently acknowledge or fully understand. Incorporating and encouraging participation and constant expression of students ' voices produced a richer awareness of the abilities of students and teachers and laid the ground for a new, more inclusive professionalism.
The experiences lived by working as real partners with students reminded us of the necessity of treating them, and respecting them, not only as equals, but also as people that have something different and important to offer. We can no longer think of students as empty vases, or blank minds. On the contrary they have their minds already active with all that they have lived, and are living. In this project students developed ways of seeing things and learned how to solve their daily problems, as they were given the opportunity to reflect and had their practical knowledge valued . They were able to defend their initiatives and propose emancipatory action. In sum, we learnt how to work with students, sharing meanings, facing doubts and errors and recognising the importance of each other ' s contributions and their ability to solve their own problems. Yvonna Lincoln is right when she says that ' children and adults combine the power and create new forms of wisdom when they explore learning together ' (Lincoln 1995 p.89).
New partnerships between universities, students, teachers and schools were at the heart of the project. Students were not the fodder for university research; rather they became key agents in the process of educational transformation. In this project, students' involvement was one of the key aspects.
This involvement had a series of characteristics that proved to be successful. One of them had to do with the quality of the students' participation. They were involved in all the stages of the project, freely expressing their ideas, sharing power in taking decisions, interviewing their peers and analysing data, designing a school programme, acting as monitors in the realisation of the programme in their own schools, evaluating the experience, participating in the redesigning of the programme and presenting findings in conferences. All of these activities turned them into agents of change in their schools, thus, going far beyond the normal and ordinary activities they were used to being asked to do in schools.
Our experience working with student researchers met all the requirements set by Gitlin (1995) for a real investigation with students. Students have been involved voluntarily in this project. They feel they have had the power to decide, as they have been offered the possibility and the challenge of solving their own problems. Both their peers and the school community saw their activity as important and felt that they had created something new and worth doing.
In fact, one of the participating schools not only incorporated some of the topics we had developed with the students in their classes, but also in the form of designing and presenting a school project to an international contest. In this sense, it could be said that students became important persons in the school. They were institutionally recognised as such in the closing session of the academic year, in front of the whole school community. The school learned that it is possible to give students responsibilities and that they will fulfil them properly and respond to the opportunity, provided that their practical knowledge is taken into account and reflection and revision of the whole process is systematically promoted, including them as valid speakers.
Finally, we have produced evidence that, when students perceive that they not only extended their right to voice their own ideas but also given the chance to identify and solve their own problems, they no longer consider themselves as simply experiments or implementers: they become agents of their own change (Breitborde, 1996, Fielding & Prieto, 2000; Mena, Prieto & Egaña, 1999; Ladson-Billing, 1995; Soo Hoo, 1993). Together we created a community in which all voices were respected and valued, not only in inclusive terms, but also in critical terms. Students realised that they have capacities to participate actively and effectively in the solutions to their own problems. In sum, they became aware that they have the primary responsibility for their own development processes, for their emerging agency, and for a better future together. The motto of the project proposed by the students themselves confirms this: ' With democracy and our voices we will be able to construct a better world ' .
As partnerships and processes among schools, teachers and students develop, we anticipate and advocate the growth of new governance relationships and shared responsibilities. We call upon schools to encourage partnerships among all those initiating the process of capacity building for positive change. We urge them to adopt proactive and collaborative strategies, in which students and staff work together in new ways with new hope. Widening student disaffection with society requires it: the future of vibrant democracy in and through education depends upon it.
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Dayton, J. (1995). ' Democracy, Public Schools and the Politics of Education ' in Review Journal of Philosophy of Social and Science XX(1,) pp.135-156.
Fielding, M. and Prieto, M. (2000). Investigando con Estudiantes: ' Una Experiencia de Practica Democrática ' , in Paideia 28, pp.105-128.
Fielding, M. (1999). ' Radical Collegiality: Affirming Teaching as an Inclusive Professional Practice ' , in Australian Educational Researcher 26 (2) pp. 1-34.
Gitlin,A.(1995) ' Educative Research, Voice, and School Change ' in Harvard Educational Review 60 (4) pp. 443-465.
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Ladson - Billing G. (1995). ' But that ' s just good teaching! ' in Theory into Practice 34 (3), pp. 159-165.
Lincoln, I. (1995). ' In Search of Students ' Voices ' in Theory into Practice 34, pp.88-93 .
MartÃnez, J.B(1998) ' La Voz de los Estudiantes: Ausencia temporal de la ciudadania ' in Cuadernos de Pedagogia , 275, pp. 134-189.
Mena, I., Prieto, M. and Egana (1999). Cada Escuela es un Barco. Santiago de Chile: UNICEF/Ministerio de Educación Pública.
PNUD (1998) L as Paradojas de la Modernizacion. Santiago de Chile.
Reyzabal, M.V. and Sanz, A.I. (1999). Los Ejes transversales. Aprendizajes para la Vida. Madrid: Escuela Española.
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Professor Marcia Prieto teaches the Social Foundations of Education at the Pontifica Universidad Católica (PUC), in Valparaiso, Chile. She holds a PhD in Education from the University of Wales. Her research interests have focused on classroom practice, teacher preparation and education for democracy, among others. During 1998-2001 she collaborated with Prof. Fielding (Sussex University) on the research which led to this paper(s), which were published initially in Britain and Chile. She is currently working on a follow-up project on, ' What students think about current teaching and learning practices ' . Professor Prieto is the mother of four and the grandmother of nine children.
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