Learning to Engage: Movements and Sociocultural Theories of Learnign

Page 1. Centre top image: Polaroid photo (comic) Group of 14 people, multiracial, standing in a group on stairs at the Learning to Engage conference. Lower image: three (comic drawn) polaroid photos: Photo image 1: small group of six people sitting around a small table in front of a white board with flip chart paper taped to it. Photo image 2: Three people sitting at a board table working. Photo image 3: Four people outside in park talking. Two are standing, one is sitting in the grass, one is laying down. Text reads: In Summer 2019, we hosted the Learning to Engage conference, a place for learning scientists to collaborate on our work for justice-focused research that centres learning and civic engagement. Funded by the Spencer Foundation, we spent a week thinking through how learning matters in community organizations, social movements, classrooms, and informal learning environments. At the end of the conference, we committed to creating a comic that translates the research work we have done with different activists into a more useful resource that explains sociocultural theories of learning and contextualizes how they can be useful in other organizing spaces. The comics in this special issue attempt to do this work.

Page 2. Header: What are the learning sciences? Image of Tanner Vea, brown man with short curly hair, one of the editors, standing with one hand on his hip, one hand pointing to a speech bubble. Tanner says: The learning sciences is an academic field interested in how learning works and how to design environments that support it. Often, learning sciences researchers research classrooms and technologies for teaching and learning in school subjects. Image of Joe Curnow, white woman with curly hair and big glasses, one of the editors, standing with both arms up, bent at the elbows. Joe says: But recently, some learning scientists have wondered: if our designs for learning always involve choices about particular ends for learning, whose ends are they? What consequences do these choices have for equity and justice? Centre image: A text box with the words: ?In conducting learning research with social movements, the authors of this special issue take up the promise of learning as a way of understanding social movements. Like schools, movements involve pedagogical practices? Image of four books stacked on the right side. Lower images: Text reads: But more than that, learning offers productive ways for thinking about how movements form, Sketch 1: Image from Civil Rights movement: Rosa Parks sitting on bus seat, front of the bus. Sketch 2: Image from Stonewall riot, image of police officer with baton raised against 2 gay men, image of police officer being punched by a person. Text reads: how ideas of justice are co-constructed Sketch 3: Image of paper with Black Panther drawn at top, with the Black Panther Party 10 point program at the top and bullet points. Bullets read: 1. Freedom power, destiny. 2. Full employment for our people 3. End robbery by white man. 4. Decent Housing. 5. Education. 6. Exempt from Military 7. End police brutality 8. Free the jailed 9. Trial by peers, 10. Land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace. Text: how tactics get taken up Sketch 4: Image from ACT UP: Back of a person wearing a leather jacket with hand painted text on jacket which reads ?if I die of AIDS- Forget Burial- Just drop my body on the steps of the FDA. Sketch 5 : Image from March for Our Lives (Youth against gun violence). Young person holding poster that reads: if I die in a school shooting, drop my body on the steps of the CDC Sketch 6: Image of Greta Thunberg, sitting on ground with knees pulled to her chest with sign that reads SKOLSTREJK FOR KLIMATET! Text: and how communities change through political struggle Sketch 7: Image from Hong Kong independence movement: of 7 umbrellas with 2 Hong Kongers faces showing beneath. And tear gas in background. Sketch 8 : Image from Oka Crisis: white man in military uniform with helmet on, face to face with kahnawakeman in camouflage with bandana covering face, sunglasses, and hat, with gun across his back.

Page 3. Text reads: Our work here is to bridge the learning sciences and social movements: As academics, we think that the learning sciences brings really important insights into how people learn-- Six images of book covers that are small versions of the covers of comics in this issue. Cover one: Politicization, Description How they become radicalized Cover 2: Guided Emotion Participation, description: how their emotion shapes their activism Cover 3: Learning and Teaching in Youth Activism, description: how young activists learn and collaborate with adults Cover 4: Pedagogies of Organizing, Description: how small practices facilitate social movement action Cover 5: Educational Intimacy, description: how community is built among activists, Cover 6: Equity oriented scale making, description how activists learn to create systems change

Page 4. Text box at top reads: we know that learning theory rarely gets translated in ways that are useful for activists. Top image: group of protestors with placards on left. On right image of scholar in regalia shouting down to a political rally: No, it's pronounced he-GEM-uh-nee!. Standing atop a large tower, amidst university style buildings. Centre text reads: The research presented here takes a sociocultural perspective. That means we see learning as not only about cognitive processing Centre image of a human brain with 2 bubbles pointing toward it. One reads: Justice The other reads Activism. Text reads: but about meaning-making, shifting practices, and the uptake of identities. Lower images: A training where 2 Black men stand over a Black woman and a white man practicing nonviolent civil disobedience. At the front a Black woman facilitator points to a flip chart that says ?Civil disobedience: non-violence? Text reads ?All learning happens in an embodied social world and is shaped by culture and interaction.? Final image (from left to right) shows a white man, a Black woman, and a Black man sitting at a lunch counter while two white men yell and pour drinks on them.

Page 5. Image of Joe and Tanner together. Joe speech bubble says: Our goal is to provide a small set of examples of how research on learning can help activists to think through learning and transformation. Tanner speech bubble says: We hope that with examples of learning concepts applied in activist contexts, these ideas and the arguments around them should be made clearer for movements. Lower half of page: Images connect in zig zag across the page to show progression. Image 1: person at desk writing. Image 2: man reading paper and stacking it on a tall pile of books. Image 3: Joe with scissors in one hand, paper in the other hand, saying: Also, we hope to highlight some of the innovative work coming out of the learning sciences to a broader audience- Image4: Tanner with paper in one hand saying including education researchers, comics people, communities, and you! Image 5: Andrew illustrating the paper contents onto an ipad Image 6: Printer with pages flying off and around the corner Image 7 Activist with placard sees a page Image 8: Activist reads this comic Image 9: word bubble from joe and tanner: As this work shows, ideas are not just abstract entities in the mind, Image 10: Activist sharing comic with another person Image 11: Activists going to rally with placards with comics in hand Image 12 word bubble from Joe and Tanner: but rather can be powerful tools for changing the world.