Looking back on the experience of about 12 years, there seem to be three main opportunities or starting points for initiating a SAT; each has implications for the choice of topic:
1. Student initiation
The school can start with a commitment to the idea of a Student Action Team as a student-led, change-oriented way of learning. But about what? Students can then be invited (or asked) to brainstorm specific issues that could be the team’s focus. This could happen within a specific forum, within the SRC, or through informal channels. The school then works out ways to establish and maintain this within its practices.
Caution: this could become tokenistic, with the school only allowing limited issues, or students believing that only such trivial issues can be addressed.
2. Issue-focused commission
A specific issue has already identified within the school or community. A Student Action Team is formed (from volunteers, a class, within the SRC, by application etc) to specifically work on it. The students are commissioned to investigate and act because their expertise and interest is recognised. Again, the school works out how to support this within its structures.
Caution: the issue may not be one of concern to students; it definition can take control away from students. The SAT can be set up in ways that are marginal to the school’s central processes.
3. Curriculum-focused
A particular class or subject adopts Student Action Team approaches as a way of learning and teaching within that class/subject. The topic or issue is then set by the established curriculum; the Student Action Team becomes the way of transforming how learning and teaching of that topic happens to provide it with authenticity, meaning and purpose; the SAT is resourced as part of the curriculum.
Caution: the class may feel ‘drafted’ into such an approach around an externally-set topic to which they feel little commitment. The class’s work may have little impact on the rest of the school.
from Connect 187, February 2011
