Pedagogy of resistance: Reading young adults for hope with Freirean pedagogy, praxis, and civic engagement in Turkey

Summer 2013 was a turning point in the lives of youth in Turkey due to the Gezi Resistance, wherein a so-called apathetic and apolitical “Generation Y” took to the streets in order to write their own history. The purpose of this study is to examine the contemporary social phenomenon, known as the Gezi Resistance, by utilizing key Freirean conceptualizations of hope as a lens for investigating the life choices of a surprisingly resistant generation of youth in Turkey. In more specific terms, this inquiry examines how young adult involvement within a resistance movement informs their thinking about self, others, and the world. In addition, it studies the learning potential of emergent hope and critical thinking within young peoples’ active social resistance. To date, little has been written regarding the specific nature or the origin of the “hope” exhibited by large numbers of seemingly apolitical youth in the Gezi Resistance in Turkey. I asked the following research questions: (a) In what ways can students’ perceptions of their own (and others) involvement in civic engagement (such as the Gezi Movement) inform educators about how to meet students’ affective and academic needs within educational settings? (b) In what ways does the involvement of young people in major civic engagement, such as the Gezi Movement, alter and/or inform their hopes for the future? (c) What are young adults’ understandings of what generates hope within young people and how is it manifested? In what ways can knowledge of adolescents’ life hopes inform educational practices in positive ways? Written in a readers’ theatre format, this narrative inquiry features the voices, stories, and insights of eight young resisters (ages 24-30 years), thereby offering insights into their educational and life needs and the learning potential of hope generated by the social movement. At its core, this narrative study depicts some of the ways in which a new lens of hope equipped participants to more clearly read self and others and to better act upon their world(s). Findings show that educators are misreading youth by labeling them as apathetic. In actuality, youth educate themselves to become critical thinkers through social interactions and develop critical consciousness through informal learning and praxis. While struggle generates hope for resisters, the relationship between hope and struggle is paradoxical as well as contextual. Youth, in this study, want to maintain their hope, no matter how harsh conditions may be. Thus, hope needs to be cultivated and nurtured in the school setting. If educators want to instruct youth in effective ways, they need to make hope possible for them.