This essay engages with ideas of agency and relationality to reimagine possibilities for young people’s modes of learning about and creating poetry. We describe a partnership between a high school and college class in which we minimized our authority as instructors to make space for young people’s collaborative agency in shaping a poetry exchange project. Our analysis of participants’ references to relationality in a post-project survey revealed relational dimensions of participants’ learning, influencing, and creating as supported by collaborative agency.
AbbottJKanpolB (2006) Constructing a university/public school partnership: scholar-practitioner pursuits. ScholarlyPartnershipsEdu1(1): 5–16.
2.
AbebeT (2013) Interdependent rights and agency: the role of children in collective livelihood strategies in rural Ethiopia. In: HansonKNieuwenhuysO (eds), Reconceptualising Children’s Rights in International Development: Living Rights, Social Justice, Translations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press: pp. 71–92.
3.
AlanenL (2012) Disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and childhood studies. Childhood19(4): 419–422.
4.
BizzellP (1991) Classroom authority and critical pedagogy. American Literary History3(4): 847–863.
5.
BugejaMJ (1992) Why we stop reading poetry. The English Journal81(3): 32–42.
6.
ChavezFR (2021) The Anti-racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
7.
ConradR (2020) Time for Childhoods: Young Poets and Questions of Agency. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
8.
Darian-SmithEMcCartyP (2016) Beyond interdisciplinarity: developing a global transdisciplinary framework. Transcience7(2): 1–26.
9.
DavisC (2017) Writing the self: slam poetry, youth identity, and critical poetic inquiry. Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal3(1): 114–131.
10.
DelpitL (1995) Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York, NY: New Press.
11.
FeldmanKP (2016) On relationality, on blackness: a listening post. Comparative Literature68(2): 107–115.
12.
FogelA (1993) Developing through Relationships: Origins of Communication, Self, and Culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
13.
Gitz-JohansenT (2022) Intersubjectivity in the nursery: a case-study from Denmark. Childhood29(1): 112–125.
14.
HartR (2008) Stepping back from ‘the ladder’: reflections on a model of participatory work with children. In: ReidA (ed). Participation and Learning. New York, NY: Springer, 19–31.
15.
JocsonKM (2008) Youth Poets: Empowering Literacies in and Out of Schools. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang.
16.
JohnsonLP (2017) Writing the self: Black queer youth challenge heteronormative ways of being in an after-school writing club. Research in the Teaching of English52(1): 13–33.
17.
MayallB (2002) Towards a Sociology for Childhood: Thinking from Children’s Lives. Maidenhead, Berkshire: Open University Press.
18.
Merleau-PontyM (1962) Phenomenology of Perception. England, UK: Routledge.
19.
Muñoz JE (2009) Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York, NY: New York University Press.
ParkJYSimpsonL (2021) Harnessing the power of collaborative research. The English Journal111(2): 20–27.
23.
ProutA (2005) The Future of Childhood: Towards the Interdisciplinary Study of Children. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer.
24.
ProutA (2019) In defence of interdisciplinary childhood studies. Children & Society33(4): 309–315.
25.
PunchS (2007) Generational power relations in rural Bolivia. In: PanelliRPunchSRobsonE (eds), Global Perspectives on Rural Children and Youth: Young Rural Lives. London, UK: Routledge, pp. 151–164.
26.
RajalaAHilppöJLipponenL, et al. (2013) Expanding the chronotopes of schooling for the promotion of students’ agency. In: ErstadOSefton-GreenJ (eds), Identity, Community, and Learning Lives in the Digital Age. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, pp. 107–125.
27.
RimmerM (2017) Music, middle childhood and agency: the value of an interactional-relational approach. Childhood24(4): 559–573.
28.
RubinJS (2007) Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
29.
SäljöR (2012) Schooling and spaces for learning: cultural dynamics and student participation and agency. In: HjörneEvan der AalsvoortGde AbreuG (eds), Learning, Social Interaction and Diversity–Exploring Identities in School Practices. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers: pp. 9–14.
30.
SanbornG (2022) The milieu of buried stimuli: relational theory and literary studies. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies19: 352–358.
31.
SmithVF (2017) Between Generations: Collaborative Authorship in the Golden Age of Children’s Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
32.
SternDN (1985) The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York, NY: Basic Books.
33.
StoneLDUnderwoodCHotchkissJ (2012) The relational habitus: intersubjective processes in learning settings. Human Development55: 65–91.
34.
Tatlow-GoldenMMontgomeryH (2021) Childhood studies and child psychology: disciplines in dialogue?Children & Society35(1): 3–17.
35.
ThorneB (2007) Editorial: Crafting the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies. Childhood14(2): 147–152.
36.
TrevarthenC (1979) Communication and cooperation in early infancy: a description of primary intersubjectivity. In: BullowaM (ed), Before Speech. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press: pp. 321–347.
37.
TrevarthenCHubleyP (1978) Secondary intersubjectivity: confidence, confiding, and acts of meaning in the first year. In: LockA (ed), Action, Gesture and Symbol. London, UK: Academic Press, pp. 183–229.
38.
UNESCO (2014) UNESCO Operational Strategy on Youth. Paris, France: United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000227150 (accessed 29 July 2022).
WinnicottDW (1978) Playing and Reality. London, UK: Routledge.
41.
WoodheadM (2008) Childhood studies: past, present and future. In: KehillyMJ (ed), An Introduction to Childhood Studies. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press/McGraw Hill, pp. 17–31.
42.
YagelskiRP (2009) A thousand writers writing: seeking change through the radical practice of writing as a way of being. English Education42(1): 6–28.