253. Building the Habits of Democracy with Dr. Sarah Burnham

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In this episode, we talk with Dr. Sarah Burnham, a postdoctoral scholar who works at CIRCLE (The Centre for Information & Research on Civic Learning) at Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. She primarily works on projects related to K-12 civics education. In our discussion, she emphasizes the transformative power of civics education and shares ways to create inclusive classrooms where both teachers and students are supported. 

Dr. Burnham discusses fostering critical consciousness and anti-oppressive attitudes within educational settings. Civic education, according to her, isn't about politicizing students but equipping them with tools to engage with their communities and society effectively.

​Sarah Burnham is a postdoctoral fellow at CIRCLE focusing on civic learning and development in K-12 education. She received her Ph.D. from Suffolk University in Applied Developmental Psychology. Her work aims to help teachers and schools embrace culturally sustaining pedagogies authentically so that all students feel affirmed in their lived experiences to effectively engage in civic action for themselves and their communities. She is also passionate about positive youth development and developing critical consciousness and anti-oppressive attitudes across the lifespan both online and offline.

The Big Dream 

Dr. Burnham's vision for education is a landscape where classrooms nurture support and belonging for both teachers and students. She believes that this starts by paying teachers fairly and diversifying the teaching workforce to create a strong sense of community. Additionally, students should have access to resources reflecting their diverse experiences, creating genuine engagement with their learning environments.

Mindset Shifts Required

To begin creating classrooms that nurture support and belonging, Dr. Burnham emphasizes the need for educators and administrators to embrace participatory decision-making in classrooms, allowing students to have a say in their educational experiences. 

This involves teachers reflecting on their comfort with flexible classroom dynamics and administrators supporting these changes. Further, it means prioritizing social studies and civics education—and new ways of teaching—even when it feels noisy or messy. 

Action Steps  

A lot of Dr. Burnham’s work surrounds pedagogical practices that foster critical consciousness in anti-oppressive attitudes. For clarity, critical consciousness refers to the ability to recognize and analyze oppressive political, economic, and social forces that are shaping society, and to take action against those forces. Anti-oppressive attitudes require someone to actively acknowledge power disparities and work for equity and liberation. 

Ideally these two are working in tandem in education, and educators who want to embrace this in their classrooms can begin with these steps in their civics education practices: 

Step 1: Understand the purpose of civics education. It’s not to push a specific ideology or push students to become overly politicized outside the classroom. Rather, it’s helping students see the connection to their community, what’s happening, and their part in it. 

Step 2: Prioritize students' voices in decision-making processes within the classroom, ensuring their experiences help shape the learning environment. It’s important to also include more diverse voices in the curriculum, ones that are grounded in the students’ identities, histories, and communities. 

Step 3: Engage in self-reflection. Educators need to ask the question: Am I okay with being this flexible in the classroom? Because centering students’ voices means creating space for lived experiences and different ideas, which can be uncomfortable at times. 

Step 4: Implement participatory exercises that don’t just deliver content, but shape experiences of community. Shared decision-making is practicing democracy in the classroom. For example, a group budgeting exercise helps students learn about real-world issues that matter to them.

Challenges?

Educators may find it challenging to shift from traditional methods to more flexible, student-centered approaches. They need administrative support to explore these new pedagogies and incorporate them effectively, and there’s a need for quality professional development to guide educators in these transitions.

One Step to Get Started 

One way to get started is for educators to identify local representatives and explore their positions on funding for schools and public goods. Engage students and families in discussions about these issues and encourage them to participate in community activities like voting or local meetings to demonstrate the practical application of civic involvement.

Stay Connected

You can stay connected with Dr. Sarah Burnham on LinkedIn or send her an email at [email protected]. Keep up with CIRCLE’s research on the Tufts website. 

To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing the Curricululm Playlist  with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 253 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.
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Quotes: 

• 1:39 “ My freedom dream is making classrooms places where both teachers and students feel cared for and supported. So I think that mostly starts with making sure that teachers are paid fairly for everything that they do.”
• 8:58 “Research paints a pretty clear picture that when done well, civic education works. It's linked to better civic outcomes, stronger community engagement, a better understanding of how government works and how you can affect government, a deeper sense of a responsibility to participate in your community.”
• 23:20 “In these conversations with civic education, we can’t expect students to practice all these things at 18 when they haven’t gotten any experience with it.”

​​​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:​

Transcript: 
Lindsay Lyons: Dr. Sarah Burnham, welcome to the time for teachership podcast.
Sarah Burnham: Thank you for having me.
Lindsay Lyons: I'm really excited. I know we've been kind of nerding out just a little bit right before we hit record, but would love for folks who are engaging with this episode just to know you know who you are beyond maybe the professional bio.
Sarah Burnham: Yeah, of course. So, um, just to iterate, my name is Sarah Burnham. Um, I am a postdoctoral scholar, um, at Circle. Um, I primarily work on projects related to K through 12 civic education. Um, I've been super into this. Uh, the new social studies curriculum in Massachusetts called Investigating History. Been working on it for about three years, and I'm really excited for what I've seen and the growth for the teachers.
Um, I even have a sticker on my water bottle for investigating history. Um, but beyond the, uh, professional stuff, I was born and raised in the suburbs of Boston. Um, I just finished reading, um, rabid by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy. Um, very interesting nonfiction book about the cultural history of rabies.
Um, and I'm also really digging the new Sabrina Carpenter album.
Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. I love this. I love the whole humanness of your response. Thank you. So now for a more, uh, potentially academic or, or work related education related question, I love starting with this. So, Betina love describes freedom dreaming as dreams, uh, grounded in the critique of injustice.
And I'm curious just what is your freedom dream for education?
Sarah Burnham: Mm-hmm. Yeah, this is a great question and I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Um, so my freedom dream is that, uh, is making classrooms, places where both teachers and students feel cared for and supported. So I think that mostly starts with making sure that teachers are paid fairly for everything that they do.
Um, and I think if that happened, we'd probably see way more teachers from all kinds of backgrounds sticking around instead of burning out or leaving. Um, and then when teachers are coming from different backgrounds. Students are feeling more connected and they actually feel like they're part of the classroom community.
So that's the one part of it. The other part is also. Uh, getting more relevant resources that reflect the diversity of students and their experiences. So, um, circles research has shown that less than half of young people say that they actually feel like they belong at school. Um, and that's a huge red flag.
So that feeling of belonging isn't the same for everyone and particularly for, um, minoritized groups. Um, they feel it less than others feeling like they don't belong. So let's tell us there's a, that there's a lot of work to do in caring for both students and teachers. Um, so what is really exciting me and something that I would love to work towards and help, uh, teachers and practitioners work towards is making the idea of classrooms where students are not just learning about democracy and theory, but are.
Practicing it. So things like participatory budgeting or, uh, group decision making where students get to use their voice and feel like they matter and feeling like they're belonging in this community. Um, and having that kind of hands-on experience also builds confidence, um, not just in school but also outside of school.
Um. Then also to go back to the teacher side of this, um, school leaders and administrators need to have teachers' backs. Um, I know that this is a crazy time for everyone, um, but they, uh, administrators at the very least, can protect time for social studies, um, and civics because often those are relegated towards, um, prepping for, um, standardized testing, um, or often for supplemental services.
Supplemental services should also be prioritized, but often kids are being pulled out of social studies for those supplemental services. Um, and so prioritizing social studies and civics and encouraging teachers to try new ways of teaching, even if it feels noisy or messy, um, and making sure that like it's, they feel okay about it.
Um, so that was a lot that I just said, but. Making sure both teachers and students are cared for. And that starts from caring for teachers, caring for um, uh, students, and then also making sure they're protected by their administrator and their institutions.
Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. I am like furiously scribbling notes.
This is amazing. I love all of this. I love the concept of pr, practicing democracy in theory, like Sure. Budgeting. So cool. I love the idea of protecting that time for social studies because one of the things we've found out from the third and fourth grade pilot with investigating history of Massachusetts is like, no one has time.
Like it's not, it's just not allotted. And so then it's like how do you create that time? Well, what is it being used for? Like you said, it's like standardized test prep and. It is so disheartening when it's like this is civics is like how you engage with the world, with your community. This is a lifelong thing that people need to develop capacity for, and yet we routinely kind of erase it from the structure of how school is done, particularly at lower levels.
And it is so depressing. So thank you for naming that. I really appreciate that. And I also just love your idea of like risk taking, like the idea of like risk taking pedagogically and like supporting that as an admin. So often I think as a teacher there's kind of this fear of like an observation is happening and it's gonna be punitive.
And it's like, how cool would it be if we had admin who are like, yeah, I support you trying that new thing, and I'll come in and I'll collect data for you and we can reflect together. And I know it's gonna be messy and it might be loud. And like all the things that traditional schooling tells us, it's like not good pedagogy, but like is great, you know?
Mm-hmm. I just. Oh my gosh. All the things. Yes. Thank you.
Sarah Burnham: Yeah, and like, so we would do like classroom observations for the evaluation and like teachers were so nervous and I was like, please do not be nervous. I don't, I don't care what you are doing. I wanna see how this, this, the classroom is functioning like as a whole, like it are the students engaging.
Like this is not evaluative, I'm not sharing this with anybody. This is all confidential and I think that was hard for teachers to kind of get over the, because like so often it's a higher up that's in the classroom. I'm just like, I am just here to take notes. Just here to take notes.
Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, I would love that culture broadly to permeate like the school, like both for outsiders, but like internal, like peer-to-peer teacher, like observations and things would be so lovely.
Um, and I know, so thank you so much for sharing so much of the research, that statistic about less than half of young people reporting belonging at school is like soul crushing makes me so sad. Also though, the hopeful part of me, the critical, hopeful part is like, how cool would it be if that is a metric that schools were tracking internally, right.
To just be like. Okay. Like, we're gonna measure this every three months or something, and we're gonna just like make moves towards increasing that number. So I, I do think for people who are engaging with this episode, like, you can do this, this is something that you can track and value it just as much, if not more, right.
Than those standardized test scores that we devote so much time and energy to. Um, but I know you have a lot of, a lot of research knowledge. Would love to, to learn from you in all of that. So curious what the research says about civic education in whatever way you wanna take that. I know that's. Super broad field of research, um, but also thinking about.
Specifically, I know you research like anti-oppressive attitudes in youth critical consciousness. Like what pedagogies or pedagogical practices foster critical consciousness in anti-oppressive attitudes. 'cause I think that's what many of us are in the work to do and would love to know what the research has on that.
Sarah Burnham: I. Yeah, that's a great question. And so before I get into like kind of the meat of this question, I just wanna make sure that, um, I'm clarifying what I mean by by critical consciousness and anti-oppression. So, critical consciousness, um, developed I think in the mid 19 hundreds. Um, so this refers to the ability to recognize and analyze oppressive political, economic and social forces that are shaping society and to take action against those forces.
So critical consciousness, um, and a lot of, at least the developmental sec. Uh, psychological literature, which is my background, um, has like three distinct, uh, dimensions of like critical reflection. So understanding kind of like your own positionality, um, political self-efficacy. So understanding what you can and can't do kind of in your position.
And then also sociopolitical action of like what are the actual actions that you're taking. Um, so that's my understanding of critical consciousness. Um. And then anti-oppressive attitudes. Um, so that's requiring someone to like actively acknowledging p power disparities and work for equity and liberation.
So these two concepts should ideally be working in tandem in education and then create a school climate that cares for teachers and students. Um, so, but to get back to the question at hand, um, so I think, um. I think this is a lot something that educators are grappling with, right, right now. But research paints a pretty clear picture that when done well, civic education works, right?
It's linked to better civic outcomes, like stronger community engagement. Um, understanding how, a better understanding of how government works and how you can affect government. And then also a deeper sense, deeper sense of a responsibility to participate in your community. Um. And so civic education is boosting knowledge, civic dispositions.
Um, but I also wanna emphasize that based also on circles, research that, um, having robust civic education, um, is not leading students to become overly per politicized outside of the classroom, which is I think something that, um, uh, a lot of, uh, naysayers against civic education. Um. Might have a concern about, um, it's not linked to partisan outcomes.
It's not links to ideological indoctrination. Um, what it's doing is giving students tools to make sense of the world and see themselves as people who can have a say in it. Um, and I think that's the core of civic education. And then, um, the critical, conscious and anti oppressiveness of like, understanding that you can affect your community and you have a responsibility as a citizen to kind of make things better for both yourself and for your community.
Um. So, um, I think one of the key shifts is around how we teach civics, um, not just what we teach. Um, and I think investigating history is a great example of that, where inquiry-based learning is a huge part of, uh, transitioning how we're thinking about teaching civics. So when students are encouraged to ask real questions and investigate issues that matter to them, um, and engage in dialogue with their peers, they're starting to build those critical thinking skills in the classroom.
And then those skills transfer far beyond the classroom, like in their afterschool activities, um, or maybe in, uh, even just in conversations with their families, which I will get to at a later point. Um, but also, uh, fostering critical consciousness. Um. It also re requires, um, making civic learning relevant to students' lives.
And I think that's also connected to having a classroom community where students feel like they belong, right? If they don't feel like they belong, then they're thinking that civic, civic learning is not relevant and then they're not fostering critical consciousness, um, which is kind of not where we wanna be.
Um, so it's. It about also about including more diverse voices in the curriculum and grounding the entire learning experience in students' identities, histories, and communities. Um, one of the things that we learned from the teachers during these, uh, evaluations was that, um. Social studies, classrooms, and lessons, um, often act as like windows, um, where we're looking out at other people, other places and other times.
Um, but we need to have more mirrors or spaces for students to reflect on their experiences, their own positionality, and how they fit into the broader social and historical context. Um, and this was something that. People like appreciated about investigating history was that it does provide some of those, um, mirrors, um, rather than like kind of the windows.
Um, and then. Yeah. So civic education is not just about kind of government structures or historical timelines. It's building the habits of democracy, um, feeling like you're connected to your community, your classroom. Um, and when students kind of see themselves in the story, then they kind of see that they have the power to shape kind of what comes next.
Lindsay Lyons: Amazing. Oh my gosh, what a great synthesis. Thank you. And, and I'm thinking about the teacher who might be, um, listening or reading the blog posts and, and thinking about their specific actions. So maybe they do have investigating hist history as a curriculum. Maybe, you know, they're, they're in a different state.
They don't have that. But they want to shift pedagogically, like how, you know, they're doing things. And I know you mentioned the inquiry being huge, like en engaging students and asking, I like that you said real questions. Real questions that mean something to them. And investigating those sources as well as having dialogue.
I love also just the idea of building habits of democracy. So how do teachers, I mean, what have you found in the research or how have you, how have you learned about. What specific practices may be things that, that teachers can do to kind of implement or, or bring about some of this learning for students?
Sarah Burnham: Yeah. Um, so, um, first I think it means centering student voice and like not just a buzz buzzword, but like in a way that's like real and consistent. Um, so creating classroom environments where students' opinions, questions, and lived experiences actually help shape, um, what happens in the room. Um, and that can be really uncomfortable.
And I think that also requires some self-reflection on the part of the teachers of like, do I feel okay with being this flexible in the classroom? Um, and but they also kind of need, again, their, uh, administrators to support them in making some of these choices. Um. Uh, in some of circle's research, and Ill be, these are with kind of older grades, but having that shared decision making framework, like participatory budgeting has been really effective in students feeling like they have a voice in kind of what happens in the classroom and what happens at their school.
Um, so that is really kind of centering student voice, um, and. Um, we've also heard that like having, um, adjusted materials can also, um, like adjusted materials to reflect kind of, um, student um, experiences in the classroom can also be really helpful. So, um. Like, uh, if it's, if they feel, if teachers feel uneasy discussing things, um, like they can ask for help to do so, um, and making sure that they feel okay to ask for help.
Um, and having kind of robust professional development is also really important. Um, and, um. Yeah. So for teachers, like it's, it's kind of like they're not just delivering content, they're also kind of shaping students' experiences of community, um, and kind of of democracy when they're trying, when they're doing this shared decision making in the classroom, if that's, um, an avenue do they decide to, uh, pursue.
Um, and yeah, so it means kinda doing a lot of self-reflection and then also feeling okay with. Exploring some of those more uncomfortable or uneasy kind of pieces that either about themselves or about kind of history, um, at large.
Lindsay Lyons: Love the different components of, of what you shared. What I really latched onto my like scholarly student voice brain was like, ooh.
Shared decision making structures. I love that. Are you, have you seen in the research the, like an example that you could share around either a class-based decision making structure, like something that you would invite students into to like. Help make a decision around, or even, I know you said upper grades, even if it's like a school based decision making structure, like an advisory council or anything.
Um, anything that you've come across that, that feels either interesting to you or just like you've, you've seen it come up in the research and, and wanted to share it?
Sarah Burnham: Yeah, so I can actually, so I wasn't, I'm not involved in the, um. Illinois kind of democracy school project as much as my colleagues. Um, but there was a big participatory budgeting, um, project in the Illinois Civic hub schools where, um, there were, they highlighted a couple of, um, high schools, um, where they were given like a small amount of money.
Um. And they were thinking about kind of what students needed. So, um, there was one, um, school where, um, they, uh, used the money to create a resource closet, um, for students. So, um, things like, um, clothes, um, hygiene supplies or food. Um, so students like basic needs could be met. Um, so that was one way that that kind of showed up in one of the high schools that they worked with.
Um, there was another, um, school that they did a similar project with participatory budgeting, um, where they looked at, um, students. Like students when they were like divided into, um, groups, um, especially with like different like abilities, they came up with like different ideas. Um, and then they had like, and this is also part and parcel with the participatory budgeting process of like generating ideas and then voting on some of the things.
But it was really interesting some of the ideas that came up. Um, of like new speakers having a coffee bar, um, having a digital media room. Um, ultimately that particular school, um, chose to set up like a calming room, um, so students could feel like comfortable and safe in their school. Um, but yeah, it like having students, like having their ideas heard, even if they weren't voted on.
I think it's still a very generative process for the students.
Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. Thank you for those concrete examples. I love those. And especially as a former high school teacher and, and thinking through the lens of like maybe a principal or someone who's listening to this from the high school lens, oh, I wanna measure student's sense of belonging.
That's gonna be a metric for our success. How do I do that? Well, I open up the floor for conversations and ideas like this. And if we aren't gonna go for a particular idea, someone nominated, we at least get back to them and say, I think that's one of the components of like Laura Lundy's, four pieces of voices.
Like, you gotta like get back to 'em and like let them know why, why we didn't choose something. Um, and I, I love that. So, such clear examples like of what can come out of inviting students into that process. I think I've even seen in as young as first grade in the student of voice literature that like even just co-designing the classroom space can be something, right?
Like, well, how you know it, there's like a weird impediment to like how you come into the classroom and hang up your stuff in your cubby and like how do we redesign that or. I need a calming space. How could we make that happen? Um, just last night, my, my kid was like, I, we have a corner in our preschool where I don't feel mad because you could just squeeze a stuffy.
And I was like, I love that. Would you like to make that at home? And he was like, we, we can do that. What? Yes, like just the tiniest things sometimes are just so valuable. So I appreciate your concrete examples and I think to transition to, to family life at home, I, I think. A lot of families or a lot of educators actually wear kind of two hats where they're like kind of parenting or supporting a young person in some capacity in their families and they're like, yeah, I do this at school, but maybe I don't think about bringing it home.
Or How could I bring it home? Or someone could like, share this episode with a family member, the of their student. Um, how can families also support? So we kind of have this dual support from both school and home. We have this kind of partnership around civic engagement. Any recommendations you have for families?
Sarah Burnham: Yeah, so I think that's a great point. And I think that like, you know, civic education is kind of also happening like all the time. Like I think a lot of times we think it like happens in schools like no, it's happened like all the time. Like when you're going to the grocery store and like even just like returning like.
The carriage like that is still like making things like better and easier for the other, um, folks at the grocery store. Um, but like, yeah, families are a huge part of the picture. Um, so, um, more often than not, young people are usually getting information from their immediate family members. Um, so, uh, seeing their, uh.
Parents or even their, or just caregivers talking about local issues, voting, attending different community events, or just having, um, like thoughtful conversations about what's happening in the world. Like young people are noticing that. Um, and they can see that like, Hey, this is something that matters to my community.
So what can parents do, um, or any family member do, like an older sibling, an aunt or an uncle of like just. Helping them volunteer or even just like taking your kid with you to go vote and see what the process looks like. Right. It's like it's, uh, at least, uh, when I was voting in Somerville a couple months ago, like it was pretty easy.
Everybody was so friendly and like the stickers are like so much fun to get. Um, I currently have a collection of I voted stickers, um, just like pasted on one of our cabinets. Um, and like. Young people are pick up on these things. They pick up on this. And, um, having family support is just really important.
Um, and then it's also kind of, especially before they turn 18, is like reinforcing those ideas, like of participating in democracy. So doing like, like bake sales, um, or just like going to like some of the afterschool, um, programming things. Um, or, um, modeling even just, uh, modeling, respectful disagreement during dinner conversations that can also.
But also be really effective in helping, uh, young people understand how to have those kinds of disagreements and to respectfully disagree. Um, because I think that's also something else that can come up in the classroom is how do we have those res, the respectful disagreements. And I think that's a great place to kind of see what's happening at home and then model that kind of in the classroom.
Um, so. I think like families, like don't need to be experts obviously, in this work. Um, but they kind of need to be open and engaged and kind of willing to show like their kids or, um, other family members that their voice matters, um, kind of now and not just when they turn 18 and they can vote.
Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh.
I love that you said that because that is consistently one of the kind of points of frustration of schooling as we always say. Like, oh, we're preparing them for this future time. And it's like, no, they right now they can do that right now. Yeah.
Sarah Burnham: Yeah. One of my colleagues like keep, like, keep saying in these conversations with civic education, we can't expect students to practice all these things at 18 when they haven't gotten any experience with it.
Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. And, and we can't instill this idea in students that their voice matters and their ideas have impact. If, if we're not actually like doing that now, right. They're gonna be like, I guess only adults have that. 'cause you keep telling me to wait. I am so fascinated by all of that. You have shared, I'm sure there's so much more to that you have come across in the researcher.
Is there anything that we, before we get to kind of our lightning round questions, is there anything that we did not talk about that you wanted to bring up? I.
Sarah Burnham: Um, I don't think so. I talked a lot about things and I hope some of this was helpful
Lindsay Lyons: For sure. Um, yeah, no, for sure. It is. And I, and I think one of the things that people like is usually at the end we ask, uh, our first lightning round question, well, I'll just get to it, I guess is like some sort of first step.
So like an action I can take today or tomorrow. Upon ending the episode and being like, I wanna implement something. I know we talked about a range of things, both at home and in school. What do you think feels like an attainable, kind of like starter people could do soon?
Sarah Burnham: Um, yeah, so I at least, 'cause I mentioned being in Somerville, I know like our.
Municipal elections are coming up. So looking up who is running and what they stand for. So, um, there's been a lot of talk about funding the schools, um, in Somerville, um, and also libraries. So thinking about who your local representatives are, who's running, and find out what they stand for in terms of like fair compensation, um, and then public, like public goods funding, and then.
Like that also feeds into some of the, what I said before is like when teachers are feeling supported, um, it can create the kind of classrooms where students are empowered to ask these big questions. Um, and I know it might be. Harder for like, not cities, but it seems like a lot, at least in my experience, people who are running for office like are fine with like talking to you, like just sending like an email.
And if they're not fine with talking to you via email, then maybe you've focused your efforts to somebody else who's running.
Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I love that. I have a, a, a colleague, I'm pretty sure this was Cara, who, you know, Cara Pranov, who, who was saying, you know, actually all of my, like my kids and my niece and my nephews, like, they know and have talked to all of the people in their, um, like local, like people that represent them because it is possible to do, it is attainable.
You just have to like reach out. So I love that you brought that up. Um, and I, I really love this idea of like. Considering not just who's writing, but I I think you also mentioned like funding and I am so fascinated when you even hand over, like the hypothetical question of like, if you were to control the budget, where would you allocate money to?
Anyone from high school all the way to like a preschooler, right? I mean, the preschooler probably say like toys, which is the usual answer I get. But like, other than toys, where would you spend money? Um, but making sure that people have. What they need as kind of that lens and through line is like, where do you think people have a need?
Where do you, right. I think that's such a great conversation starter. 'cause every kid's gonna have a different answer. And so if you're at home, cool, you learn more about your kid and what they care about. And if you're in a school system, like, okay, in this class we had like 25 different answers. So how do we, how do people actually decide where to, like, that's such a lovely entry point into, um, conversations about civics and government and, and all of that.
Um, so I love that that lens of like, who are the leaders? Right? How does the funding get allocated? And then there's such a beautiful, um, kind of inquiry map that you can start there to dive into all of the structures and ways decisions are made.
Sarah Burnham: Exactly. Always inquiry all the time.
Lindsay Lyons: That's right. Um, okay.
This one is kind of just for fun, but it can be research based, but also just in your life in general. What are you learning about lately?
Sarah Burnham: Um, so I've actually, this is research based, so it's not like as fun or exciting, um, but it's fun and exciting to me 'cause I'm learning. Um, I've been attending some weekly webinars about research practice partnerships, um, or RPPs.
So they're like collaborations between, um, education agencies and researchers. Um. So there's like, they've been doing some short webinars, especially they've been kind of over lunch, so I don't really like talk. Um, but um, learning about like what makes a successful research practice partnership, I think like, uh, people may be more familiar with like the U Chicago, um, consortium where they primarily partner with, um, Chicago Public Schools, um, to, um, increase or improve, um, different aspects of, uh.
Just schooling of like, I think there's like computer science, education, um, reading and literacy, but they're like really purposeful, um, partnerships that people like Foster. Um, so I'm learning more about that. Um, but it seems like a very powerful way to connect evidence to poli policy decisions like in real time.
Lindsay Lyons: What that is fascinating. I have not heard of this, so I need to investigate. Thank you for that. Um, and then finally, how can our audience connect with you? Continue to follow your research. Check out what Circle is doing all the things.
Sarah Burnham: Yeah. So, um, I am on Blue Sky, um, as Bernham Burglar, that is my last name with burglar added to the end of it.
Um, I had been meeting about, I've been meeting to be better about using Blue Sky. Um. You can also follow me on LinkedIn as SL Burnham. Um, for more formal connections, you can email me at my Tufts email address. It's just, uh, sarah dot [email protected]. Um, and then for all circle research, which is not just on civic education, there's many aspects of young people civic life.
Um, I think we just posted something about, uh, rural turnout, um, and also youths connect, uh, young people's connection to social movements. Um, you can check out circle.ts.edu and there's a ton there. And you can also find more about some of the things I was talking about, especially with the participatory budgeting, um, project and some of the other work, um, in Illinois.
Lindsay Lyons: Amazing. Dr. Burnham, thank you so, so much for talking to us today.
Sarah Burnham: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.