ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on student-led pedagogy, and examines the ways in which young people can become actively and creatively engaged in project-based research. It describes, in a replicable way, the student participant-researchers (SPR) model used in the Critical Connections project. The SPR model used for the Critical Connections project, Illuminate', was developed in response to a two-year ethnography on school exclusion. An Illuminate project is thus a delicate balance between stakeholder briefs and student-led research. The SPRs then used a research planning form to decide who, when, where and how they would find and interview people. In many ways, the Illuminate model produces what Cummins et al. describes as identity texts. Because people learn the techniques of inquiry-based learning, Illuminate SPRs could be said to be developing academic-linguistic capital. This chapter outlines the potential of student engagement in alternative pedagogies.
