Mike Rifino

Mike Rifino is a first-year doctoral student in Human Development at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Drawing on cultural-historical activity theory and recent advances in Vygotskian scholarship, specifically, Stetsenko’s notion of Transformative Activist Stance, his research interests focus on the transformative potential of critical theoretical teaching-learning in public secondary and post-secondary education in regard to student agency. Throughout his undergraduate journey, he has gained deep experience with peer mentoring, having worked as a research assistant for the Peer Activist Learning Community (PALC), as well as a mentor for a college readiness program for underrepresented students. He is currently researching ways how students and faculty in PALC collaboratively investigate and redefine student agency to create an activist learning community.