Curricular and Pedagogical Possibilities of Digital Filmmaking: Unraveling and Provoking New Forms of Thought for Educators

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Multimodal Literacies, Performance Theory, and Digital Technologes

Abstract

The literature on digital filmmaking in teacher education shows no documentation of the ambivalences, contradictions, and unconscious processes discussed elsewhere regarding such productions. This three-year inquiry involved pre-service teachers at the end of a concurrent education program who produced digital films of critical incidents in their practice teaching. Data included digital films, pre- and post-production materials, and focus group transcriptions. Analysis of the materials, including multimodal layers of digital films, was carried out using interpretive lenses of psychoanalysis, film theory and critical pedagogy. Findings reveal the importance of digital filmmaking as a means to encounter and express understandings that resist symbolization, but raises questions about the possibilities for transformative and critical education work, when intense emotions arise.

Authors

• Avril Aitken, Bishop's University

• Linda Radford, University of Ottawa