Examining Lived Experiences as Action Verbs of School-Sanctioned Literacies Across Social-Participatory Youth Coresearcher Methodologies

• In Event: Continuing the Conversation: Enacting Participatory and Social Justice-Oriented Methodologies in Working With Youth and Teachers

Abstract

The author presents a preliminary finding from an ongoing interpretative study (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007) examining how youth enact literacies learning, construct identities, and engage civic imaginaries across their artistic practices and artifacts associated with hip-hop. The author uses “social-participatory youth co-researcher methodologies” (Marciano & Watson, 2011; Watson, 2013) to involve youth as co-researchers in data collection.
Theoretical Framework
This inquiry is framed using sociocultural theories of learning that involve constructing literacy learning beyond a solo cognitive act, such as reading, speaking, or writing (Street, 2007), toward a social view of literacy. Literacies learning in such a view entails “more than reading, writing, speaking and listening; literacy involve[s] the practices in which these processes are embedded” (Moje, 1996, p. 175). Less understood is the ways in which youth navigate understandings of their literacies learning beyond standardized curriculum, yet built upon their knowledge(s)/lived experiences/cultural assets as strengths and academic literacies.
Modes of Inquiry/Data Sources
A social-participatory methodology refigures interviews from one-way researcher-monopolized talk, toward individual/communal meaning making. Specifically, data collection included open-ended, in-depth, one-on-one “listening-party” interviews with ten participants, allowing youth to share experiences and meaning making of creative and artistic artifacts and practices bound to their lived experiences with hip-hop; and open-ended, in-depth, “jam-session cipher focus groups” with seven youth participants. In remixing interviews as “listening-party” interviews and focus groups as “jam-session cipher focus groups,” the author contextualizes the interview beyond a singular space of exclusivity enacted by the researcher (Kvale, 200), taking up Enciso’s (2007) call for researchers to “break prevalent interpretive frames and invent new uses of language through which a frame of reference may be built to include the possibility of unspeakable knowledge” (p. 65).
Preliminary Findings
A listening-party interview involved an extended exchange between two youth, Riana and Melvin, and the author. The author asked Melvin
Um, so, this is kind of a what-if, but what’s a time in school associated, like, is there a typical, like, English is one subject area we think about, like where you could see them bringing in something hip-hop related and it would go well with the lesson.
Riana restated the question, asserting her co-researcher identity: “So I guess like what, what kind of classes could you incorporate hip-hop into?
Melvin responded: A.P. English literature […]
Collaborative communal meaning across the listening-party interview gives a shout-out to multiple lived experiences as the author affirms Riana and Melvin’s identities, including the experiences of their uncle spinning records in the basement. Moreover, across the listening-party interview, youth’s identities emerge as galvanizing learners and learning, engaging such action verbs as deconstructing, critiquing, and having an awareness of audience – attributes valued as co-researchers, and as academic literacies in Common Core standards.
Significance
The timeliness and significance of considering youth’s roles as co-researchers for teachers, researchers, and policymakers is in building upon and extending understandings of youth’s knowledge(s)/lived experiences/cultural assets as strengths (Winn, 2008), and as academic literacies (Morrell, 2007).

Author

• Vaughn W.M. Watson, Michigan State University