Becoming Designers of Social Futures: Youth Research, Production, and Civic Engagement in Urban Classrooms

• In Event: 52.082 - Multiliteracies, Connected Learning, and Opportunities for Equity: Exploring Key Principles of Literacies Research in the 21st Century

Abstract

A growing body of researchers have documented the positive outcomes of using digital tools in literacy activities that center youth voice and production (Ito et. al, 2009; Morrell 2003 ) However, more research is needed to better understand the processes that support these outcomes, what they mean for non-dominant youth inside of urban school settings, and how teachers are developing pedagogical strategies to support young people in these endeavors. This paper aims to provide a more comprehensive view of non-dominant youth and their literacy practices,s upon connected learning (Ito et. al., 2013) and multiliteracies (New London Group, 1995) paradigms to construct a response to the troublesome discourses that arise from what Graff (1979) named over three decades ago as the “literacy myth,” or a model that ascribes power, transformation, and emancipation to a neutralized, Western conception of literacy that discounts the diverse contexts that literacy events are produced under.

This paper attempts to answer these questions: What memories do non-dominant youth have of their experiences of literacy, and what can be learned from these? 2. How do youth whose literacies have been relegated to a subordinated status use literacy to navigate the world across multiple contexts, both in person and online? 3. How do young people produce and consume texts in environments that support textual production, and how might an understanding of this be useful for classroom teachers?

Using a case-study approach across three sites, the author draws from qualitative data points collected across six months and includes observations, interviews, and artifact analysis. The five participants for this study were all young men of color ranging from ages 14-21, self-identified as artists, and struggled academically inside of traditional classroom settings. However, each of them at the time of this study was supported by their peers and adults in producing a variety of texts, both print and digital, inside of school. Work that they took up included youth participatory action research projects (Cammarota & Fine, 2010), film production, and community photojournalism initiatives. This author specifically examines how students drew upon experiences with a range of literacies to later compose and re-compose a self, and draws specific attention to the evolution of students’ identity development as it relates to to what Freire calls conscientization (1998), or a development of critical consciousness arising through a process of action and reflection.

This project draws connections between critical pedagogy, (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Giroux, 1988) culturally relevant pedagogy, (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and New Literacy Studies (New London Group, 1996) to address the potential for creating transformative experiences for urban students in classrooms. Drawing on Lave’s (1996) concept of “identities in practice”, this study analyzes how participants became “different kinds of persons” (157) while engaged with production-centered curricula, and how this “becoming” shaped what they knew and practiced later on inside of school.

This paper offers a counter-narrative to dominant accounts that posit that young men of color lack literacy skills. Instead, this paper suggests that pedagogies that support critical production within academic contexts can foster academic achievement, civic agency, and positive self-identity.

Author

• Danielle Filipiak, Teachers College, Columbia University