Toward Critical Participatory Literacies Through Digital Video Composition in an Elementary Literacy Capstone Course

• In Event: 14.041 - Toward Justice in Literacy Teacher Education: Critical Literacies in Elementary and Secondary Methods Courses

Abstract

In this presentation, I explain how I use digital video assignments to foster critical participatory literacy practices in a literacy capstone course for preservice elementary teachers. My approach to the Literacy Capstone was pretty conventional when I began teaching the course; however, in a gradual effort to decenter myself as the sole authority in the classroom—to walk the walk of critical literacy—I began shifting toward digital video (author and colleague, colleague and author) and involved the class in decisions about assessments for the course. My work towards critical participatory literacies is based on three fundamental assumptions that I describe in detail in the first part of my presentation:
• All students deserve chances to acquire “powerful literacies” (Finn, 2009)
• Design (Janks, 2010) is a powerful literacy, easily accessed via digital video composition
• Creating a participatory classroom culture (Jenkins et al., 2006) requires a problem-posing educational approach (Freire, 1970).
In the next section, I discuss three digital video assignments that build on each other in my course to place my students and me on the path to problem-posing education, a classroom participatory culture, and powerful and critical participatory literacies: (1) Digital Storytelling with Structured Literature Circles; (2) Group Digital Presentations; (3) Critical Literacy Digital Videos. My presentation concludes with a discussion of the possibilities, tensions, and limits of our work toward critical participatory literacies in the literacy capstone course. In particular, I discuss the tensions and contradictions inherent in trying to turn a graded, professor-directed course into a participatory, problem-solving space where critical literacy skills are also fostered. This discussion also identifies technical, pedagogical, and political concerns related to establishing participatory cultures, identifying audiences for teacher candidates’ work, time allotted to digital compositions, critical analysis of visual texts, and the impending changes to literacy education associated with the Common Core Standards.

Author

• Jessica Zacher Pandya, California State University - Long Beach