"What's Happening in the Story": Creating Intertextual Tensions for Critical Consciousness

• In Event: 46.077 - Pushing Beyond the Project: (Re)Defining Justice Through Community Engagement

Abstract

In “What’s happening in the story:” Creating Intertextual Tensions For Critical Consciousness, Presenter #3 will discuss data from her year-long ethnographic case study of four adolescent youth who participated in a critical service-learning project. In this paper, presenter 1 offers two theoretical proposals to expand understandings of literacy in service-learning projects. The first is project-relevant literature and the second is community-relevant literature. Project-relevant literature refers to readings (e.g., YA novels), which are thematically connected to the issue under investigation by way of the characters’ narratives or the plot focus, whereas community-relevant literature refers to the active juxtaposition of those readings by students with their own community as text (broadly conceived). Presenter #3 will explore data from her study where students’ active juxtaposition of YA novels and community—as text—created generative tensions for social transformation. The researcher asks, “What role does literacy play in social action in critical service-learning projects?” and “How is critical consciousness informed by the intertextual connections of lived and fictional realities?” It is not uncommon for service-learning classes to embrace relevant literature to investigate pressing social issues, but here, the goal will be to consider the interaction between student, text, and context, and similar to the work of Sims Bishop (1990), consider how project-relevant readings might serve as mirrors and windows for community change.
In order to explore the literacy, learning and participation within this critical service-learning project, the researcher considered the intersection of two theoretical frames: 1. New Literacy Studies which focuses on literacy practices and events within contextualized and situated spaces (e.g., Barton, 1991; Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Gee, 2000; Street, 1984); and 2. Bloome and Egan-Robertson’s (1993) concept of intertextuality. Collectively, both theories supported an investigation of reading in context and the act of juxtaposing texts (broadly conceived) in these engagements.
In an interest to look closely at the experiences of these youth, their teacher, and their community partner, the researcher designed an ethnographic case study. In order to capture the perspectives of the people in this study, the researcher’s methods consisted of participant observations, one-hour semi-structured interviews of teachers, students and community partners, field notes, and artifacts (i.e. teacher handouts, texts, student journals) over the course of an academic school year.
Butin (2003) noted that while there is evidence that learning occurs within service-learning projects, there is a dearth of research documenting how the learning actually occurs within these projects. Similarly, there are few studies that explore the social nature of literacy practices within these projects and how literacy becomes a social practice employed by students and teachers. While sociocultural theories of literacy abound, their application within the context of service-learning literature is lacking. The paper will connect these theories to a ninth grade service-learning project in a large urban high school in a mid-sized Midwestern city and consider the implications of identifying project-relevant literature, particularly as these selections make use of local and state-directed objectives.

Author

• Emily Annette Nemeth, Denison University