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Youth Voices on the Sponsorship of Literacy in an Emerging Participatory Culture in a School Setting

Sat, April 18, 2:45 to 4:15pm, Sheraton, Floor: Ballroom Level, Sheraton V

Abstract

Objectives
This paper presents an analysis of peer interviews of young people who took part in Community Connections, a project-based high school English class organized around the principles of connected learning. The focus is on young peoples’ interpretation of the mixture of elements of traditional schooling with more expansive literacy practices that link to student interests and to the community.

Perspectives
We draw on two notions of literacy to interpret the youths’ experience: sponsorship and participatory culture. Brandt’s (1998) notion of sponsors of literacy highlights ways that access to literacy is gated by various institutions, including schools. For Brandt, sponsors are “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way” and “set the terms for access to literacy and wield powerful incentives for compliance and loyalty” (p.168). A contrasting view of literacy is evident in Jenkins’ (2006) notion of participatory culture. For Jenkins, new technologies render access to many forms of participation in literacy practice more open and position young people as writers and producers and helpers of one another.

Methods
Data analyzed are from a youth participatory research study (Sabo Flores, 2007) embedded with a larger study of interest-related learning as part of the MacArthur-funded Connected Learning Research Network. Along with adults in the network, youth are studying the dynamics and impacts of today’s changing media ecology on learning (Ito et. al., 2013). As part of the study, youth interviewed peers at five different programs that use new media in school and community settings (n = 88 interviews across 5 program sites).

Data Sources
We drew on coded data from 18 peer interviews from one site, Community Connections, a writing program in a public Title I high school. A team of coders used a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2000) to inductively develop codes for interviews that focused on youths’ experience of the program and their interests. Codebooks were iteratively refined as part of reliability testing until adequate interrater reliability was established.

Results
Brandt’s notion of sponsorship helped illuminate ways that participants in Community Connections oriented to elements of the course that resembled traditional schooling, pointing specifically to obligations to complete assignments, grades, and the fact that the course met requirements for a senior project needed for students to graduate. At the same time, peer interviews revealed aspects of the course that positioned youth as contributors to their community and helped expand networks related to their existing interest-related pursuits.
Overall, Community Connections students felt the course’s unique mix of choice and obligation-based activities gave them targeted and intentional opportunities to explore their identities, develop expertise on topics of interest, and improve in academic writing.

Scientific or scholarly significance
This analysis reveals ways that schools are not foreclosed to opportunities for interest-related learning and that small but significant adjustments can make a crucial difference in the experiences students have in traditional school spaces.

Authors