Developing and Practicing Public Voice: Civic Agency in an International Videoconference

• In Event: Fostering Students' Political Engagement

Abstract

This paper examines secondary students’ civic agency during an international videoconference between multiethnic and multi-religion students from Macedonia and Utah. The videoconference served as the culminating event for semester-long problem-based inquiry projects that were developed by all students. The videoconference provided an opportunity for students to share their action plans, which proposed methods of addressing the community problems based on their inquiry. The findings of this study focus on three aspects of the videoconference, while students discussed same-sex marriage: public voice development, audience, and civic agency. The study demonstrated that the project and videoconference shifted students' positionalities and shaped their public voice.

Author

• J. Spencer Clark, Utah State University