Negotiating With Artifacts: Participating in Civic Engagement Through the Embodied Exploration of Current Events

• In Event: Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Writing and Literacies SIG Roundtable 9. Developing Literacy Practices and Habits of Reflection: Media, Materials, and Meaning-Making

Abstract

Imploring for a school reform that embraced meeting the needs of the whole child, Dewey (1902) offered that these needs encompassed a wide range of the spectrum from intellectual to physical and social to emotional needs and much more. Instead of trying to fill students' mind like vessels à la “banking education” (Freire, 1970), Dewey urged for educators to instead spark students’ interests and nurture their curiosities-thereby cultivating inquiry, critical thinking and a community of collaborators and learners. This withness challenges both young people and educators to contribute and take an active role in exploring, identifying, shaping and negotiating ideas, meanings and relationships around self, citizenship and local/global community.

Through an ethnographic approach, this participatory observation includes informal group interviews, participant artifacts, and observations during the media literacy workshop that met once a week for nine months. The paper highlights how a group of youth engage with media (art, camera, text) to embody, analyze, and (re)produce news headlines and public issues that are affecting their local and global communities. Through the ethos of fostering a caring open space and perspectives of critical pedagogy, the youth in this study engaged with headlines (entitlement, ethics, equality, leadership) and used their engagements to nurture and embody their own meaning-making and understanding of the issues represented in the media. This embodiment of withness is a constructive way of integrating culturally relevant ideas, generating diverse conversations, fostering ownership and bridging the gap between the required educational standards, while meeting wants and needs of young people.

These experiences connected heavily to their relationship with self, adults (family, educators, community members), other young people (friends and classmates) and their (perceived) relationship with imagined audience (strangers). The engagement of media afforded opportunities for youth to enter into a critical dialogue with the script of the news that so often sets them apart as "other"-and these instances, when viewed through an affective lens, suggested ways of understanding the young people's identity narratives as being embodied and not held at a distance. From their animated responses-with their words, physical engagements with one another and non-verbal expressions (laughter, gasps)-also held meaning for how the youth were interpreting and engaging with the headlines.

As McLeod (2000) explains, the use of media, interpersonal communications, and participation in community enhance an active social, civic and political participation among youth. These participations in an active citizenship result in “synergy in terms of new power and energy that propels groups to greater innovation” (i.e., McLeod (2000), Zeldin et al. (2000)). Through it, young people can have not only better self-image and -perception about themselves, but they also have powerful effect and positive change within the communities that they interact. These engagements calls attention for young people to be given spaces where they could be heard; and more importantly, have others seriously reflect on young people’s fresh perspectives and diverse forms of (non)verbal expressions that contribute to the ongoing discussions and potential change in our communities.

Author

• Ahram Park, Teachers College, Columbia University