Pandemic Meaning-Making: Messing Toward Motet

• In Event: Theorizing Multimodality Through Children's and Youths' Perceptions and Experiences

Abstract

Objectives:
In this child-parent research (Authors 9 & 10, 2020), three adolescents theorize about their meaning-making experiences during a three-month stay-at-home mandate. In highlighting understandings of their literacy practices during COVID-19, the adolescents showcase how they engaged in complex processes vis-à-vis directing, understanding, and adjusting their activities. In so doing, the research team expands the possibilities for youth-generated theory.

Theoretical Perspectives
This child-parent research builds upon a critical dialectical pluralist (CDP) methodology (Onwuegbuzie & Frels, 2013), a participatory research method that supports an intentional privileging of the teen-as-co-researcher at every stage of the inquiry. Thus, a CDP approach conceptually grounds this collaborative autoethnographic, child-parent research because, in such a line of inquiry, youth participation exists at all phases, from a study’s design through its dissemination and presentation.

Methods/Data Sources
For this inquiry, the adolescents chose to explore the context and contours of a particular meaning-making experience during the pandemic: Author 11 (then age 17) analyzed her dancing school experiences; Author 12 (then age 15) examined her band class; and Author 13 (then age 13) explored her collaborative math experiences. In addition to over 8 hours of meetings in April, 2020, the 3 teens and their parent researchers met again in June, 2020 for 6 hours, and July, 2020 for an additional 6 hours to discuss their multimodal meaning making. The adolescents engaged in 4 writing sessions (alone) and the 5 of us engaged in four, 60-90 minute collaborative discussions. The teens asynchronously wrote and synchronously talked through their ideas about motet meaning making during COVID-19. They used meeting notes and their written words to engage in the initial round of individual coding, noting trends in the data and creating color-coded themes. The team of 5 then collaborated to create common categories that cut across the coding (time, frustration, space), and the adolescents discussed ways that their codes could be combined (i.e. “loss” was folded into “frustration”) into themes. The adolescent researchers conceptualized how time, frustration, and space also could be represented as vectors, showcasing the dimensionality and complexity of their experiences.

Findings
The musical form of a motet provides a metaphor that three adolescents used to theorize their meaning-making experiences during the stay-at-home order. The adolescents determined that time, frustration, and space were overarching themes that captured the essence of working alone, and then together, in messy, orchestrated online ensembles. These themes pulsed across the adolescents’ meaning-making experiences and infiltrated their emotions, social interactions, and sense of self. The adolescents understood what was missing, what was lost, and what needed to be created. The adolescents’ theorizing helped them to put the pandemic in its place.

Significance
Research that privileges youth feedback creates an important space for their voices to resonate across and inform policies (Authors 9, 10, 11, 12, & 13, 2020). In this research, youth voices guided conversations about research traditionally relegated to the purview of adult scholars. This presentation, therefore, showcases research that creates a dialogic space wherein adolescents and their parents co-constructed meaning, contexts, and understandings.

Authors

• Mary Beth Schaefer, Saint John's University

• Sandra Schamroth Abrams, University of South Africa

• Molly Kurpis

• Charlotte Abrams

• Madeline Abrams