“We’re Kinda Stuck With These Portrayals”: Youth Critiquing and Revising Media Depictions of Adolescence/ts

• In Event: Examining and Reimagining Constructions of Adolescence/ts, Sexuality, and Gender in Education

Abstract

Purpose
Though central stakeholders in education, secondary-aged people’s perspectives are among the most neglected in educational research and practice (Bautista et al., 2013). Related, youth rarely see themselves—as youth—in curriculum, and even rarer, have opportunities to speak back to how they are depicted as an age-based demographic. Thus situated, this presentation reports the findings of a study that examined secondary students’ experiences of a curriculum that invited them to critique and revise media representations of adolescence/ts, age, and adulthood.

Theoretical Framework
Theoretically, this study is framed by the “Youth Lens” (Authors, 2015), which is an analytic approach to textual activity (reading, viewing) that focuses on age, adolescence/ts, and adulthood. In this way, this framework explores how texts uphold and/or subvert dominant systems of reasoning related to youth, much like a gender lens examines how texts produce ideas of gender normativity. With few exceptions (e.g., Sarigianides, 2019), to date most of the Youth Lens scholarship has emphasized analysis of texts, discourses, and policies and has given less attention to what happens when secondary students engage in critiques of the construct of adolescence.

Methods & Data Sources/Analysis
Methodologically, this ethnographic study focused on secondary students’ meaning-making, perspectives, and experiences. Data sources include a) curricular artifacts; b) transcripts of semi-structured interviews; c) fieldnotes and analytic memos from participant observations; and d) student work. Data analysis focused on instances whereby students consumed, produced, and/or discussed texts related to age, adult(ism), and adolescence/ts. These events were coded and analyzed for how they 1) revealed students’ emergent understandings of adolescence as a cultural construct; 2) expanded students’ repertoire of textual consumption and production; and 3) produced possibilities for students to engage beyond the curriculum (e.g., political activism).

Findings
Overall, the findings demonstrate how explicitly teaching about adolescence as a construct facilitated students’ reading of the “word” (media literacy) and the “world” (societal structures) (Morrell, 2008). First, the unit helped students develop/deepen understandings of adolescence as a cultural construct. A second finding was the students’ development of understanding of ways in which media—and institutions like schools—are constitutive with producing adolescence. For instance, students explained how certain transgressive behaviors (e.g., alcohol use) are often framed as “teen problems” but statistically are more prevalent among adults. Third, students conceptualized and enacted new ways of being teens in the world that pushed back against deficit depictions of youth.

Significance
As noted, youth are often marginalized in the adult-centric world of schooling. This study advances knowledge of how youth take up critiques of adolescence/ts, which currently lacks a well-developed empirical base. Given the conference’s theme of expanding understandings of intersectional identities, this paper inserts an in-depth exploration of age as a category of social representation, which is often overlooked. In this way, this paper offers an important critique to the commonsensical systems of reasoning that contribute to the governance of youth.

Authors

• Robert Petrone, University of Missouri

• Ermal Hoxha, University of Missouri