“They Hear It From Me”: An Emic Perspective on Assessing Critical Digital Multimodal Composing

• In Event: Examining Student Learning Processes and Teacher Classroom Assessment Practices

Abstract

This five-month ethnographic case study explores a secondary student’s emic perspective (Hellmich et al., 2021) on assessing their own critical digital multimodal compositions (DMCs). The DMCs, used as a pedagogical tool to foreground voices, reclaim identities, and take a stance on social issues, were produced in an English Language Arts class in Western Canada. Social semiotics (Kress, 2010), the concept of action (Arendt, 2018) and transgressive pedagogies (hooks, 1994) informed our thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021), which highlights judicious sourcing, relatable connections, intentional use of communicative repertoires, and audience awareness as relevant criteria informing her critical DMC design. The study emphasizes the importance of valuing youth’s emic perspectives to repair harms associated with etic approaches to classroom assessment.

Authors

• Jonathan Feitosa Ferreira, University of British Columbia

• Maureen Kendrick, University of British Columbia