Context and Participants and Data Sources

• In Event: Academic Upgrading Students Remember their Pasts and Dream for their Futures through Photovoice

Abstract

Context and Participants
The collective inquiries we document took place as part of a critical literacy curriculum in a mandatory English skills-building course for ethnically diverse students, ages 19-59, each of whom have experienced prior school struggles or interrupted formal schooling. The course is situated in an academic upgrading program at a community college, operated as a publicly-funded initiative for adults who have experienced disruptions to their formal schooling or who need to build academic skills required for postsecondary education. The program involves a streamed curriculum, focused on workplace literacies and basic skills, rather than more holistic, culturally relevant, or critical approaches recommended by scholars (e.g., Janks, 2010; Luke, 2018).

Participating students, ages 19-59, each experienced prior school struggles or interrupted formal schooling, which necessitated that they enroll in the academic upgrading program before entering the mainstream certification and degree programs at their college. Together, we explore how students use critical literacy to document moments of change in their lives through multimodal, arts-based activities. The goal is to improve students’ learning and engagement in issues of identity, power, and change by positioning them as co-constructors of knowledge.

Data sources
Data include classroom artifacts such as photographs and audio recordings of small-group and whole-group conversations, and students’ written work, such as artist statements and “I remember” poems (Brainard, 1970/2000). Alongside their creative writing pieces, students took personal photographs of unique and commonplace moments, which they combined creatively in the photovoice projects, which our six student co-presenters will share in this symposium.

Authors

• William Edwards, University of Toronto

• Melissa Arasin, University of Toronto