High School Students' Use of Languaging for Enacting Relational Agency in Extracurricular Events

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Languaging Queerness, Race, and Relational Agency

Abstract

Previous research indicate that students benefit from participation in extracurricular activities through interactions with peers in ways that enhance their relational agency. Drawing on languaging theory, this study examined high school students’ use of writing and reflection to portray their languaging actions for interactions with peers in extracurricular activities served to enact relational agency. Analysis of students writing and reflection indicated that students employed languaging for enacting supportive, caring relations; enacting emotions; using “insider language” to coordinate embodied actions; and enacting personhood through languaging. These results suggest the value of having students write about their languaging in extracurricular experiences to enhance their awareness of development in relational agency through languaging.

Author

• Richard W. Beach, University of Minnesota