Cultivating Critical Consciousness Through Digital Video Inquiry

• In Event: Education and the Political: The Possibilities of Civic Education in an (Un)Democratic World

Abstract

As political participation across the globe grows increasingly contentious and accusations of “fake news” and “post-truth” politics rise, the how, where, and why of civic learning in schools are called into question (Kahlenberg & Janey, 2016). In contrast, multimodal practices such as digital video production continue to promote youth engagement and deliberation of social issues through dialogue, crowd-sourcing, and relationships (Goodman, 2003; Wargo & Clayton, 2018). Herein we examine the classroom-based approaches to digital video inquiry as a problem-posing antidote to traditional banking approaches to civic education (Freire, 2007). To forward this claim, we describe 2 classroom uses of digital video production for critical social inquiry, one setting a private, dual-language (Spanish/English) school in a major South American city, and the other a public school situated in an urban emergent Midwestern city of the US.

In both cases digital video inquiry opened up space for students to interrogate social structures and to drive their own coming-to-know process, a prerequisite for acting towards democracy and justice in their social context. Specifically, four moments of the filmmaking process were catalysts for students’ bourgeoning consciousness: formulating a question, experiencing the subject, selecting media elements, and crafting a narrative. The understandings that unfolded in these moments demonstrate student moves beyond banked knowledge about issues into a critical relationship with their topics of study and the communities affected.

We also must acknowledge that not every student experienced a sociopolitical awakening. In both settings, we have stories of students who elected to step away from democratic prodding to instead protect storylines that confirm existing worldviews and to forward stories that might be better received by audience members. Yet in more cases than not, digital video production invited students to authentically seek out diverse perspectives in order to best understand a chosen issue of social concern; consider those diverse perspectives in order to come to their own conclusions about significant social issues; and communicate their argument about the social issue to a real, public audience. Perhaps it is an unintentional byproduct, but there is evidence that this process contributes to students’ critical consciousness about inequality and power. Unlike the depoliticized rehearsals of many democratic pedagogies, digital video production asks students to take some kind of authentic, communicative stand about a social issue. Students are thus required to practice democratic skills while cultivating a sociopolitical consciousness about their issue. In that, digital video production does not merely teach about democracy. Rather, it embodies critical democratic practice, and perhaps more importantly, affords a kind of intellectual self-determination that allows students themselves to uncover social inequality as well as their own perspective on those inequalities. Such multimodal and embodied practices forge a path of political participation not easily allowed in other pedagogical and social spaces.

Authors

• Candance Doerr-Stevens, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

• Melissa L. Gibson, Marquette University