African Immigrants’ Civic Identities, Learning, and Action, and Negotiations of Citizenship Across Digital Media Technology Contexts

• In Event: Roundtable Session 113
  In Roundtable Session: Civic Learning Across Multiple Contexts

Abstract

African immigrant youth in the U.S. negotiate participatory cultures of online civic life, such as Facebook and blogs, across (in)formal teaching and learning opportunities. Participating in multiple forms of digital technologies encourages nuanced civic identities and engagements amid new conceptualizations of citizenship. This paper focuses on second- and 1.5-generation African immigrant youth’s civic identities, learning, and action, and negotiations of citizenship across digital media technologies. Implications are drawn for (in)formal learning opportunities and contexts, and evolving pedagogies of teacher educators and K-12 teachers to support civic education through recognizing and building on civic learning and action in participatory media technologies to help serve the public good, shape U.S. civil society, and stay connected internationally.

Authors

• Michelle G. Knight, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Vaughn W.M. Watson, Michigan State University

• Ashley M. Taylor, Teachers College, Columbia University