Rejecting Neutrality and Challenging Inequity: Fostering Critical Youth Civic Engagement Across Informal Learning Contexts

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 17

Session Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

This symposium highlights the work of an interdisciplinary group of researchers who are exploring the varied critical and multimodal literacy practices young people are leveraging to forge empowered political and civic identities in informal, out-of-school educational settings. The studies examine how young people from historically minoritized communities are rejecting the deficit-oriented ways that traditional civic structures often portray them and are creating transformative counter-stories through innovative forms of media production and annotation, participatory action research, and debate. They also analyze how educators and community organizers are challenging normative pressures to remain objective and neutral in their practice and are instead embracing practices of civic interrogation and innovation to honor the lived experiences of the young people with whom they work.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Macro-analysis of the social contexts of teaching and learning

Chairs

• Bettina Love

• Leigh Patel, University of California - Riverside

Papers

• Black Girl Civics: Engaging Black Girls in Research and Health Equity - Ginnie Logan, University of Colorado - Boulder; Ben Kirshner, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Thoughts on Fire: Performative Youth Debate as a Form of Critical Civic Interrogation - Nicole Mirra, Rutgers University

• Civic Writing on Invisible Walls: Annotation as Critical Interrogation - Antero Garcia, Stanford University; Jeremiah Holden Kalir, University of Colorado - Denver

• The Social Location Room: Interrupting the Internalization of Oppression - Kristy Luk, Youth in Action; Leigh Patel, University of California - Riverside; Keith C. Catone, Roger Williams University; Molly Messenger, Pittsfield Listens