Antero Garcia

The Council of Youth Research: Critical Literacy and Civic Agency in the Digital Age.

This article explores the relationship between critical literacy practice, digital media production, and civic agency in the Council of Youth Research, a youth participatory action research program in which Los Angeles high school students conduct research and create dynamic, multimedia presentations as leaders of a growing youth movement for educational justice. We examine theories of critical literacy to articulate a vision of literacy that is tied to societal power structures for the purpose of personal and social transformation. In order to bring critical literacy theory into practice, we explore the ways in which critical pedagogy and participatory digital literacies structure the work of the Council. We use ethnography of communication and visual sociology to analyze literacy events from 1 year of the Councils work to highlight ways in which student digital literacy production manifested powerful civic agency. We conclude by discussing the implications of this work for classrooms and further grounded research in pedagogies of participatory media.

City youth and the pedagogy of participatory media

Recently, two different images of learning in schools today flooded through our various social networks. Logging on to Facebook, one high-school teacher bemoaned the fact that her students in a Los Angeles classroom were using their mobile devices to take pictures of the notes on the board: the teacher put in hard work preparing and sharing content and students, with a few button presses, captured hours of work effortlessly. Commenters shared that they banned mobile devices for similar reasons and the word ‘lazy’ was invoked by more than one participant in the socially networked discussion. Also shared on Facebook and other social networks like the educational community that relies on the Twitter hashtag #educhat, an article from the online site Mashable proclaimed, ‘Low Income Students’ Test Scores Leap 30% with Smartphone Use’ (Freeman 2012). Citing academic uses of mobile technology, the article concluded with a quote from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that ‘digital literacy’ is necessary for students and parents so they can use ‘the tools and know-how to use technology for education and job skills training’. In both of these stories, the fact that these contexts for learning and technology use took place in historically marginalized spaces was prominent. As educators and educational researchers continue to grapple with how uses of new communications technologies can increase educational equity, the challenges of adjusting pedagogy to meet these needs are often being disregarded. Throughout this issue, we seek to explore how the educational challenges that city youth face around the globe can be confronted with what we call a pedagogy of participatory media.

Schooling Mobile Phones Assumptions About Proximal Benefits, the Challenges of Shifting Meanings, and the Politics of Teaching

Mobile devices are increasingly upheld as powerful tools for learning and school reform. In this article, we prioritize youth voices to critically examine assumptions about student interest in mobile devices that often drive the incorporation of new technologies into schools. By demonstrating how the very meaning of mobile phones shift as they are institutionalized and by highlighting the divergences between adult and youth assumptions about these devices, we make a significant contribution to policy debates about the role of new digital technologies in the classroom. In addition, we explore challenges such as privacy, freedom, and resource-use that emerge when scaling-upthe use of mobile technologies in the classroom.

Toward a teacher solidarity lens: former teachers of color (re)envisioning educational research

Based on a two-year self-study by a group of early-career scholars of color, we explore and purposefully name our role, within the contemporary context of neoliberal reform, as educational researchers of color who are former K-12 teachers. We capture the insights that emerged from our self-study through a close reading of dominant neoliberal educational reform discourses, particularly through an examination of the writings of Michelle Rhee and Wendy Kopp. Along three dimensions of: (1) experience as teachers; (2) solidarity with teachers; and (3) analyses of racism in schooling, we characterize prominent discourses through which educators, researchers, and the public describe teachers and teaching. We name these discursive frames to make explicit the assumptions that are embedded in each and the intentional or inadvertent consequences of each. Finally, we propose a teacher solidarity lens through which we strive to approach our research and work with teachers.

Civic Participation Reimagined: Youth Interrogation and Innovation in the Multimodal Public Sphere.

This chapter challenges dominant narratives about the civic disengagement of youth from marginalized communities by reconceptualizing what counts as civic participation in public life and how youth are positioned as civic agents. We examine ideologies that undergird traditional forms of civic education and engagement in the United States and offer an alternative vision of civic life grounded in recognition of systemic inequality and struggle for social justice. We consider the ways in which digital media has fundamentally transformed the public sphere and expanded opportunities for youth civic expression and action, as well as the ways that youth participatory action research literature offers a framework for civic education that forefronts youth experience and voice. Our analysis culminates in the development of a new conceptual model for civic learning and engagement that pushes past participation into the realms of interrogation and innovation.

The Revolution Starts with Rue

Thresh brings the rock down hard against Clove’s temple. It’s not bleeding, but I can see the dent in her skull and I know that she’s a goner. There’s still life in her now though, in the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the low moan escaping her lips.

Changing Literacies and Civic Pathways: Multiliteracies in Inquiry-Driven Classrooms.

Reflecting on how “the very nature of language learning has changed”(New London Group [NLG], 1996, p. 64), this article describes an inquiry-driven teaching approach to middle school English. Looking at student outcomes utilizing Google’s 20% approach, this study explored how mentorship, digital tools, and student interests provide “opportunities [for students] to find their own voices” (NLG, 1996, p. 71). In particular, this article analyzes student inquiry based on the 4 pedagogical foundations of multiliteracies: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. By focusing on the voices and experiences of students, this framework highlights what multiliteracies can look like within classrooms. Ultimately, this study of literacies within inquiry-driven classrooms responds to the call of multiliteracies research from 20 years ago that, “Students need to develop the capacity to speak up, to negotiate, and to be able to engage critically with the conditions of their working lives” (New London Group, 1996, p. 67).

Looking at the "Next" 20 Years of Multiliteracies: A Discussion with Allan Luke.

In this discussion with literacies researcher Allan Luke, the New London Group Member reflects on the role of multiliteracies in shaping literacies research and the continuing changes to technology, capitalism, and learning. Focused on looking toward future advances in literacies research, Luke reflects on the role of multiliteracies in contemporary educational policy and how this work is shaping literacy scholarship and practice today. Luke looks pragmatically at the current political landscape and emphasizes how colonial practices of technology over the past twenty years bend literacies research away from the initial optimism expressed by the New London Group. At the same time, Luke grounds contemporary literacies interpretations of technology and learning in foundational critical theorist like Freire, Illich, and Dewey. By focusing on how technology has changed schooling, power, and literacies, Luke considers what challenges loom for the theory and practice of powerful, equitable literacies in the next two decades.

“DUDE UR GUNNA BE A GREAT TEACHER YO”: Cultivating Diverse Englishes Through Chatroom Discussions Between Preservice Teachers and Urban High School Youth

ABSTRACT This article examines the potential for creating an alternative learning context using digital tools in English classrooms to better support the identities and language practices of diverse learners. We explore the role language plays in the relationships between preservice teachers in central Illinois and their 10th-grade partners in Los Angeles. Through discourse analysis of online chatroom transcripts, we found that intertextuality and persona building through intentional language use were 2 tactics participants used to shape power dynamics in their relationships. This study provided preservice teachers with opportunities to build relationships with students different from themselves, gain a deeper understanding of the language practices of youth, and explore power structures in schools.

Smoldering in the darkness: contextualizing learning, technology, and politics under the weight of ongoing fear and nationalism

When we first envisioned this issue’s theme, in the early months of 2017, we did so expecting this to be a collection of scholarship reflecting back on a moment of historical tension and pronounced hand-wringing about technology, learning, and the sociopolitical state of things globally. Instead, we find ourselves now in a political context where even people in dominant groups are in disbelief that presumed safeguards for democracy and assumptions about ‘common’ decency are failing. This issue presents research exploring how the current nationalist and oppressive sociopolitical environment – seen globally – shapes youth identities and learning practices in both formal and informal environments. We have curated this work in order to interrogate how learning and the role of technology are affected by and have created a political climate that continues to lead to a rise in global far-right movements, such as those in evidence in the wake of prominent recent events like Brexit and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As guest editors in the U.S., we are particularly cognizant of a localized context in which a successful presidential campaign was built on foundations of racism (Kendall 2016), religious intolerance (Rosenberg and Ainsley 2016), sexual assault (Burns, Haberman, and Martin 2016), misogyny (Khazan 2016), xenophobia (Sargent 2016), and a disregard for science and the environment. Two years into Trump’s presidency, we see these themes continuing to cause harm in classrooms and to families (Garcia and Dutro 2018). Rather than see the slinging of damaging rhetoric as a momentary blip from which our research community can learn, we write this noting that governments inflict increasing harm today than when we first proposed this issue—particularly to youth of color and to the most vulnerable communities globally including refugees, members of the LGBTQ community, and children. We continued to sense a belief in our academic communities (despite the historical evidence to the contrary) that the future held the promise of improvement and that if we sheltered in place for the time being, the work of others – activists, researchers, policy makers, and educators – would sort things out in a timely fashion. Rather than looking back at a momentary suffering vis-à-vis sociopolitical contexts of education, technology, and learning, we are roiling in the present. We write this acknowledging that the vast majority of educational—particularly classroomspecific—research is conducted now without acknowledging the sociopolitical contexts that press on the lives of youth today. As students sit in schools within the U.S., they are presented with reminders that youth are presently in cages, are victims of violence and unarmed deaths, and are foisted into debates of the morality of alleged sexual assault. To consider improving student learning outcomes, we must first acknowledge the substantial damage that is being incurred by both the blindness of schools to the healing needs of youth (Zembylas 2007) and the normative approaches of educational research on vulnerable communities (Tuck 2009). Further, we note that the words, policies, and violence prevalent in global contexts is not bound to the whims or motives of individuals; we see today’s political actions—internationally – shaping the landscape of learning and technology long after the administration of individual leaders. As a result, the papers in this issue explore the broader landscape of the current political climate, rather than focusing exclusively on specific figures and events. It is our hope that they provoke renewed conversations about the intersections of learning, engagement, and resistance.