"Just Like I Have Felt": Multimodal Counternarratives In Youth-Produced Digital Media

A key concept that we introduce and develop in this article is multimodal counternarrative, the way in which individuals employ multiple modes of representation to push back against oppressive master narratives. In order to identify and analyze this form of counternarrative, we develop and explicate an analytic tool called multimodal microanalysis. We use multimodal microanalysis to study a digital poem produced by a high school sophomore who identifies as gay, Asian, and a second-generation immigrant. Our analysis indicates that this young man uses digital media in four key ways to create his multimodal counternarrative: by remixing stories and traditions, mixing modes, using functional load to foreground identity, and creating dialogic space for his audience. We conclude that youth can create counternarratives in school contexts by employing multiple modes within digital media production to simultaneously highlight and resist cultural ideologies that may otherwise function to marginalize them or silence their voices

Conceptualizing Identity In Youth Media Arts Organizations: A Comparative Study

In this article the authors explore the relationship between concepts of identity and the purpose, process, and products of youth media arts organizations. Since the explicit mission of these organizations is to work with adolescents to explore and represent identities, the authors develop our understanding of how organizations conceptualize identity development and how these concepts shape the digital film-making process and products. In a comparative case study of In Progress (St Paul, Minnesota) and Reel Works Teen Film-making (New York City), organizational leaders were interviewed, and a semiotic analysis conducted of the organizations' websites and other public, printed materials. The authors analyzed the films as products of these organizations' production processes to understand how these organizations define identity and what these definitions mean for how they do their work with youth. They found two distinct conceptualizations of identity: identity as community building, and identity as individualization. Unpacking these different conceptions helps us to understand how youth media arts organizations shape the identity development process and what is made possible for participating youth. This work can also lead us to more sophisticated models of adolescent identity development, particularly for non-mainstream communities who have often been saddled with dominant cultural models that do not quite fit

Scientific Literacy In The Wild: Using Multimodal Texts In And Out Of School

Building a better public education system for our children begins with providing students with real-world learning experiences from the very beginning. To this end, the authors explored how two kindergarten teachers scaffolded scientific literacy learning using an authentic multimodal text before, during, and after a zoo field trip in ways that fostered the identity of kinder “scientists” along with good literacy skills. From their experiences, public educators can help their students develop strong science knowledge and scientific literacy through rich literacy practices intertwined with learning science content, over a period of time, with multiple, varied, and scaffolded uses of an authentic, multimodal text and paired with authentic, out-of-school learning experiences

What Makes A Youth-Produced Film Good? The Youth Audience Perspective

In this article, we explore how youth audiences evaluate the quality of youth-produced films. Our interest stems from a dearth of ways to measure the quality of what youth produce in artistic production processes. As a result, making art in formal learning settings devolves into either romanticized creativity or instrumental work to improve skills in core content areas. We conducted focus groups with 38 youth participants where they viewed four different films produced by the same youth media arts organization that works with young people to produce short-form, autobiographical documentaries. We found that youth focused their evaluations on identifying the films' genre and content and on assessing how well the filmmakers' creative decisions fit with identifications of genre and content. Evaluations were mediated by audiences' expectations and seemed to inform judgments of quality and creativity. We hope that our work can inform the design of formal learning spaces where young people are producing narrative art

Tracing The Paths Of Moving Artifacts In Youth Media Production

Using a theoretical grounding in social semiotics, chronotopes, and social spaces with youth, I will discuss how identities are made possible and expressed in the interplay between the different parts of the youth video production process as youth artifacts as they move through time and space. The majority of my data is what I have come to term "moving artifacts", and this article will attempt to make a case for attempting to trace "the paths of the moving artifacts" through the spaces in which youth artifacts are created, within the youth artifacts themselves, and between the artifacts. Exploring how youth artifacts move through time and space provides a new lens with which to understand how identity expression occurs in youth media production

Developing An Ethics Of Youth Media Production Using Media Literacy, Identity, & Modality

This critical, theoretical paper conceptualizes what determines an ethics for youth media production. Through discussions of medialiteracy, identity, and multimodality, I attempt to shift the question away from “What are the ethical ways in which youth use media?”toward the question “What are the ethics we have created as media literacy educators within which youth create media?” I assert thatwe must widen our lens to revision ethics as a complex interplay of definitions of media literacy, representations of youth identities, andunderstandings of modality as we move toward envisioning what constitutes an ethics of youth media production

"Key Moments" As Pedagogical Windows Into The Video Production Process

In this article, we trace learning across the digital video production process through case studies with four youth media arts organizations (YMAOs) across the United States. We hypothesize that what these organizations share is a series of key moments throughout the production process in which youth must articulate the relationship between the idea they intend to represent in their video and the tools of the digital video medium that afford representation. By highlighting these key moments, we can both describe the core features of the YMAO organizational process and offer a mechanism for tracing participant learning over time. We conclude with implications for teachers and leaders who may be interested in how to support the inclusion of digital production processes into formal instructional spaces

College-going beliefs of prospective first-generation college students : perceived barriers, social supports, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations

" Approximately 27% of all graduating high school seniors are prospective first-generation college students. First-generation college students are defined as those whose parents have no formal education beyond high school. Unfortunately, most of the research to date on this group has focused on these students once they arrive at college. Because not all prospective first-generation students complete, or even begin, college, vital information is lacking about this group of students. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the college-going beliefs of middle school students who would be the first in their families to attend college as compared to their peers. Specifically, Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994) was applied to help explain the college-related barriers, social supports, self-efficacy beliefs, and outcome expectations of prospective first-generation college students and their peers. In addition, background variables such as gender, ethnicity, and parent educational level, which are believed to affect the learning experiences upon which self-efficacy and outcome beliefs are formed, were examined as well. In this study, each of these constructs was examined through the use of an extensive written assessment. The participants in this study were 7th grade students (n = 272) from four middle schools in a single southeastern state. Of these participants, 105 were prospective first-generation college students. As proposed in the hypotheses for this study, factorial ANOVAs helped demonstrate differences in perceived barriers, parent support, self-efficacy beliefs, and positive outcome expectations between first-generation students and their peers. Path analyses for the full sample as well as separated by first-generation status indicated partial support for SCCT. The influence of background variables, barriers, and supports on strength of college-going intentions differed for prospective first-generation college students as compared to their peers. Evidence was provided to suggest that barriers and supports may have a direct effect on outcome beliefs in addition to self-efficacy beliefs for both groups of participants, although in different ways. Suggestions for how to apply this information to the counseling profession as well as directions for future research are discussed. This study emphasized the many differences between first-generation students and their peers and highlighted the need for early interventions with this population "--Abstract from author supplied metadata

The concept of rest in the poetry of George Herbert

The title page of the 1633 edition of The Temple,1 the final collection of George Herbert's poems, contains a quotation from Psalm 29, "In his Temple doth every man speak of his honour," which implies that Herbert intended The Temple as a eulogy of God. But Izaak Walton, his first biographer, records that Herbert sent the following message with a book of his writing to Nicholas Ferrar: . . . tell him, he shall find in it a picture of the many spiritual Conflicts that have past betwixt God and my Soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master: in whose service I have now found perfect freedom; desire him to read it; and then, if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor Soul, let it be made publick: if not, let him burn it: for I and it, are less than the least of God's mercies. In reading The Temple itself one can see that Herbert intends it to lead men to God. He extends an invitation to the reader in "Superliminare," the second poem in The Temple: Thou, whom the former precepts have Sprinkled and taught, how to behave Thy self in church; approach, and taste The Churches mysticall repast

A measure of college-going self-efficacy for middle school students.

Many career and educational plans are made well before high school graduation. School counselors' efforts to support these plans are limited by the lack of assessments of middle school students' college-going beliefs. Development of the College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale for middle school students is described in this article. Initial evidence of validity and reliability from three separate studies is reported, and suggestions for using this scale with students are provided