I have a new co-authored article detailing the Council of Youth Research in the current issue of Reading & Writing Quarterly. Titled “The Council of Youth Research: Critical Literacy and Civic Agency in the Digital Age,” you can access the article here.
I’m excited about extending and sharing further work around the Council of Youth Research in a future publication as well (stay tuned!). As always, I am indebted to my amazing co-authors: Nicole Mirra, Ernest Morrell, Antonio Martinez, and D’Artagnan Scorza. Thank you. I am sharing the abstract to the article below.
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 Council’s 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.