Connected Learning Multimodal

Youth Say, Youth Practice, Educators Offer, Literacies are …

Summary:

This post shares research by Josyln Young, a Stoneleigh Junior Fellowship with Research for Action in 2010-2011. In her research she writes that she “wanted to figure out more about what teaching, learning, and pedagogy look like beyond the classroom.” She specifically studied young producers at the Philadelphia Student Union and Chester Voices for Change and how they learn and master skills in media production. Published in 2013; original media no longer available. Originally published on March 26, 2013

Lessons on Learning, Teaching, and Motivation from Young People

Youth say they want respect, voice, value, safety, support, challenges, and a sense that they are making a contribution to something goodin the world, so what can we learn from young people about what motivates them to engage and learn new skills?

Based on interviews with and observations of youth media producers in the Philadelphia area, this resource explores what motivates these youth to engage in the programs and what advice they have for educators who want to foster more engagement from students. As part of my Stoneleigh Junior Fellowship with Research for Action in 2010-2011, I listened to radio and video producers from the Philadelphia Student Union (PSU) and Chester Voices for Change (VFC) to see what they think is interesting and motivating about media and how that could be applied to other learning environments.

This resource highlights my finding that these media literacy programs draw heavily from the intrinsic motivations of young people and encourage the development of mastery goal orientation, both of which help to encourage deep and sustained learning. I try to show this by:

  • summarizing key shared motivations for why youth spend time creating media;
  • highlighting what drives students to master skills; and
  • sharing advice from the youth themselves about what educators should do to better engage students.

Motivation & Media

The media programs at PSU and VFC draw heavily on students’ intrinsic motivations to:

RAISE THEIR VOICES, which youth said over and over again. They want their stories to be heard. One producer from VFC explained, “The main thing teenagers look for is just for someone to listen to everything you have to say.” This desire to be listened to was shared by other young producers, like another VFC member who explained how great it was to write about her own life and what she wanted to write about, and PSU producers who talked about their desire to “write the news and not be the news” by highlighting the real stories and perspectives of youth in their communities.

DO SOMETHING POSITIVE, which was another shared goal between the programs.One PSU member explained, “If I’m gonna dedicate my time to something, it should be something positive. And to me, this is as positive as it gets.” Other youth producers talked about how making media contributed to their communities, helped them serve as role models for younger siblings or neighbors, and raised awareness of positive activities, programs, and other happenings in the community.

Youth were drawn to PSU and VFC because the media production in those programs connected to their intrinsic or internal desires to be heard and contribute to their communities. In addition, other key aspects of the student’ motivations helped them to engage in sustained learning focused on mastery, so that they would persevere through difficulties until they mastered a skill or created a product that met their own high standards.

The goals or motivations that helped spark this drive included:

CONNECTING TO EXISTING INTERESTS AND FUTURE PLANS, which many of the students expressed in their interviews. Many youth, especially those in VFC, were already interested in media or communications. For most youth, media is a part of their culture, it’s something they interact with every day, and so learning about media was in some ways, a kind of culturally-relevant pedagogy for all youth. But beyond that, there were also participants who wanted to be journalists, radio hosts, actors, music producers, and talk show hosts. Their future plans and existing interests brought youth into the programs and because they were learning skills and using tools that had a clear purpose in their futures, they were willing and determined to master what they learned.

CREATING PRODUCTS FOR REAL AUDIENCES, which pushed the youth to create quality products of which they were proud. You knew that their final piece would be played on air or available for anyone in the world to listen to or watch online, and that challenged them to give their best. They knew their name would be associated with this product that others could see and they wanted it to be perfect. Producers in both programs volunteered to come in for extra or longer hours in hopes of putting their final touches on a piece, and this recognition that their work was for an audience beyond just their teacher or their parents was exciting and motivating.

These connections to existing interests, future goals, and real audiences encouraged youth to pursue perfection and push through difficulties in order to master the skills and tools involved in the process. This dedication to a task, project, and learning process is something that educators should strive for with all of their students because it supports them to persevere through mistakes and truly master a skill or knowledge set.

PSU and VFC members also provided their own advice for educators about how to support students:

RESPECT STUDENTS AND THEIR EXPERIENCES. This came up repeatedly throughout the interviews. Students felt disrespected by teachers, which made them less likely to want to learn because they didn’t feel valued as a person. The main piece of advice students had for adults working with young people was to respect them, value their experiences, and understand that they have important contributions and knowledge to share.

VALUE STUDENTS’ VOICES. Given that one key motivation for joining media literacy programs was for youth to be heard, it should be clear that educators must value and find ways to share the voices of their students. By listening to what students, honoring and valuing their stories, and recognizing the important things that youth share, educators can go a long way in supporting their students and encouraging them to participate because the youth feel valued and empowered.

PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES TO CREATE PRODUCTS WITH REAL AUDIENCES.By sharing their products with an audience beyond their teachers or classrooms, students felt motivated to revise their work and dedicate time to create a quality product. These kinds of opportunities help students connect to their communities and push through difficulties they encounter while learning and creating. Educators who provide more opportunities to reach a real audience will likely reach more students, too.

Although good teachers have been doing these things for years, I find it is always a helpful reminder to hear what students think – to understand what they see as most important, useful, or motivating. There are still, however, some questions that must be thought about in more detail:

  • As important as student voice seems to be for encouraging student engagement in learning, how can student voice be effectively used and incorporated in today’s educational climate that is so focused on reaching high test scores? This emphasis is clearly influencing today’s classrooms and out-of-school programs as teachers are focused on test preparation and support for arts programs is being cut drastically. In this climate, how can educators in and outside of classrooms effectively support student voices?
  • Since connecting to students’ interests and future goals can help them develop mastery-oriented goals for learning, how can educators help all students to connect learning to their own interests and goals? This may be especially difficult when working with large classes that have a wide range of interests and goals within it or when students are forced or required to participate in a class or program. Having only worked with students in voluntary afterschool programs, I wonder how educators manage a variety of students with different interests, plans for the future, and initial levels of motivation. Is there a way for educators and peers to help every student connect with material in a more meaningful way?
  • Although sharing work with a real audience is incredibly important, there are a number of ethical issues that must be thought about when doing so. At what stage is appropriate to share the work? How should youth, who are minors, be recognized or associated with their products? How might that change based on the content, audience, and mode of sharing? Who owns the final products when created in a group and for a particular class or organization? There are, undoubtedly, more questions along these lines that educators must consider when working with young people.

Understanding What Youth Gain through Media Literacy Education Programs

Youth practice recording, interviewing, writing, rehearsing, editing, and presenting throughout media literacy programs, but what other skills do they practice and master in these programs that will help them in life?

Focused on my (sort of unintended) findings about the life skills that youth gain through participation in these programs, this resource:

  • describes the main 21st century life skills youth mastered during their time at PSU and VFC;
  • suggests key program elements that encouraged development of those skills; and
  • emphasizes what educators and education can do fully prepare youth for life.

Learning for Life

Participation in youth media programs can help young people gain important life skills, including:

COLLABORATION. Since media production typically involves individuals as part of a larger production crew, youth had to learn and practice skills in collaboration. Whether they were filming, co-editing, co-interviewing, or writing and revising a script, the youth in PSU and VFC were forced to work with one another. As one VFC member explained, “It really helps you to learn how to work with different personalities, learn how to work with people on different levels than you.”

COMMUNICATION. Often in the same breath as their mentions of collaboration, PSU and VFC members also mentioned their development of effetive communication techniques. In their group projects and interactions with community members (often for interviews), the young producers learned what works and what doesn’t when communicating with different people. A PSU radio producer explained, “You learn how to do radio and you learn about audio and things like that, and production, but you also learn about how to communicate with people, how to build relationships.”

RESPONSIBILITY. As youth became more experienced producers, they took on more and more responsibilities for their own production. In both programs, experienced producers set up their own interviews or community collaborations and took control over their products. PSU and VFC members with several products under their belts would often create their own mental timeline for completing work, rather than relying on the adult coordinators to set specific deadlines, which indicated their growing sense of responsibility and their abilities to act on it.

INDEPENDENCE. Going along with responsibility, as youth produced more pieces, they also gained more experience working independently. Although they were still often a part of a larger group project or show, PSU and VFC members worked on individual radio pieces or scenes that would be combined by the group later on. As the youth set their own timelines, they also worked on their own to meet those deadlines, coming to the program in their spare time to finish a piece they were working on.

CONFIDENCE.Many young peole in both programs also shared stories of how their participation in PSU or VFC helped them to gain confidence in themselves, their ideas, and their capabilities. This is best explained by two youth members who shared how this happened to them:

“I think that you feel comfortable enough to do the uncomfortable. Like, when I came in I was a freshman, and I was so-ohmygoodness, I was so nervous. I was so insecure, and now, I fast-forward to here, and I’m in PSU, it’s my second year, I’m a sophomore now, and I’m so crazy comfortable with who I am as a person…..Like I’m more secure in myself as a person, like that’s the magical thing about PSU.”

“It [VFC] definitely brought me out of my shell more. It made me be more ambitious and more outgoing for what I want to do. It taught me just how to be a go-getter basically….If I was gonna act, I had to – I was forced to speak up. My ideas, throwing out my opinions, I couldn’t just sit there and keep my mouth shut, I had to speak up. So it just, kinda brought me out of my shell more.”

These were the life skills most commonly mentioned in interviews with youth from both programs, which makes sense because they fit into the activities involved with media production. As youth were forced to work in groups to develop ideas, write scripts, host radio shows, and film movies, they learned how to communicate, collaborate, assign tasks, take on responsibility, and work independently while also being involved in the group. Furthermore, by creating products that raised their voices and connected with real audiences, the young producers also practiced speaking up and felt more comfortable sharing their ideas, which then helped them become more confident.

With this in mind, there are several important things that educators can do to encourage the development of these life skills amongst their own students:

ENCOURAGE GROUP WORK. Giving young people opportunities to work with one another will help them to develop skills in communication and collaboration while also taking on responsibility. These skills are vital in any job, and practicing them when young is a great for people to hone their abilities. However, it is important to note that simply throwing youth into group work can often result in failure. They guidance, support, and scaffolding to figure out exaclty how to work with each other, rely on one another, and communicate in effective and appropriate ways. Modeling these skills, offering time for reflection, and slowly letting students take on more responsibility helps to ease this transition into group work.

SUPPORT YOUTH VOICES. Learning how to express themselves appropriately and effectively while still sharing their opinions is a very important skill for people, particularly youth. By valuing and supporting youth voices in activities and projects, educators can help young people become comfortable with their voices and gain confidence in themselves. Young people need opportunities to be listened to and express themselves, and this is something that educators should try to do more often.

SHARE WITH REAL AUDIENCES. Having a real audience – beyond the teacher or classroom – is helpful for a number of reasons. For one, it can encourage the group to work together because everyone’s name will be on this product for a public audience to see and critique, demanding a certain level of excellence. In addition, a real audience further supports the development of self-confidence because youth are sharing their ideas and products with a wider public, forcing them to practice presenting their work and answer questions about it.

Many youth develop and practice important life skills while involved in media literacy programs at PSU and VFC, but there are questions to consider when thinking about more widespread use of these techniques:

  • How can these skills be developed in an educational context that is often focused solely on standardized test scores? Today’s educational climate rarely allows for group work, youth voice, or real audiences, so how can (and are) teachers supporting youth to develop these life skills?
  • What else contributes to the development of these skills among youth? How do other factors, both within and beyond the program, affect a young person’s ability to practice and hone these skills? And what needs to change or adapt to help youth in all situations to gain these kinds of abilities?

Detailing the Pedagogy and Practice Behind Youth Media Production Programs

Educators offer instruction, support, guidance, opportunities, challenges, resources, but how do teaching and learning really occur in out-of-school media literacy education programs?

This resource highlights my finding that the pedagogy of media literacy programs is a sort of experiential, student-centered apprenticeship that takes place in a community of practice and aims to help educators understand this relationship between teaching and learning by:

  • describing key characteristics and processes of the pedagogies at PSU and VFC;
  • suggesting reasons why this kind of teaching supports learning and mastery; and
  • explaining what this needs to be successful for both educators and learners.

The Pedagogy of Production

I made the video below to highlight my key findings about teaching and learning in out-of-school media literacy programs. Although the video is focused on VFC, the findings were similar for PSU, and may represent an even wider set of communities that support youth media literacy education. Important characteristics of instruction at these sites included being hands-on or experiential, maintaining a focus on youth and their lives, supporting learning through apprenticeships, and engaging in communities of practice. These characteristics are discussed in more detail after the video.

As previously mentioned, the practice of teaching and learning in PSU and VFC was:

EXPERIENTIAL because it was hands-on from the beginning. Students were given equipment right away and expected to use it, learn from it, and make mistakes with it. In both programs, it was extremely important for youth to get the tools and abilities to create something. Rather than simply receiving information or content, they were creating it.

STUDENT-CENTERED because the content and the programs were focused on the lives, experiences, and ideas of the young people involved. The stories produced all stemmed from students’ passions, interests, or experiences, and the adult coordinators supported students to develop interests and deal with community issues.

AN APPRENTICESHIP because new producers learned from experts and slowly gained practice and experience before becoming experts and teachers themselves. Ben Kirshner described apprenticeship as when experts “coach, model, and fade,” which is exactly what occurred in both programs. In addition, when possible, this apprenticeship teaching was peer-to-peer instruction but also used the adult coordinators to teach throughout the programs.

WITHIN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE because each program formed its own community, which new members joined and steadily became more active in. As outlined by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, communities of practice support learning and engagement and allow for new members to engage at their own pace. These communities provided goals for students to work towards and helped to fuel students’ learning because group members shared information and supported one another.

These characteristics created a learning environment and mode of instruction that engaged, supported, and challenged learners. They were engaged because they were encouraged to create content that connected to their own lives and interests. In addition, the community of practice and apprenticeship helped to support learners when they needed it and challenged them as needed. The communities offered encouragement and created a space in which youth felt comfortable to try new things and make mistakes, and the apprenticeship style of teaching allowed novice producers to learn, practice, and take control according to their own comfort level and schedule. This allowed young people to truly engage with material and progress at their own pace, supporting both the learning process and the overall goal of mastery in production.

This environment and style of teaching and learning was present at both PSU and VFC, which may also represent the philosophies and methods behind the growing number of youth media and digital writing programs. However, for it to work, both teachers and students have to:

LET GO AND LEARN TOGETHER because the community of practice necessarily involves both experts and novices who help each other and create a supportive environment together. Although experts (educators) provide guidance and support at the beginning, the group recognizes that every member contributes something and works to support other members in ways that will help the community to grow and develop.

VALUE THE EXPERIENCES OF OTHERS because the recognition and valuing of students’ lives and experiences helps them to engage, teachers’ experiences can provide great insight to youth and vice versa. Neither one is necessarily better or more important than the other, but they are all key to fostering connections, support, and engagement in a learning community.

HELP CONNECT WORK TO THE REAL WORLD because part of being hands-on and experiential means that community members are working to create something. Finding ways to share products and writing with real audiences outside of the program or class is an important (and increasingly easy) part of digital writing, and making something useful or connected to a wider community helps to motivate everyone involved to create a quality product.

Understanding this process of experiential, student-centered apprenticeships in communities of practice helped me to think about how I teach and learn when working with young people, but it also brings up questions that I (and our educational community) need to think about more:

  • How are communities of practice changing in the 21st century? What does it take to create a “community” in today’s world? How do we decide who can join and how to participate?
  • How can we foster more connections between learning communities? How can in-school and out-of-school learning support one other and connect more frequently? How can youth programs and classes find ways to help their broader communities and build connections between students and adults in the neighborhood?
  • How do educators and students negotiate their relationships and the power dynamics behind them as they work together and learn from one other?

Bridging Generations of Literacies Through Media Production

Literacies are reading, writing, composing, creating, producing, changing, adapting, and evolving, but what do we know about how new and traditional literacies are already connected in the lives of today’s youth?

Specifically, this resource explains how traditional reading and writing skills included in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) can be strengthened through participation in media literacy programs by:

  • detailing specific literacy skills used in media production at PSU and VFC;
  • describing how media literacy can help to motivate and engage youth as readers and writers; and
  • suggesting important steps for educators who hope to support their students’ literacy development.

Linking Literacies

Media production can help young people to enhance their reading skills as they read and dissect media to:

LOOK CRITICALLY AT POINT OF VIEW AND PERSPECTIVE. To learn about different techniques for making media, youth at PSU and VFC had to look at existing examples and dissect them – or read the media. As they looked at different shot angles in VFC and when to use narration versus interviews versus sounds from the field at PSU, the young producers gained a deeper understanding of perspective and how point of view is used throughout a media piece. This helps meet the CCSS to “assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.”

ANALYZE ARGUMENTS. By looking at examples and creating their own media, these youth also came to understand more about what goes in to making arguments, both in the media and in general. They learned how music and sound effects can alter a piece, changing the audience’s mood or perception of what is happening. This, in addition to other activities focused on critically reading the media, supported the producers to learn about effective arguments while participating in PSU or VFC. This connects to the CCSS to “delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.”

Furthermore, participation in PSU and VFC helped many youth build on their writing skills when they:

GO THROUGH A WRITING PROCESS. Just like in good traditional writing, young producers also go through multiple steps in order to create their final product. Brainstorming, gathering information, drafting, rehearsing, revising, redrafting, and editing all play important roles in the media production process. For some youth, going through this process at PSU or VFC may help them recognize and understand the importance of the writing process in general, while meeting the CCSS to “develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.”

WRITE FOR TARGET AUDIENCES. Throughout the production process, youth were encouraged to consider their audience. They had to figure out who they wanted to reach, how they would reach that target, and how they would convey their message in an effective and appropriate manner. PSU students considered what background would be needed for their audience to understand their piece and how to share that information in an engaging and useful way. At VFC, actors frequently told each other to “get real,” as they saw the scene from the audience’s perspective and recognized how fake it appeared. Understanding and thinking about a target audience helps these youth to reach the CCSS to “produce clear and coherent writing [or media] in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.”

Finally, media literacy programs help to engage some youth in more frequent literate practices because it encouraged them to read, write, and create in their spare time. This is best explained by two of the young producers:

“IT [VFC] MADE ME WANT TO WRITE MORE. I’m starting writing now- my own screenplay. And I should be receiving a camcorder soon as a late Christmas present, so it’s- that program [VFC] has really inspired me to start getting out and start making films. Just ’cause the program’s over doesn’t mean I should stop, but keep going, take from what I learned from the program, just do my own thing now.” ~VFC 2009 Participant

“I think my involvement in RADIO MADE ME MORE EAGER TO READ THE NEWSPAPERS AND BLOGS ONLINE. I also get the impulse to write down my ideas for music and other inspiring things. … Radio taught me the value of recording ideas and working them out so now I record all of my creative ideas on my free time hoping that one day I turn them into full products.” ~PSU On Blast Producer & Youth Organizer

Participation in media literacy programs at PSU and VFC seemed to help a number of youth practice traditional literacy skills. For some, participation sparked a passion for reading and writing in new ways. And through their experiences with the program, young producers gained practice in targeting audiences, going through the writing process, analyzing arguments, and understanding perspective.

These connections may be just the tip of the iceberg for how new and traditional literacies are related, but it also seems that too often, these links are missing in the minds of students and teachers. To really help students make these connections and understand what literacies are useful and important, educators should try to:

ENCOURAGE THE USE MULTIPLE LITERACIES. Media literacy in PSU and VFC transformed some of these youth to become more active readers and writers and helped them to practice skills in traditional literacy while also learning skills that are useful in the 21st century. If teachers hope to reach students and motivate them to engage with material, using multiple, non-traditional forms of literacy may help.

HELP LEARNERS CONNECT ACROSS LITERACIES. Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, director of national programs and site development for the National Writing Project, said, “We know that students often don’t make connections between the writing and publishing they do on their own and their work in schools. So that’s a connection we need to help them make” (Teaching Digital Writing: More than Blogs and Wikis. Live webchat on 4 April 2011. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org…). Students need help making those connections explicit and recognizing the similarities and differences between them. Teachers can help by talking through ideas, sharing their own experiences, and encouraging students to make and share those connections between different literacies.

While these connections are valuable and important to build from, there is still a lot that needs to be discussed and figured out in the world of literacy education in the 21st century. Some questions I still have include:

  • How much should we force students to connect their literacies? Since traditional literacy is typically associated with school and new literacies are outside of school, what happens when we push youth to build connections between those worlds? It may be great for some and terrible for others. How much do we want to connect the mandatory world of school with the voluntary world of afterschool?
  • How are these skills used throughout in-school classrooms? Although media literacy is rare in schools today, this study is limited to an out-of-school program focus, so I wonder what it looks like in the classrooms that are already using it, how their process is different, and if the students (or teachers) find similar results