DROP KNOWLEDGE PROJECT Collaboratively documenting youth activist networks

through a new media representation of critical literacy

inquiry

Elizabeth Bishop, Primary InvestigatorDoctoral Student - Language Literacy

& CultureSchool of Education, University of

Pittsburgh

www.dkpnyc.org

Topic Working collaboratively with urban youth activists & organizersto document their anti-oppressive

work through hybrid new media representations

Context Urban youth organizing projects as

an innovative out-of-school space for critical education and social action

Purpose To promote radical democratic citizenship

Need a new political frontier

“capable of giving a real impulse to democracy” (Mouffe, 1993, 6)

To begin to identify implications for pedagogical theory and practice that enhance student empowerment through the development of individual subjectivities in a framework of community organizing principles

Articulation theory – the concrete processes (daily enactments) by which social meaning (identity) is constituted, whereby discourses produce and are transformed

Importance of reflexive agency, a will to act, and respect for adversarial relations

Why? Individual freedom cannot be sustained without solidarity on key issues such as equality and respect for social difference (Nadensan & Elenes, 1998)

Language! Radical means “to grab at the root”

“Critical educators challenge ethically limp discourses (privatization, national standards, global competitiveness) with simultaneously providing ethical signposts for public discourse about education and democracy...need to produce critical public spaces of education as a process of social change that takes place across multiple sites outside of

school” (Giroux, 1998, x)

Method Activist Educational Research

Ethical-political in all steps of emergent design

Levels of activism Negotiable/emergent structure for the DKP

Tools of educating and organizing in person and online

Method Participatory Action Researchwith youth and staff of HRAP

Cycle of PAR

Collective classification of objectives of

researchTeam-building

Generative themesConsensus-buildingPlanning systematic

action(s)ExecutionReflection

(Torres, 1995)

Political-pedagogical projects

born out of social struggles,

in defense of rights, in search of strategies for emancipatory education

Focal Point “Becoming Activist” Interested in the construction of

critical sociopolitical identities of urban youth organizers in struggles for social justice

“To illuminate how youth agency contributes to more vibrant and inclusive democracy and informed public policy” (Ginwright, Noguera, Cammarota, 2006, xvi)

Language! Shifting identities enacted

TheoreticalLens Critical Literacy Critical literacy learning practices – foregrounding how youth navigate their complex social surroundings and act to transform their communities

Method Critical Auto/Ethnography to provide an opportunity to dialogue with the various understandings participants have of the work of youth organizing

Representation Polyvocal Mixed-Media Portrait

Connect www.dkpnyc.org www.facebook.com/dkpnycwww.twitter.com/dkpnycbishop@dkpnyc.org