Table Of ContentComposing as a Powerful 21st Century Author Advocating for Social Change
by
Richard Lee
Bachelor of Arts, University of Victoria, 1995
Bachelor of Education, University of British Columbia, 2000
A Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF EDUCATION
in the area of Language and Literacy
in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction
! Richard Lee, 2015
University of Victoria
All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy
or other means, without the permission of the author.
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Composing as a Powerful 21st Century Author Advocating for Social Change
by
Richard Lee
Bachelor of Education, University of British Columbia, 2000
Bachelor of Arts, University of Victoria, 1995
Supervisory Committee
Dr. James Nahachewsky, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Supervisor
Dr. Deborah Begoray, Department of Curriculum
Departmental Member
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Abstract
This project examines the organization, design and implementation of a middle years
English Language Arts (ELA) unit entitled Composing as a Powerful 21st Century Author
Advocating for Social Change informed by the author’s question: [H]ow can my students
use spoken word poetry and digital media to be authentic writers in the 21st century to
advocate for, and possibly create, social change? Chapter 1 introduces the project through
a discussion of particular challenges and opportunities for literacy learners and teachers
in our rapidly changing digital age. Considerations of personal and social challenges for
adolescents are presented along with the need for engaging in digital composition in the
classroom. Curricular connections are addressed leading to the guiding question for this
project: What are the pedagogical challenges and opportunities in creating and supporting
a writing program that articulates critical pedagogies and new literacies for the potential
of students’ personal and social transformation? Chapter 2 defines the project’s two main
frameworks – critical pedagogy and New Literacies – and examines recent literature
regarding the implementation of each in diverse educational contexts. Chapter 3 presents
a critical reflection on the unit’s six phases: (1) Exposure to and dialogue about social
issues; (2) Inquiry into issues that require social transformation; (3) Learning spoken
word poetry; (4) Digital video composition; (5) Performance night; and (6) Taking a
stand. Together with these sections, an accompanying Unit Plan and student hand-outs
created by the teacher and included as Appendices, are intended as a professional
learning resource for educators who wish to explore the potential for creating social
change through the composition and digital presentation of students’ spoken word poetry.
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Table of Contents
Supervisory Committee ………………………………….……………………………… ii
Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………. iii
Table of Contents ……………………………………………………………………...... iv
Acknowledgements ………………………………...………………………………........ vi
Chapter 1: Introduction ………………………………………………………………….. 1
Locating my Project ……………………………………………………………………... 1
Digital Times: Challenges and Opportunities ……………….…………………............... 2
Addressing Change by Making a Change ………………………..……………………… 3
Writing Online for Authenticity – of Audience and Purpose …………………………… 4
Curricular Connections ……………...……………………………………...…………… 5
Changing my Pedagogy …………………………………………………………………. 7
My Master of Education Project Question ………………………………………………. 9
Chapter 2: Literature Review …………………………………………………………... 11
Theoretical frameworks ……………………………………………………………...… 12
Critical pedagogy ………………………………………………………………………. 12
Critical literacy .…………………………………………………….…………... 14
Dialogic teaching ………………………………………………………………..15
New Literacies………………………………………………………………………..… 17
Internet usage in Canada ……………………………………………………….. 19
Multiple media and multiple modes of digital composition …………………… 20
World-wide audiences …………………………………………………………. 21
Online collaboration ……………………………………………………………. 22
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Trends toward critical digital literacies ………………………………………… 23
Performance poetry …………………………………………………………………….. 25
Personalized learning …………………………………………………………………... 27
Inquiry-based learning …………………………………………………………………. 30
Review of the research literature ………………………………………………………. 34
Chapter 3: Presentation of my Master of Education Project …….……………………... 41
Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….. 41
Contextualizing the product ……………………………………………………. 42
Phase 1: Exposure to and Dialogue about Social Issues ……………………………….. 44
Phase 2: Inquiry into Issues that Require Social Transformation ……………………… 48
Phase 3: Learning Spoken Word Poetry ……………………………………………….. 53
Phase 4: Digital Video Composition …………………………………………………… 57
Phase 5: Performance Night ……………………………………………………………. 61
Phase 6: Taking a Stand ………………………………………………………………... 65
Reflecting on my Master of Education Project ………………..……………………….. 68
Implications for Future Research ………………………………………………………. 71
References …………………………………………........................................................ 73
Appendices …………………………………………...............................................…… 81
Appendix A: Unit Plan: Composing as a Powerful 21st Century Author
Advocating for Social Change ………………...……………………………….. 81
Appendix B: Morning Media Moments ………………………………………... 93
Appendix C: Student Handout: Composing as a Powerful 21st Century Author
Advocating for Social Change …………………………………………………. 94
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Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge all of the people who have supported me through this
Master of Education journey. Without their support, guidance, patience and wisdom, this
journey would have come to an abrupt halt many months ago.
I would first like to thank my children, Finnian and Juniper, who have shown such
incredible patience over the last two and a half years. I promise that this will be the last
summer that Daddy is absent, and that I will be spending far fewer hours in front of the
computer screen. I dedicate this project to you and all the summers that we will get to
play together, as we adventure around the world.
Second, I would like to thank my parents for their wisdom and words of
encouragement. As educators, they showed me the importance of making a difference in
children’s lives and continually offered a calming, reassuring voice of reason throughout
this Master’s program.
Third, I would like to express my gratitude to Eamon Murphy and Anne Maloney
who gave me a place to stay for two summers while I completed coursework at UVic.
Fourth, I would like to acknowledge my professors, particularly Dr. James
Nahachewsky for his time, knowledge, reassurance and for introducing me to the work of
Paulo Freire, which has transformed my pedagogy.
Last, I would like to thank my wife, Bridget, who has picked up all the slack at
home and has endured a grumpy, stressed out, sleep deprived spouse. This
accomplishment would not have been possible with all of your support and love. I love
you and promise that when it comes time for you to complete your Masters, I will pick up
the slack for you.
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Chapter 1
Introduction
“What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become
themselves” ~ Paulo Freire (Horton, Freire, Bell, Gaventa, & Peters, 1990, p. 181)
Locating my project
During the past school year of 2014-15, I explored the potential for transforming
self and society through critical pedagogy and new literacies practices in my grade 6/7
language and literacy classroom. Informed by critical pedagogy theorists including Freire
(1970) and Giroux (1981), and New Literacies theorists such as Lankshear and Knobel
(2013) and Leu (2014), I have worked to transform my teaching, and more specifically
develop a unit entitled Composing as a Powerful 21st Century Author Advocating for
Social Change that intentionally centred on my students taking ownership of their own
critical literacy development and the shaping of society. For this purpose, I used a critical
pedagogical framework that begins with valuing students’ identities and facilitating social
change through a critical viewing, examination and discussion of social injustices and
power imbalances we witness in the news or experience in our own lives. I invited my
students to compose spoken word poems that advocated for change in relation to those
issues. The students then represented the poems in both non-digital and digital contexts
using new literacies practices. The question that guided this transformation in my
language and literacy teaching, and the development of the unit was, “How can my
students use spoken word poetry and digital media to be authentic writers in the 21st
century to advocate for, and possibly create, social change?”
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Throughout this first chapter, I further contextualize my Master of Education
project by presenting particular challenges and opportunities that our digital times pose
for contemporary learners; discussing the authenticity of writing online; making
connections between the existing and draft British Columbia English language arts
curricula, and new literacies and critical pedagogy practices; and introducing how and
why my pedagogy has recently transformed. I begin by presenting particular challenges
and opportunities in our digital times.
Digital times: Challenges and Opportunities
In the 21st century, opportunities for engaging students in authentic and
potentially transformative writing are perhaps more prevalent than ever before. With the
rapid development of the Internet and social media, young people are increasingly
becoming published authors of personal writing; making their diverse voices easily
accessible to a broad audience. Today’s classroom teachers – many of whom were born
in a different technological and communications era than their students, and who have
developed their careers within traditional educational systems – may reject their students’
use of digital media as a means of composing and presenting their work to a broad
audience through online platforms such as blogs or vodcasts. Yet many of today’s
students, having been born into and grown up in this digital age, have an inherent sense
of “digital wisdom” (Prensky, 2012). This wisdom arises from both the use of digital
technologies to access “cognitive power beyond our innate capacity and to wisdom in the
prudent use of technology to enhance our capabilities” (Prensky, 2012, p. 202). These
same students use digital platforms as an authentic way to communicate personally
online, and sometimes publish publicly as authors.
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This digital age has also seen an increase in the number and variety of media
outlets that are accessed by students (Leu, O’Byrne, Zawalinski, McVerry & Everett-
Cacopardo, 2009). Increasingly, these outlets present a world that seems to be in a state
of crisis. On YouTube™, through Twitter™, and on various news channels that stream
content on the Internet 24 hours a day, students witness societal challenges such as the
devastation of ecosystems or the eradication of species; corporate greed and the
government’s complicity; ongoing struggles of poverty and hunger; objectification, rape
and bullying; and discrimination due to ethnicity, gender, beliefs or appearance. It is true
that our social and environmental worlds are often in a state of strife despite all of the
advances in areas such as digital technology, food cultivation and medicine. Scientist and
environmentalist David Suzuki (2009) argues that the exponential growth and damaging
impact of our world’s rapidly increasing population, new technologies, and corporate-
driven consumer-oriented economy directly creates disparity, hardship and planetary
damage. Such challenges, whether big or small, societal or personal cannot be denied –
they are as ubiquitous as the cell phones which many kids carry. Yet, I believe that digital
platforms and media can be used authentically along with students’ critical literacy to
both address these challenges, and to help transform their own personal lives and the
society around them. I discuss this potential for change and authenticity in the next two
sections.
Addressing change by making a change
In my experiences as an educator during the past fifteen years, students come to
school with a variety of personal issues that they struggle to resolve. Many middle years
children are struggling through an awkward stage of developmental learning to
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understand themselves, and they are faced with pressures from many directions – parents,
family, peers, and society. Evidence suggests that youth develop purpose from these
pressures targeted towards life-satisfaction, coping, generosity, optimism, humility,
mature identity status, and more global personality integration (Mariano & Going, 2011).
As they try to understand their world, adolescents look to a variety of avenues – often
through the Internet – to create a deeper understanding of themselves and their struggles.
I witness daily that adolescents will feel persecuted or singled out for their differences,
ridiculed or belittled for a perceived weakness, or bullied for what they wear or whom
they choose as friends. But also, many students have a desire to speak out against those
wrongs. Students, it seems to me, need to have authentic opportunities to target these
personal and social issues, and to effect change. Writing online through digital platforms
is one way to address their need for authenticity and change.
Writing Online for Authenticity of Audience and Purpose
Writing and composition in the 21st century holds many opportunities for
authenticity of purpose, audience and multimodal content for contemporary adolescents.
Students embrace writing about real issues that impact them, their social community and
their world. Middle years students also thrive from opportunities to write for audiences
beyond the classroom teacher, particularly when they can focus on an authentic purpose
that has the potential to change their personal or social realities. In my experiences, when
middle years students are presented with opportunities to explore and write about
personal and social challenges in their compositions, they develop their voices as
authentic writers.
Description:English Language Arts (ELA) unit entitled Composing as a Powerful 21st . students to compose spoken word poems that advocated for change in
