Participatory Video Study

This multi-year, ethnographic, qualitative case-study research explored possibilities for language and literacy learning through in-school digital media production (specifically, filmmaking) in popular new media genres (e.g., Reaction Videos, Video Podcasts) among nine newcomer students from refugee and immigrant backgrounds in a Metro Vancouver secondary school. 

In collaboration with their teachers, and anchored in provincially mandated curricular goals, PhD Candidate Amir Michalovich facilitated participatory video production activities with groups of students during class time (in person and then online, due to COVID), in which they inquired about issues of interest and concern to them. He employed a play-based pedagogical approach, in which students rotated between the performance of various authentic roles (e.g., Director, Editor) along with scripts, props, and relevant actions, striving to create a space where errors, setbacks, spontaneity, risk-taking, as well as enjoyment, exploration, and choice could be pursued as part of learning.

Reflexive thematic analysis indicated several ways in which the digital media productions afforded students possibilities for language and literacy learning: 

• the video production processes involved increased written production, including sustained attention to language in multimodal forms; 
• students invested in and carefully edited their videos to make visible their imagined identities, e.g., through editing their speech and performance to express themselves as proficient and literate users of English;
• students positioned themselves anew in storylines that troubled common deficit narratives and went beyond trauma stories, highlighting the creative and knowledgeable human beings they are, bringing rich arrays of assets, strengths and competencies that could too easily have been overlooked in print-based or language-dominant school work; 
• students’ sustained engagement in the production processes could be explained by the potential social and economic capital they felt they were gaining from these digital literacy practices, and from the relationships of mutual dependence and accountability they developed with each other in their role performances.

This project was supported by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship and Insight Grant [435-2017-0338], as well as the University of British Columbia’s Public Scholars Initiative Award.