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7
accountability report, an allowable practice according to the law that involves
defining a threshold group size for including the test scores of specific subgroups of
students.11 Their omission from the reporting gave the class flexibility that other
classes did not have. The students generally spent all but one or two periods per day
with either Ms. Abel or Mr. Davidson, which allowed them to spend long periods of
time working on their media production projects. When a deadline for a project came
close, the students often worked only on the media project for days at a time. Both
teachers went back and forth on the decision to foreground the media projects,
concerned about replacing direct instruction in phonics or decoding with this more
whole-language approach to reading and writing. Most of the time, the students’
progress was evident enough through their productions and through other school
work that the teachers were able to reassure themselves that it was the correct choice.
By the end of the school year, the teachers reported to me that almost every student
in their classes was reading at a significantly higher grade level than they had been at
the start of the year. Several students were close to reading at grade level, and several
would be transferred to a regular education classroom for the following school year.
In addition to the advances in their traditional literacy skills, the students had learned
a number of technical skills through the media production projects.
Kids and Technology
Describing the improvements in Ms. Abel and Mr. Davidson’s students as a
success story should not impede taking a critical view of both the production
activities themselves and of larger discourses about kids and technology. David
Object Description
| Title | Kids as cultural producers: consumption, literacy, and participation |
| Author | Stephenson, Rebecca Herr |
| Author email | rherr@usc.edu; bhs@hri.uci.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Communication |
| School | Annenberg School for Communication |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-25 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2008-10-17 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Banet-Weiser, Sarah |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Gross, Larry Seiter, Ellen |
| Abstract | This dissertation looks closely at the practice of digital media production within a group of special education students and their teachers. Using ethnographic methods of extended participant observation and semi-structured interviews with students, teachers, and parents, along with textual analysis of students' media projects, this work examines the types of learning that emerge from making media at school and the ways in which that learning relates to media and technology use in everyday life. Over the course of one school year (2005-2006), the students who are the focus of this dissertation undertook eight different multimedia production projects, ranging from designing PowerPoint presentations to digital video production and stop-motion animation. Through media production, the students found opportunities to practice traditional and digital literacy skills as well as to explore issues of identity and self-expression.; This dissertation provides empirical support for recommendations made by several media literacy scholars to include media production as part of critical media literacy curricula and contributes a unique case study -- one situated in special education -- to a growing body of work on digital literacy. Three interdisciplinary themes--consumption, literacy, and participation -- are used to organize the description and analysis of the students' media production activities. These themes connect the specific production that took place in the classroom to larger discourses about youth, media, technology, education, and access, working to complicate existing constructions of young people as either helpless victims of manipulative media or naturally savvy media and technology users. Instead, this research emphasizes that the relationships kids have with media and technology are complex, dynamic, intrinsically linked to their identities as consumers and participants in society. Media literacy is thus theorized as a tool for understanding and controlling consumption, participation, and the construction of young people as both current and future citizens. |
| Keyword | media literacy; media production; special education; middle school; digital media |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Los Angeles |
| Coverage date | 2005/2006 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1674 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Stephenson, Rebecca Herr |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Stephenson-2393 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume29/etd-Stephenson-2393.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 12 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 7 accountability report, an allowable practice according to the law that involves defining a threshold group size for including the test scores of specific subgroups of students.11 Their omission from the reporting gave the class flexibility that other classes did not have. The students generally spent all but one or two periods per day with either Ms. Abel or Mr. Davidson, which allowed them to spend long periods of time working on their media production projects. When a deadline for a project came close, the students often worked only on the media project for days at a time. Both teachers went back and forth on the decision to foreground the media projects, concerned about replacing direct instruction in phonics or decoding with this more whole-language approach to reading and writing. Most of the time, the students’ progress was evident enough through their productions and through other school work that the teachers were able to reassure themselves that it was the correct choice. By the end of the school year, the teachers reported to me that almost every student in their classes was reading at a significantly higher grade level than they had been at the start of the year. Several students were close to reading at grade level, and several would be transferred to a regular education classroom for the following school year. In addition to the advances in their traditional literacy skills, the students had learned a number of technical skills through the media production projects. Kids and Technology Describing the improvements in Ms. Abel and Mr. Davidson’s students as a success story should not impede taking a critical view of both the production activities themselves and of larger discourses about kids and technology. David |
