Picturing English Language Learning Youths’ and Pre-Service Teachers’ Perspectives on School

Abstract

The authors used photovoice and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) methods to explore youths’ perspectives on school, literacy, teaching, curricula, and learning for nearly a decade. While in their previous photo elicitation studies they paid attention to the literacy and general school experiences of diverse middle and high school students, they have never simultaneously explored the points of view of the Pre-Service Teachers (PSTs) who will one day serve these young people in the classrooms where they will meet. Because of the dual roles of teachers and the fact that middle and high school classrooms continue to grow more diverse, and because so many of these young people struggle to achieve in the classroom and recognize writing activities and school in general as relevant to their present and future lives, the authors have begun to explore—and compare—the results of visual sociological explorations conducted with both adolescents and these PSTs. In this chapter, they describe the findings of a photography and literacy intervention that viewed youth as valid authorities on their school and writing experiences. They also called on a population of pre-service teachers to both address questions of the purposes of, supports for, and impediments to school, and then to facilitate this inquiry with approximately 100 diverse middle and high school students. The authors’ analyses of students’ and future teachers’ visual and written responses suggest important insights regarding multimodal composition and general teaching and writing pedagogies. With examples of youths’ and pre-service teachers’ image/reflection combinations, the authors introduce three findings themes and detail writing instruction curricula and pedagogies that address each theme.