Video Making, Production Pedagogies, and Educational Policy

Abstract

The promise of “21st century learning” is that digital technologies will transform traditional learning and mobilize skills deemed necessary in an emerging digital culture. In two case studies of video making, one in a Grade 4 classroom, and one in an adult literacy setting, the authors develop the concept of “production pedagogies” as complex multiliteracies embedded in video production oriented to meaningful social ends. Drawing upon concepts of translation in Actor Network Theory (ANT) and the “workaround,” the authors trace how in spite of the imaginary of “21st Century Literacy,” policy regimes privileged networks oriented to “minimal proficiency” print literacy. They theorize that the workarounds in which practitioners engaged illuminate three nodes or sites of action to strengthen production pedagogy networks: how learners are defined or problematized in literacy projects, how people get access to powerful digital literacy tools for learning, and how time-space regimes of traditional schooling are reconfigured.