“See, Click, Fix”: Civic Interrogation and Digital Tools in a Ninth-Grade Ethnic Studies Course

ABSTRACT

Drawing from the theoretical contributions of Ethnic Studies, activist new media, and critical digital literacies, this article explores the nature of a ninth-grade curricular unit about how one’s daily environment impacts one’s health and well-being. Using a combination of ethnographic and practitioner inquiry methods, the authors highlight an Ethnic Studies teacher’s innovative and community-based pedagogy that honed students’ critical digital literacies and civic action practices through their engagement with the digital media app “See, Click, Fix.” Findings detail students’ perspectives about how the unit both helped them resist deficit-oriented ideologies and served as a conduit for critical civic literacies. The authors contend that the fostering of critical digital literacies remain extremely imperative to the future and expansion of Ethnic Studies courses.

Acknowledgments

Our sincere gratitude goes to Joseph Kahne and Nicole Mirra for their insightful feedback on this manuscript. We also deeply thank Young Whan Choi for his support on this larger project as well as Equity & Excellence in Education’s editors and anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leona Kwon

Leona Kwon, originally from Los Angeles, has taught ethnic studies in Oakland Unified School District since 2011.

Cati V. de los Ríos

Cati V. de los Ríos is an assistant professor in the School of Education at University of California, Davis. She is a former ethnic studies and bilingual high school teacher in California and Massachusetts public schools.