Youth as historical actors in the production of possible futures

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we expand the concept of historical actors to elaborate on how transformative agency has been addressed in our work with youth from nondominant communities, particularly as they leverage digital tools. First, we revisit our work with migrant students, from which the concept arose. Next, we expand this theory by proposing four indicia of the transformative nature of becoming historical actors, and offer three empirical examples to elucidate them. In our first vignette, we document how, when youth glitch during video game play, they collectively experiment with the rules, regulations, and boundaries of game design, finding ways to circumvent normative video game play and co-author their experiences. In the second vignette, we focus on siblings who take over research video cameras as their family is being filmed. We illustrate how they reshape their relation to the cameras, reorganizing participation structures through their agentive and transgressive actions. Finally, we offer an example from viral media to consider how we might recognize the process of becoming historical actors in the research that youth themselves conduct when they leverage digital tools to document everyday acts of racism, and, importantly, resistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Through ballot initiatives in 1994 and 1998, California voters passed Propositions 187 and 227, respectively. Proposition 187 in effect prevented undocumented immigrants from gaining access to public services or benefits, including healthcare and  public education. Proposition 227 sought to terminate bilingual education and require that all public school courses be taught primarily in English. For more discussion on these propositions and their impact on California’s public education, see Escobedo (1999).

2. These are the years that Kris Gutiérrez was involved as director and PI of MSLI, and in which this specific curriculum and the notion of historical actors arose. The program ran for a few years after 2006 under other leadership.

3. Instead of the more well-known zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), we use Cole’s [personal communication, 2005] term of zo-ped, where zo is an African word for “shaman” or “wise man” and ped refers to “pedagogy”; hence, “the pedagogy of a wise man.”

4. We provide the links to these events: BBQ Betty (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh9D_PUe7QI) and Permit Patty (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0OQEeudpZk).

5. We provide the link to the video of the interaction: https://www.facebook.com/larazaunidaparty/videos/1977886785579055/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the MacArthur Foundation Connected Learning Research Network under Grant CLRN 10-97572-000-USP (Phase 1) and CLRN 13-105643-000-USP (Phase 2); John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation [MacArthur Foundation Connected Learning Research Network].