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InsideOut: Facilitating Gay Youth Identity Development Through a Performance-Based Youth Organization
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This article addresses issues of identity development for youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ), using the concept of a "viable social identity" (Côté & Levine, 2002) as the model for a positive developmental trajectory. LGBTQ youth face more extreme developmental challenges than most mainstream youth, such as learning to manage a stigmatized identity (Hetrick & Martin, 1987) in a potentially hostile environment, making participation in identity-work activities particularly important. Through a case study with About Face Youth Theatre, a performance arts organization in Chicago, this study explores the relation between narrative and identity, and the way in which the public performance of personal narratives both allows youth to explore possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986) and to see their painful, personal stories independent of themselves, allowing them to move beyond these events toward a positive future.
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... Consistently, historical memory education (HME) emphasizes the importance of pedagogical change as a prerequisite for providing reparation and guaranteeing non-repetition (Corredor et al., 2018). In this task, a productive strategy is the incorporation of pedagogical experiences in history and arts education that have been shown transformative educational effects (Halverson, 2005;Reisman, 2012). This chapter presents an educational experience in HME that uses both document-based activities and role-playing. ...
... Recently, narrative activities involving artistic production have been conceptualized as spaces for identity exploration and positive youth development. In these spaces, adolescents have the opportunity of performing personal narratives, through dramaturgical projects or digital media production which permits the exploration of possible selves and the experience of collective identity exploration (Halverson, 2005(Halverson, , 2010(Halverson, , 2013. Narrative exploration, in this context, allows youth from stigmatized groups to process social pressures through collective representation and develop positive identities of themselves. ...
... Activities in this study were designed following basic principles of HME, that is, they were student-centered, collaborative, and digital (Corredor et al., 2018). Activities also incorporated recent developments in educational research (Halverson, 2005(Halverson, , 2010(Halverson, , 2013Kobbe et al., 2007;Kollar et al., 2006;Martin & Wineburg, 2008;Reisman, 2012;Wineburg, 1991). Our design shows that it is beneficial to incorporate pedagogical concepts developed for the teaching of other subject matters to the teaching of history and historical memory. ...
Millions of children worldwide will not reach their potential in terms of education and development. However, it is widely known that investment in high-quality early childhood development (ECD) pays rich dividends throughout the lifespan of an individual, impacting their own lives, families, and communities in a positive way. Further evidence points to the importance of ECD in delivering the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The multi-sectoral, integrated provision of ECD services is ideally placed to facilitate holistic positive change and enhance social cohesion in some of the most inequitable and vulnerable contexts. The LINKS project brings together an international network of researchers, who work in strategic partnership with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Early Years the Organisation for Young Children in Northern Ireland to support the development, implementation, and evaluation of ECD programs in low- and middle-income countries impacted by divisions and conflict. The project is designed to contribute to the international evidence base on ECD for social cohesion and sustaining peace to make a real difference in the lives of children, caregivers, and communities.
... Consistently, historical memory education (HME) emphasizes the importance of pedagogical change as a prerequisite for providing reparation and guaranteeing non-repetition (Corredor et al., 2018). In this task, a productive strategy is the incorporation of pedagogical experiences in history and arts education that have been shown transformative educational effects (Halverson, 2005;Reisman, 2012). This chapter presents an educational experience in HME that uses both document-based activities and role-playing. ...
... Recently, narrative activities involving artistic production have been conceptualized as spaces for identity exploration and positive youth development. In these spaces, adolescents have the opportunity of performing personal narratives, through dramaturgical projects or digital media production which permits the exploration of possible selves and the experience of collective identity exploration (Halverson, 2005(Halverson, , 2010(Halverson, , 2013. Narrative exploration, in this context, allows youth from stigmatized groups to process social pressures through collective representation and develop positive identities of themselves. ...
... Activities in this study were designed following basic principles of HME, that is, they were student-centered, collaborative, and digital (Corredor et al., 2018). Activities also incorporated recent developments in educational research (Halverson, 2005(Halverson, , 2010(Halverson, , 2013Kobbe et al., 2007;Kollar et al., 2006;Martin & Wineburg, 2008;Reisman, 2012;Wineburg, 1991). Our design shows that it is beneficial to incorporate pedagogical concepts developed for the teaching of other subject matters to the teaching of history and historical memory. ...
Pedagogical change is imperative for historical memory education (HME). This chapter describes qualitatively an educational experience in HME that embeds document-based analysis in role-playing activities. Historical role-playing was used as a pedagogical resource, allowing the presentation of historical inquiry within narratives that are attractive for students. Results show that the role-playing activities fostered class dynamics around emergent document-based narratives that transformed both the understanding of the conflict and the empathetic appreciation of what the conflict meant emotionally for victims and survivors. Using thematic analysis, this chapter presents the main findings of this work in a way that can enrich pedagogical practices in history and HME. Guidelines for designing this type of activities are provided, attending especially to the principle of not reenacting traumatic events directly and to the need of having adequate moments of emotional closing and healing, but also to the idea that HME needs to present the complexity of a violent past and to connect with economic, political, and institutional issues.
... As "a border, a margin, a site of negotiation" (Carlson, 1996, p. 20) the dramaturgical process offers youth opportunities to understand their lives and experiences (Hammock, 2011;Winn, 2012); portray the stories and personae of other people as a way to try on different selves (Halverson, 2010); and imagine possibilities for their lives (Halverson, 2010;Winn & Jackson, 2011). As a "live space" (Halverson, 2010) for the interrogation of inequitable conditions, theater affords youth with opportunities to delve into and retell difficult events and repudiate negative judgments through the re-presentation of lived experiences (Halverson, 2005;Winn, 2012). Rehearsals and performances are thus significant sites of "authoring" (Halverson, 2010;Winn & Jackson, 2011). ...
... Furthermore, Xang understood that it was important for him to risk the personal and navigate the "blurred boundaries" between the personal and professional (McLaughlin, 2001) to illustrate for Hmong youth possible ethnic selves (cf. Halverson, 2005) that included dating or marrying someone with the same last name: I don't think that any of them would have been-If not for this story and if not for my experience, I have a feeling they would not have seen the same-last-name dating as an okay thing . . . They wouldn't have seen it as an okay thing. ...
Background/Context
Community-based youth theater programs afford youth opportunities to explore and “author” new identities by “performing writing.” Yet, we know much less about the ways in which immigrant youth are exploring struggles and changes within their families and ethnic community. We particularly lack research about the roles of immigrant adult educators in youth programs, and the significance to the pedagogical process of their experiences, being, and modes of interacting with young people who share with them a common ethnicity.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study
The purpose of the study is to explore the role of a community-based Hmong immigrant educator as a “nepantlera,” or boundary-crossing “guide” in Hmong youth’s negotiation of culture and identity. It is guided by three questions: (1) How does nepantlera pedagogy move beyond self–other dichotomies? (2) How does nepantlera pedagogy facilitate rewriting the self to construct new visions of ethnic identity? and (3) How does nepantlera pedagogy entail risking the personal?
Setting
The research setting was a Hmong community-based arts organization in an urban center in the Midwestern United States.
Population/Participants/Subjects
Three 1.5-generation Hmong American adult staff of a community-based organization, one Korean American teaching artist from a local theater company, and 11 second-generation Hmong American adolescents participated in the study.
Research Design
The study draws from a critical ethnographic investigation of the culturally relevant practices of a youth theater project within a Hmong coethnic organization.
Data Collection and Analysis
Ethnographic data collection occurred over the 4-month program cycle of the theater project. Data sources include field notes from participant observations, semi-structured interviews, audio and video recordings of the activities, work products, and documents about the program and organization. The data were analyzed with thematic analysis techniques.
Findings/Results
The findings suggest that the nepantlera pedagogy of the Hmong immigrant educator fostered opportunities for Hmong youth to (1) disrupt binaries between first-generation and second-generation immigrants by exploring not only differences but also commonalities; (2) imagine new ethnic selves by exploring and rewriting a Hmong edict against same-last-name relationships; and (3) experience the vulnerability of their Hmong educator through disclosure about his personal life.
Conclusions/Recommendations
The nepantlera pedagogy of an immigrant educator within a coethnic community-based organization brings a perspective from the nepantla, or “in-between,” of culture and identity that provides immigrant youth with a deeper level of cultural knowledge and connectedness to navigate their multiple worlds.
... In our study, we used narratives to analyze teacher identity based on the idea that stories procure a way for individuals to explore key dimensions of identity: how we perceive ourselves, how we relate to others, and how we integrate into the communities to which we belong (Halverson, 2005). ...
This qualitative exploratory study analyzed the identities of eight language teachers participating in a collabo-rative problem-based Professional Development Program (PDP) to develop students' writing skills. We analyzed how these teachers' positionings about the teaching/learning of writing shaped their identities and positionings in their classrooms. Using semi-structured interviews (Rubin & Rubin, 2012) and following a dialogical (Akkerman & Meijer, 2010) and narrative approach (De fina, 2012) to identity, we found that there were clear contradictions in the way that teachers presented themselves in their narratives, showing clear evidence of teacher identity being multiple and unitary, individual and social, continuous and discontinuous.
... • Unitary and multiple • Discontinuous and continuous • Social and individual Akkerman & Meijer (2010) Narratives • Halverson (2005) posits that narratives allow us to analyze: ...
Evidence indicates that students have few opportunities to develop argumentative writing in school (Graham et al., 2013; Meneses, 2008; Concha et al., 2010 ), directly affecting their possibilities of participating in more complex literate worlds, like higher education, where these skills are required for succeeding (Wesley & Lowenthal, 2010).
This article analyzes preconceptions about writing in participants of a Writing Teacher Professional Development (TPD) program in a public University in Chile. This work was guided by two research questions: (a) What are the beliefs and appraisals about the teaching and learning of writing in the context of this TPD program? (b) What are some of the reflections (contrasts with previous beliefs and appraisals) reported by teachers after and during their involvement in this TPD program?
This qualitative exploratory study expands on a previous one (Alvarado et al., 2021), using semi-structured interviews (Rubin & Rubin, 2012) at three points in time during 2018 and 2020 with seven ongoing participants of the aforementioned Writing TPD program. Preliminary results of the data show that teachers envision the writing teaching-learning process as a communicative process based around the construction of meaning. Further, teachers reflected on the re(construction) of what a meaningful student-centered learning environment means.
Finally, this study not only adds to the literature on Writing TPD programs to prepare students for higher education but also emphasizes the importance of constant teacher reflection as a concrete way to modify and adapt teaching practices, allowing teachers to feel empowered by their beliefs.
Our inquiry considers how minoritized youth counter brutal hegemony by re-imagining their identities through arts. In particular, it explores how minoritized youth draw on dark themes to (re)present their lives in creative production. Since K-12 educational contexts are often viewed as sites of convivial ambience where student depictions of violence are discouraged (Phillips [2012]. “Retribution and Rebellion: Children’s Meaning Making of Justice Through Storytelling.” International Journal of Early Childhood 44: 141–156.), research is needed to explicate how youth engage themes of physical violence, destruction, and even death in storying their lives. Our article is guided by the following questions: How do minoritized youth engage dark themes that disrupt discourses of conviviality in re-storying their lives? Why is a curriculum of darkness important for radical healing? Our illumination of the ways in which minoritized youth explored violence and destruction in their creative work significantly extends the literature on young people’s examination of identity and inequality. Our study brings attention to the need for a curriculum of darkness, where pedagogy might better reflect the dark themes that are culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings [1995]. “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.” American Educational Research Journal 32 (3): 465–491.) to the identities and lives of minoritized young people.
Learning in the arts is distinct from most other subjects for three reasons. First, the arts are centrally a representational domain and learning in the arts involves becoming aware of how representational choices communicate meaning to different audiences. Second, form and meaning are integrated; artistic representations are saturated with meaning, and subtle variations are consequential to that meaning. Third, work in the arts involves examining identify and culture, because artistic cognition is intertwined with both. This chapter argues that these three distinct features of arts learning have implications for our understanding of learning more generally. The chapter reviews four types of research: (1) how the arts have been studied in educational settings; (2) how learning occurs in different arts including music and visual arts; (3) the key features of arts learning: the role of the audience, critique, authentic assessment, and role taking; (4) how an arts-based perspective can contribute to our understanding of learning in all subjects.
The interdisciplinary field of the learning sciences encompasses educational psychology, cognitive science, computer science, and anthropology, among other disciplines. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, first published in 2006, is the definitive introduction to this innovative approach to teaching, learning, and educational technology. In this significantly revised third edition, leading scholars incorporate the latest research to provide seminal overviews of the field. This research is essential in developing effective innovations that enhance student learning - including how to write textbooks, design educational software, prepare effective teachers, and organize classrooms. The chapters illustrate the importance of creating productive learning environments both inside and outside school, including after school clubs, libraries, and museums. The Handbook has proven to be an essential resource for graduate students, researchers, consultants, software designers, and policy makers on a global scale.
This study draws on ethnographic research from three co-ethnic community-based, arts programs serving immigrant youth to examine the ways in which immigrant educators serve as “curriculum texts” for youth. It illustrates the curricular nature of the experiences, being and interactions of immigrant educators who share with youth the same racialized ethnic backgrounds, languages, and cultural heritage. It significantly contributes to the re-imagining of the possibilities for education across formal and non-formal settings, and the re-valuing of the work of co-ethnic community-based organizations and their immigrant staff. Against the backdrop of a paucity of teachers of color, exploring the curricular contributions of minoritized educators in out-of-school contexts is critical for understanding significance of minoritized educators for advancing culturally relevant pedagogy.
This article analyzes the development of initiative as an exemplar of one of many learning experiences that should be studied as part of positive youth development. The capacity for initiative is essential for adults in our society and will become more important in the 21st century, yet adolescents have few opportunities to learn it. Their typical experiences during schoolwork and unstructured leisure do not reflect conditions for learning initiative. The context best suited to the development of initiative appears to be that of structured voluntary activities, such as sports, arts, and participation in organizations, in which youths experience the rare combination of intrinsic motivation in combination with deep attention. An incomplete body of outcome research suggests that such activities are associated with positive development, but the developmental processes involved are only beginning to be understood. One promising approach has recorded language use and has found that adolescents participating in effective organizations acquire a new operating language that appears to correspond to the development of initiative.
Although most individuals pass through adolescence without excessively high levels of "storm and stress," many do experience difficulty. Why? Is there something unique about this developmental period that puts adolescents at risk for difficulty? This article focuses on this question and advances the hypothesis that some of the negative psychological changes associated with adolescent development result from a mismatch between the needs of developing adolescents and the opportunities afforded them by their social environments. It provides examples of how this mismatch develops in the school and in the home and how it is linked to negative age-related changes in early adolescents' motivation and self-perceptions. Ways in which more developmentally appropriate social environments can be created are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Three studies are described that examined the effects of contextual factors on the self-concept, self-regulation, and coping competence. Results indicated that personally significant social experiences influence not only the accessibility of differing self-conceptions, but also appraisals of their current and past self-descriptiveness and expectancies of their future likelihood. Furthermore, positive and negative experiences were found to have asymmetrical effects on these appraisals and expectancies and on their association with self-regulation and coping competence. By contrast, appraisals regarding the attractiveness and personal valuation of self-descriptors were more resistant to situational influence. Implications of these findings for clinical interventions are considered.