UC Santa Cruz

In this semester-long study in a high school English class that was online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a class of ninth graders engaged in communication with people outside of their classroom about their collectively chosen project topic: racism. The transliteracies framework was used to explore students’ participation in multimodal events and texts, as well as the teacher and students’ views of the projects. This study helps to complicate, contribute to, expand, and bring together the related pedagogies of youth participatory action research (YPAR) and critical literacy. More specifically, the findings of this qualitative study were that students used a variety of transliteracies practices to move with and against the projects. Self love and skepticism were themes that emerged and deepened the projects, while the teacher grappled with issues of control, legitimacy, and representation. More research and collaborative practice is needed that explores limitations and the role of emergence in YPAR.