A Pedagogy of Powerful Communication ― Youth Radio and Radio Arts in the Multilingual Classroom

This volume details the author's study of a youth media project, Youth Radio and Radio Arts for multilingual students in high schools, which took place in a multi-grade class of English as a second language (ESL) studies skills and academic support with 16-18 students from working class immigrant families. It aimed to transform remedial ESL and literacy practices and help students use media to promote justice by incorporating elements of multiliteracies, critical language teaching, and community-based arts education to promote personal, social, and academic development. She discusses how ideas of voice were constructed and understood by participants in relation to communication, and the processes of change and continuity at the collective and individual levels in terms of classroom cultural practices and socially situated identities. She explains the program design, the genre-based pedagogy, the radio and radio genres that were taught, and the conditions for learning and youth subject positionings within the school and community; the first phases of the construction of the curriculum, how youth and adult participants began to make sense of its purposes, and the continuity and change in cultural practices and selves; and two case studies of participants and the sense they made of the cultural elements in support of their learning and development. Annotation c2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Dana Walker is Associate Professor of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education at the University of Northern Colorado. She has directed and researched youth media arts and poetry programs since 2000, and is currently Director of Youth Radio and Radio Arts in the Denver metro area.