“It’s Me Trying My Best to Bring Awareness to the Issues”: Narrative Assemblage and Visual Text-Making as Sociopolitical Inquiry in Canadian History

Abstract

In this collaborative inquiry, we – Felix, a Grade 11 student; Tim,a high school social studies teacher; and Michelle,a literacy education professor – explore civic engagement and the politics of literacy in the classroom as developing practices for engaging in sociopolitical issues. We consider the “means and mechanisms” by which students in a Grade 11 Canadian History class were invited to “scrutinize the values and priorities” of Indigenous peoples and European explorers in Nouvelle-France, and to come to a deeper understanding of exploration and settlement in relationship to exploitation and colonization. We share how it happened that negotiating a written assignment to produce a piece of visual art allowed Felixto create a personal and political expression of the important concepts of the unit, demonstrating that a wider range of civic engagement and literacy practices have an important place in the classroom. In the process, we highlight tensions in multiliteracies pedagogies and wonder at the assemblage created by Felix’sliteracy artifact. Together, we are inspired to consider the kinds of critical and creative expressions that an art piece and its entangled practices, connecting texts, inspirations, and ideas produce, and the engaged sociocultural, political and historical inquiry that can emerge when the curriculum is learned in relation to becoming an artist,student and activist.

Keywords

• participatory politics
• civic education
• assessment
• political expression
• multimodality
• multiliteracies
• new literacy studies
• inquiry
• social studies