Nicole Mirra

This chapter challenges dominant narratives about the civic disengagement of youth from marginalized communities by reconceptualizing what counts as civic participation in public life and how youth are positioned as civic agents. We examine ideologies that undergird traditional forms of civic education and engagement in the United States and offer an alternative vision of civic life grounded in recognition of systemic inequality and struggle for social justice. We consider the ways in which digital media has fundamentally transformed the public sphere and expanded opportunities for youth civic expression and action, as well as the ways that youth participatory action research literature offers a framework for civic education that forefronts youth experience and voice. Our analysis culminates in the development of a new conceptual model for civic learning and engagement that pushes past participation into the realms of interrogation and innovation.

This article analyzes how guns emerged as both urgent topics of dialogue and common features of everyday life for 228 students and their teachers in six communities across the United States who participated in the Digital
Democratic Dialogue (3D) Project, a year long social design-based experiment aimed at foregrounding youth voice and fostering connection across lines of geographic and ideological difference. We trace the myriad ways that guns literally and discursively shaped the multiple ecological contexts of the 3D Project in order to detail youth sociopolitical learning and extend traditional models of civic education. We propose a paradigm of speculative civic literacies that privileges a collaborative push toward democratic interrogation and innovation over integration into existing civic and political structures.

A confluence of circumstances in US public life, including the proliferation
of digital media outlets, the diminished role of information
gatekeepers, and entrenched ideological polarization, have made one
of the core competencies of political engagement — staying informed
about current events — an increasingly fraught endeavor. Fears about
misinformation, bias, and “fake news” have spawned an array of curricular
resources aimed at helping educators teach students how to
analyze information sources in hopes that a common foundation of
knowledge will contribute to reasoned and productive civic debate. In
this article, we argue that analyzing news sources is a necessary but
insufficient skill for fostering dialogue in public life. We suggest that
the development of authentic connections across partisan divides
require more expansive literacies grounded in civic storytelling,
inquiry, and collaborative social dreaming. We draw upon the practices
of 2 learning communities to offer principles and strategies for
fostering such culturally relevant media literacies.

This article explores how speculative civic literacies can support youth engagement in policy discourse in digital and analog contexts. We broaden the scope of civic literacies by emphasizing core principles of Afrofuturism and participatory culture. Articulating a specific framework for applying these principles to contemporary conceptions of civic literacies, we identify six digital civic literacy practices that may be leveraged in classrooms. We then analyze two case studies of youth engaging with digital tools and web-based platforms, providing examples of how youth participate in educational policy discourse in online contexts.

Authored by a teacher-researcher design team, this manuscript explores the boundaries and processes of literacy research enacted across perilous timescales. Building from fieldnotes, reflections, and dialogue from a two and a half year social design-based experiment, this study extends scholarship focused on kinship and communities of practice. Through considering the boundaries of where and how critical research is enacted, this paper demonstrates the ethical imperatives for considering when collective research continues or ends. Considering a lineage of solidarity tied to new literacy studies, we examine the multiple activity systems occupied by our community members and explore the pedagogies of healing and reconstitution that emerged. These findings push for speculative approaches to design that center affect and analog interactions.

In this essay, Nicole Mirra and Antero Garcia explore how young people from six demographically distinct communities across the United States understand the social and political issues affecting their lives, engage in storytelling and dialogue across differences, and collaboratively imagine humanizing and hopeful civic futures. Drawing from critical race perspectives on democracy and civic education, and with an expansive vision of the nature and purpose of literacy, Mirra and Garcia develop a speculative approach to civic literacy research and practice that centers the voices and concerns of young people, honors differences of identity and expression, and manifests ideological commitments to equity, empathy, and collective struggle to ward off civic disintegration. Findings from their social design-based experiment foreground counterstories in which youth challenge their positioning as not-yet-citizens, create opportunities to engage in civic life on their own terms, and leverage their repertoire of literacy practices to invent new possibilities for inclusive democratic community life.

Purpose-This paper aims to analyze how a group of middle-school debaters integrated their identities and epistemologies into the traditional literacy practice of debate to advocate for more expansive and inclusive forms of academic and civic discussion. The adult and youth co-researchers of the Debate Liberation League (DLL) detail their creation of a critical debate praxis through the use of spoken word and translanguaging and illustrate how they sought to redesign a foundational activity of English Language Arts on their own terms. Design/methodology/approach-Drawing upon critical race and borderlands theories, the authors use critical ethnographic and participatory action research methods to explore how the DLL deconstructed the boundaries of what counts as public dialogue and offered an alternative model of what intergenerational and multi-voiced democratic discourse could look like in English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms and beyond. Findings-The findings demonstrate how DLL students broke down normative binaries of affirmative/ negative and objective/subjective in their debate performances and introduced testimonios as evidence for civic claims to make space for their voices and reimagine deliberation. Originality/value-This study foregrounds dialogic data generation through a collaborative, intergenerational research approach. It highlights the constructed nature of literacy "rules," demonstrates youth expertise in reimagining ELA, and offers a pathway toward a more compassionate public sphere. Keywords Critical literacy, Literacy and identity, English language arts Paper type Research paper The debate tournament was beginning. Pairings for the first round had been released and each team eagerly scanned the list: Are we aff or neg? Who are we up against? What room are we in? Students sought final words of encouragement from their coaches and then took off-don't want to keep the judge waiting. It was April, so every debater could recite the resolution by heart; after all, it was the same one that all middle and high school policy debaters had been The authors would like to thank the members of the Southside Middle School community. No external funding was received to support this research. The Debate Liberation League (DLL) is comprised of the 10 middle school debaters who participated in this study, co-analyzed the data, and made decisions about the structure and stylistic choices made in the manuscript. While privacy constraints prevent them from naming themselves, they collaboratively developed the DLL group name and use it to identify themselves as co-authors of this piece. We discuss our writing process further in the methodology section of the article. Nature and purpose of public dialogue

In response to widespread interest in 21st-century learning across the educational landscape, the authors explored the extent to which the concept possesses clear definition and coherent meaning within both research discourse and K–12 classroom practice in the United States, particularly with regard to conceptualizations and enactments of literacy. This research review offers descriptive data about the subject areas and grade levels in which 21st-century learning efforts are concentrated, analyzes the literacy frameworks employed to guide pedagogy, and describes instructional practices most frequently associated
with the concept. Further, this research review explores the role of
digital tools in the enactment of 21st-century learning, including how often teachers are leveraging the collaborative and interactive affordances of those tools. By leveraging a critical analytic framework, findings indicate a dearth of classroom-based research emphasizing democratic engagement and equity within 21st-century learning, as well as a hesitancy to use digital literacies to connect with wider publics. Analysis suggests a weakly defined understanding of what literacy learning in the 21st century means in classrooms today, which
speaks to the need for a stronger focus on social futures.

This manuscript examines how national reading policies in the United States shape specific kinds of civic identities for K–12 students. We engage in a thematic discourse analysis of two contemporary national policy documents—the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Reading Framework—to understand the ways citizenship is defined and constructed at the national level. By reading these documents for
how they conceptualize civic-based educational outcomes, we interrogate the disconnects between this language and the civic contexts—and potential outlets for civic action—that young people are
navigating in the United States today. We examine how seemingly benign policy documents define citizenship in increasingly narrow visions of individualist passivity, and how such definitions run counter to the expansive visions necessary to honor the lived experiences of young citizens of color. Our analysis highlights how these policy documents structure literacy practices, including the variety of texts that students encounter, opportunities to analyze those texts, and specific forms
of engagement with media and messages found in society, in ways that stymie a Freirian reading of the word and the world. Ultimately, we suggest how educators might work within the limited pedagogical spaces of these policies toward liberatory ends.

Many teachers still struggle to find a coherent and meaningful framework for incorporating new literacies into their instruction. This case study examines the teaching and learning that took place in a New and Multimodal Literacies class for preservice English teachers to understand how the ideas of connected learning are generative yet challenging as educators seek to create transforma-tive, technology-integrated, and equity-oriented literacy learning experiences for students. Findings suggest that when teachers explore technological tools with connection in mind, they can develop instructional experiences that forefront student interests and critical literacy learning. The study offers a vision of connected teaching to guide digital literacy teacher education into the future. "I was very wary of bringing technology into the classroom in arbitrary ways simply for the sake of calling the unit multimodal. In designing the curriculum I was aware of the affordances of each piece of technology and the actions associated with their use that have to be made relevant in each activity. Something like Microsoft OneNote, for example, could be no more revolutionary than a sheet of paper if it is simply being used for submission instead of interaction or a place to share ideas and feedback. Technology is not a magical enhancer of activities, nor do students magically know what to do with it just because they are young." Elizabeth 1 , an aspiring high school English language arts (ELA) teacher , shared these thoughts in the rationale paper accompanying the final unit plan she submitted for my New and Multimodal Literacies graduate education course. She echoes some of the most common concerns that educators across the country voice about integrating technology into classroom pedagogy , specifically, a healthy skepticism about the idea that the mere presence of these tools "magically" transforms learning (Cuban, 2013; Enyedy, 2014).

The authors undertook a study of the Middle School Quality Initiative, a program of the New York City Department of Education that integrates debate into the middle school curriculum. They discovered that debate can bolster students’ academic literacy skills along with inspiring them to be engaged citizens. The article highlights debate as a best practice that sustains students’ linguistic, cultural, and civic identities.

Although the literature on teacher working conditions often cites student-and school-level factors as contributors to teacher turnover in high-poverty urban schools, the larger context of social and economic inequality within which these factors are situated is often overlooked. This mixed-methods study draws upon a survey of nearly 800 California public high school teachers and case studies of two high-poverty urban high schools to highlight the ways that inequality structures teacher time and student learning in these schools. We highlight efforts teachers make to meet student needs and exert professional agency within the broader social ecology of inequality.

In today’s educational context, characterized by growing inequality and the rise of neoliberal ideology, universities are dealing with pressures to contribute to the global workforce and partner with private interests rather than educating citizens and serving the public good. This article presents youth participatory action research (YPAR) as a practice that can encourage reflection about the complex purposes of higher education and the politics of knowledge production in this moment. The authors explore how 26 university faculty members who engage in YPAR conceptualize the purposes of this practice and consider the role of the university in this work. Findings indicate that YPAR promotes both participation in existing educational structures and transformation of those structures in pursuit of social improvement and offers opportunities to push back against the hardening of neoliberal pressures on universities towards democratic and collaborative research.

Under the guise of increasing quality and accountability, many urban teacher education programs and professional development models characterize educators as mere transmitters of standardized content knowledge. The authors argue that such dehumanizing practices, which are rooted in the discourse of neoliberalism, prevent teachers from helping their students develop powerful literacies and civic skills. The authors seek to disrupt mainstream views about teaching and learning by instead envisioning the “Teacher as Civic Agent.” By reevaluating theories of schooling and democracy and analyzing a particular learning community that conceptualizes teachers as public intellectuals, this work aims to make an important theoretical shift in how educators, politicians, and policy makers think about the purpose of education in a democracy. The authors argue for new paradigm of teacher education in which teachers engage with local communities, become producers of knowledge, and work collectively in solidarity with their students to create social change.

Educating for Empathy presents a compelling framework for thinking about the purpose and practice of literacy education in a politically polarized world. Mirra proposes a model of critical civic empathy that encourages secondary ELA teachers to consider how issues of power and inequity play out in the literacy classroom and how to envision literacy practices as a means of civic engagement. The book reviews core elements of ELA instruction―response to literature, classroom discussion, research, and digital literacy―and demonstrates how these activities can be adapted to foster critical thinking and empathetic perspectives among students. Chapters depict teachers and students engaging in this transformative learning, offer concrete strategies for the classroom, and pose questions to guide school communities in collaborative reflection.