Amir Michalovich will have his dissertation defense at 12:30 PM on Wednesday, May 24, 2023 in Room 203 of the Graduate Student Centre (6371 Crescent Road).
All are welcome to attend. Please arrive 5 minutes early so the exam can begin promptly.
The examination committee comprises:
Supervisory Committee Members: Drs. Maureen Kendrick and Margaret Early (Co-supervisors), Dr. Bonny Norton (Committee Member)
University Examiners: Dr. Patsy Duff (LLED) and Dr. Rita Irwin (EDCP)
External Examiner: Dr. Antoinette Gagné (OISE)
Exam Chair: Dr. Tony Clarke (EDCP)
Digital Multimodal Composing with Youth from Refugee and Immigrant Backgrounds in a Metro Vancouver Secondary School
Canadian schools welcome increasing numbers of emergent multilingual newcomer youth. However, studies examining graduation data have shown that schools have not been very successful in keeping youth from refugee and socio-economically marginalized backgrounds invested in school learning. There is thus an urgent need to understand how these youth can be better supported in Canadian schools to achieve their potential. This qualitative, multi-year, ethnographic case-study research addresses this need, involving nine emergent multilingual adolescent newcomers from refugee and immigrant backgrounds in a Metro Vancouver secondary school. The study explored possibilities for language and literacy learning among these youth through in-school digital multimodal composing (DMC), the use of digital tools to make meaning with multiple modes (e.g., languages, visuals, gestures). Youth inquired, and later shared, about issues of interest and concern to them in DMC activities, specifically video productions, that I facilitated during class time in popular new media genres (e.g., reaction videos, video podcasts). The activities were designed with a role-play-based, dramaturgical pedagogy, and were anchored in curriculum goals. Reflexive thematic analysis of text, audio, and video data collected from youth and their teachers was conducted inductively in ATLAS.ti, with a multimodal ethnographic approach. Findings revealed three patterns presented in three manuscripts: (1) a focus on the role-play-based, dramaturgical pedagogy of the project as a case showed how this pedagogical structuring of DMC processes facilitated the nine newcomer students’ investment in classroom learning; (2) a focus on the reaction videos production as a case showed how six youth from refugee backgrounds took ownership of how they were to be perceived by their classmates and teachers; and (3) a focus, as a case, on one emergent multilingual refugee-background learner with significantly interrupted schooling who had come late to literacy, showed how DMC processes helped him overcome the language barrier, showcase English proficiency, and counter deficit perceptions. The study helps researchers, educators, and teacher-educators better understand how DMC can foster these youth’s investment in school learning.