31. LEd – Network on Language and Education
Paper
School Radio: an Innovative Tool for the Development of Linguistic and Social Competence. A Case Study in Secondary School
Yaimara Batista Fernández, Yasna Patricia Pradena García, Rocío Anguita Martínez, Eduardo Fernández Rodríguez, María del Carmen Herguedas Esteban
University of Valladolid, Spain
Presenting Author: Batista Fernández, Yaimara;
Fernández Rodríguez, Eduardo
This qualitative research presents two case studies in the field of secondary education focused on the use of school radio as an innovative educational tool for improving linguistic communication skills, both oral and written comprehension and production, taking into account the needs and interests of students and the sociolinguistic context in which their activities take place. The first case was developed during the recording of the radio adaptation of a play by students with specific educational support needs, and the second one took place during the school radio workshops, made up of voluntary students. In both cases, the different talents of the students are taken into account, promoting learning from critical literacy approaches since reading and writing are not only cognitive processes or acts of (dis)codification, but also social tasks, cultural practices historically rooted in a community of speakers (Cassany & Castellà, 2010). In critically literate environments, students are given opportunities to ask questions, deconstruct stereotypes, co-construct knowledge, and examine multiple perspectives (Cleovoulou, Y., & Beach, P. 2019).
The use of the radio as an educational tool makes it possible to create a link between education and this media, at the same time it allows working on linguistic communication competence from different perspectives. It has achieved high effectiveness in teaching and learning processes through specific didactics that have boosted its use as educational tool. (Araya-Rivera, 2017). It also, contributes to improve students' oral and written expression, promotes comprehension of oral and written texts, learn to listen, to express opinions, to work in groups and to socialise with their peers. The use of the school radio directly transforms the teaching and learning process, stimulating the construction of knowledge, the creativity, the expression of language, the collective participation and the student's participation in the citizenship education.
In addition, it facilitates the acquisition of vocabulary and the improvement of communication for students with poor reading skills and visual deficits, providing a very favourable channel of information and communication and contributing significantly to the integral formation of the student in relation to the four pillars of education: "learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be" (Cobo, J., & Torres, P. 2016:320).
The use of radio is intended to make citizens more democratic and supportive, reflective and critical, autonomous and responsible, creative and imaginative, making it a medium that fascinates both students and teachers (López Ayuso, M.A. 2021).
Furthermore, school radio enables the development of critical thinking in students because not only promotes communication within their educational institution, but also transcends into their community. (Apaza Escobedo, Y., 2020).
The research questions of this study are as follows:
What are the opportunities, challenges and problems for the development of communication competence through pedagogical proposals of creative experimentation and collaborative learning based on the use of school radios as a teaching tool?
What limitations and possibilities do secondary education institutions encounter for the design and implementation of educational projects based on the production and dissemination of media content and its integration/articulation with the school curriculum?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis research follows a qualitative methodology to explore the use of school radio as an innovative proposal for improving students' competence in linguistic communication. Two case studies (Stake, 2005) are used as a research approach to provide a more detailed description of the object of study.
In order to carry out the case study, triangulation by methods was used, comparing the information obtained through participant observation in the first semester of 2021/2022 academic year, interviews and documentary review. In more detail, the techniques used were as follows:
- Classroom observation: non-participant observation was carried out in 30 class sessions, 10 took place in the school classroom, 16 in the radio, 3 in the garden and 1 in the language laboratory. A journal was kept in order to systematise the experiences and then analyse the data.
- Interviews: an in-depth interview was conducted with the teacher who carried out the educational experience in order to find out about relevant aspects of her educational practice. In these interviews, attention was paid to the dimensions of her teaching practice, but also to her biographical and personal experience.
- Document analysis: Information was collected and analysed in different formats: Didactic programming of the subject (PDA), Educational project of the centre (PEC), General annual programming of the centre (PGAC), Project of Access to chairs formulated by the teacher (PAC).
- Student and teacher anecdotal records, in which the perceptions and opinions about the innovation project in which they are involved are recorded.
- Audio and video recordings of the educational practice analysed.
For the analysis of the teaching practice, a matrix of didactic dimensions is used with the following elements: (a) selection criteria regarding the teaching contents and the perspective from which they are approached; (b) procedures, strategies and techniques implemented in the educational projects and which make up the teaching methodology developed; (c) resources, means and materials; (d) assessment resources used, the objectives pursued through the assessment activities implemented and the main dimensions and aspects to be assessed; (e) types of groups used, learning spaces and infrastructure of the centre used for the educational project, as well as the timing of the work carried out.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFirstly, the document analysis revealed that in 2019-2020, the school radio was implemented within the School Linguistics Project as an interdisciplinary tool to improve students' linguistic competence. In both case studies, the radio became a didactic facilitator, enhancing the students' performance. Students transfer knowledge and strengthen their language, creativity, motivation and imagination. At the same time, students improve their written expression in terms of spelling and syntax and improve their diction. In addition, the radio allows them to deal with the comprehension of written texts, textual typology, structures and elements of cohesion of texts, and spelling rules.
Secondly, the use of the Project Based Learning methodology in the use of radio in the classroom, makes students face real-world problems, identify those that are significant in their learning, finding tools to address them and finally acting collaboratively to create solutions to these problems.
Thirdly, from the analysis of critical literacy, we can see how through the use of programmatic content and socially and culturally relevant topics, students are able to see the world through other lenses, make new interpretations and contrast it with other points of view. Through the different discursive genres used, radio-drama, poetry and workshops, a situated knowledge is fostered by bringing students closer to the world’s reality, such as injustices, war conflicts, divided cities, etc. Both, in the classroom and in the workshops, students' interests are considered and a horizontal dialogue is established, both teacher-student and student-student, non-hierarchical, egalitarian and supportive dialogue, creating an environment appropriate for learning. Likewise, through the radio workshops, students participate constructively in the decisions and tasks related to their immediate environment. They organise debates, interviews and other radio programmes related to the cultural and social diversity of their own neighbourhood, and create links with other school’s radio and the community.
ReferencesAnwaruddin, S. M. (2019). Teaching language, promoting social justice: a dialogic approach to using social media. CALICO Journal, 36(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1558/CJ.35208
Apaza Escobedo, Y. D. (2020). El desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa y la radio escolar digital en estudiantes de secundaria de una Institución Educativa Pública de Lima. https://tesis.pucp.edu.pe/repositorio/handle/20.500.12404/17333
Araya-Rivera, C. (2017). La radio estudiantil como estrategia didáctica innovadora. Actualidades investigativas en educación. 17(3), 1-32. https://doi.org/10.15517/AIE.V17I3.30098
Bender, W. (2012). Project-Based Learning: Differentiating Instruction for the 21st Century. Corwin.
Cardoso Álvarez, P. G. (2020). La radio educativa como herramienta didáctica. Reconocimientos Nacionales Aula Desigual, #yoincluyo https://reconocimientos.escuelasinclusivas.com/experiencia-la-radio-educativa-como-experiencia-didactica/
Cassany, D., & Casstellà, J. (2010). Aproximación a la literacidad crítica literacidad. Perspectiva, 28(2), 353–374. https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-795X.2010V28N2P353
Cassany, D. (2015). Literacidad crítica: leer y escribir la ideología. Universitat Pompeu. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251839730_Literacidad_critica_leer_y_escribir_la_ideologia
Cleovoulou, Y., & Beach, P. (2019). Teaching critical literacy in inquiry-based classrooms: Teachers’ understanding of practice and pedagogy in elementary schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 83, 188-198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.04.012
Cobo, J. & Torres, P. (2016) La radio como recurso didáctico para la formación integral de los estudiantes de Educación Secundaria. Educ@ción en Contexto, Vol. II, N° Especial. I Jornadas de Investigación e Innovación Educativa. “Hacía una Educación de Calidad para el Desarrollo Integral del Ser Humano”. Diciembre, 2016. ISSN 2477-9296
Ellis, A. (2013). Critical literacy, common core, and “close reading”. Colorado Reading Journal (Winter). https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=education_facpubs
Ellis, A. & Eberly, T. L. (2015). Critical literacy: Going beyond the demands of common core. Illinois Reading Council Journal, vol. 43, núm. 2, pp. 9-15. https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1087&context=education_facpubs
Erickson, K. A.; Koppenhaver, D. A (2020) Comprehensive Literacy for All: Teaching Students with Significant Disabilities to Read and Write. Brookes Publishing Company. ISBN: 978-1-59857-657-3
Ferrer, I., Lorenzetti, L., & Shaw, J. (2020). Podcasting for social justice: exploring the potential of experiential and transformative teaching and learning through social work podcasts. Social Work Education, 39(7), 849–865. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2019.1680619
Gabriel Santana, E. (2016). La radio escolar, una herramienta innovadora con multitud de posibilidades. Consejería de Educación del Gobierno de Canarias. https://www.ifema.es/simo-educacion/noticias/radio-escolar-herramienta-innovadora-multitud-pos#:~:text=La%20radio%20escolar%20como%20la,la%20utilizaci%C3%B3n%20de%20rutinas%20y
López Ayuso, M.A. (2021) Proyecto de innovación e investigación didáctica en el área de lengua castellana y literatura, centrado en la radio como herramienta metodológica innovadora.
Sandoval Alvarado, D. A. y Zanotto González, M. (2022). Desarrollo de la literacidad crítica, currículo y estrategias didácticas en secundaria. Sinéctica, Revista Electrónica de Educación, (58), e1312. https://doi.org/10.31391/S2007-7033(2022)0058-008
Stake, R. (2005). Multiple Case Study Analysis.The Guilford Press.
31. LEd – Network on Language and Education
Paper
Bridging TV shows and Online Videos Watching Practices to Language Awareness and Multiliteracies in a University Classroom
Liudmila Shafirova, Maria Helena Araújo e Sá
University of Aveiro, Portugal
Presenting Author: Shafirova, Liudmila
One of the pillars of the Council of Europe agenda is to form plurilingual and pluricultural social agents who can successfully use their semiotic and linguistic repertoires during communication (Council of Europe, 2018). Another pillar of language education is including new technologies in the classroom and developing student's multiliteracies, which increasingly becomes a global agenda (United Nations, 2015).
This study aims to use both plurilingual and multiliteracies approaches to develop and validate an innovative pedagogical tool to foster language, plurilingual and critical media awareness of university students. In addition, we aim to contribute to a more global discussion on the intersection of multiliteracies and plurilingual education. To reach this objective we propose an innovative bridging activity for the classroom on Linguistic and Cultural diversity, mostly aimed at future language teachers at a Portuguese University. Bridging activity aims to connect students’ out-of-school activities with the in-school ones developing awareness of students’ informal language use (Thorne & Reinhardt, 2008; Yeh & Mitric, 2021).
When developing the bridging activity, we follow Benson (2021) in the idea of focusing the research not only on human interaction, but also on the learning environments the students encounter. In our case, we will focus on online videos/video platforms and the relationship of the students as consumers with these platforms/videos. To do so the students have to document and reflect on their consumption of online videos including video-based platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Netflix or HBO. We consider these informal practices valuable for research and classroom implementation as previous research claims that online videos open opportunities for students to use their plurilingual repertoires through different and combined modalities (Shafirova & Cassany, 2019, Vazquez-Calvo et al, 2022).
The notion of bridging activity is based on the framework of multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015; Gee, 2004) which views literacy as a social practice and focuses on day-to-day language use. As online interaction is a day-to-day practice for most young people, this online language use also should be introduced to the classroom (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015). In our study, we aim for students to develop multiliteracy and autonomous learning skills when watching videos on different platforms including taking into account the affordances of the platforms, the work of algorithms and how it is connected to language varieties in the media. These multiliteracy skills are also connected to several types of language and media awareness including:
Learning awareness. Drawing on Garrett & James (1992) cognitive awareness, we refer to it as the student’s awareness of the language learning when watching, comprehending or reacting to videos in different languages or language varieties.
Plurilingual and pluricultural awareness. Here we are drawing on Byram’s (2012) cultural and language awareness, which goes beyond just paying attention to cultural and linguistic diversity, expanding it to analysis of the “language-culture nexus” in specific contexts. In our case, we refer to it as students’ noticing and reflecting on their daily use of language and cultural varieties when consuming different videos.
Critical language and media awareness. We adopt this term from Tagg & Seargeant (2021) following their idea of its being a fluid and interactional experience of the users. In this study, we aim to understand the students’ awareness of social media algorithms in terms of the appearance of different languages and linguistic variations when they interact with videos.
The main research questions of the study are (1) What design/implementation of a bridging activity can enhance multiliteracy skills and language awareness of university students? (2) How can this design/implementation contribute to the global discussion on the intersection of multiliteracies and plurilingual education?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study follows the research based on educational design methodology, which includes the development of theoretical knowledge based on the inquiry and a practical instrument (McKenney & Reeves, 2014). In our case, the practical contribution consists of an educational product (a multimodal scaffolding instrument for auto-ethnographic observations) and educational planning (the bridging activity). Following this methodology, we went through a circle of Analysis, Design and Evaluation including (1) the Exploratory stage, where we issued a questionnaire to university students on video consumption and language learning; (2) the Pilot stage, where we applied the educational product to three students, evaluated the process and applied changes, and (3) Implementation stage, in which we collaborated with a university professor and applied the bridging activity to the classroom of a master course (From November 2022 to January 2023). The current study features preliminary results of the Implementation stage; more classroom implementations in teacher education subjects are planned for February/March 2023.
This bridging activity included three main parts of implementation:
1.The introductory 2-hour classroom (19 students) on media consumption and language diversity aimed to sensibilize the students to the topic through examples and discussion of students' experiences with video consumption. Data collected from the classroom: 108 minutes of audio recording and 19 screenshots.
2.Three students (two language educators and one aspiring teacher) from the classroom participated in the next stage. They had to make auto-ethnographic observations by filling in a specific table for four days observing the language varieties in the voiceover, subtitles or comments of the videos they watch normally, and searching for new videos in new languages for them. Data collected from this stage: three tables with 14 pages of observation and 34 screenshots.
3.The final stage is reflection. The students had to write an essay of 700-1000 words including a summary of the auto-observation process, a reflection on linguistic and cultural knowledge in the media and on how they can use videos in a classroom. Also, the feedback interviews of the students were collected and transcribed (39 minutes and 3,733 words in total).
Qualitative content analysis with a mostly top-down approach was used to analyze different types of awareness (Schreier, 2012). The data were analyzed according to such categories as learning awareness, plurilingual awareness, media awareness and multiliteracy skills, however, we were also open to other categories appearing from the data.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThis bridging activity successfully connected informal and formal learning in the university classroom (Thorne & Reinhardt, 2008). The students reflected on their learning experiences in an informal environment and their knowledge was valued in the classroom (Metz, 2018). We suggest that the design of the bridging activity was advantageous in developing multiliteracy skills as the participants could reflect on their online environments and language learning opportunities with video practices. One student even found online tools for language learning and included them into his viewing routine developing his autonomous learning skills (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015).
Interestingly, the students advanced differently in the different types of awareness. For some, language learning awareness was more meaningful, so the students became more open to learning new languages and including them in their routine. For other students, plurilingual awareness was the pillar of the exercise so they could reflect on the meaning of language diversity in the media. The awareness type the students struggled with the most was critical media awareness with only one student who could deeply reflect on it. We suggest, similarly to Yeh & Mitric (2021), that even more pronounced scaffolding guidelines are needed in the design of this bridging activity to overcome the level of “noticing” in awareness theory to the level of analysis and reflection (Byram, 2012).
This study shows that bridging activities can create new spaces for developing both multiliteracies and language awareness of university students. Even though it was conducted in one specific context of a Portuguese university, the results contribute to a global dialogue about the intersection of computer-assisted learning, multiliteracies and plurilingual pedagogies. The innovative design of this bridging activity enriches this dialogue with the ideas on how we can connect digital learning environments of the students to the classroom from a plurilingual perspective.
ReferencesBenson, P. (2021). Language learning environments: Spatial perspectives on SLA (Vol. 147). Multilingual Matters.
Byram, M. (2012). Language awareness and (critical) cultural awareness–relationships, comparisons and contrasts. Language awareness, 21(1-2), 5-13.
Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2015). The things you do to know: An introduction to the pedagogy of multiliteracies. A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Learning by design, 1-36.
Council of Europe. (2018). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Companion volume with new descriptors. https://rm. Coe. int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989
Garrett, P. & James, C. (1992). Language awareness in the classroom, Applied Linguistics and Language Study. Longman.
Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. Routledge.
McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. C. (2014). Educational design research. In Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 131-140). Springer.
Metz, M. (2018). Pedagogical content knowledge for teaching critical language awareness: The importance of valuing student knowledge. Urban Education, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042085918756714
Tagg, C., & Seargeant, P. (2021). Context design and critical language/media awareness: Implications for a social digital literacies education. Linguistics and Education, 62, 100776.
Schreier, M. (2012). Qualitative content analysis in practice. Sage publications.
Shafirova, L., & Cassany, D. (2019). Bronies learning English in the digital wild. Language Learning & Technology, 23(1), 127–144. https://doi.org/10125/44676
Thorne, S. L., & Reinhardt, J. (2008). “Bridging activities,” new media literacies, and advanced foreign language proficiency. CALICO Journal, 25, 558–572. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.v25i3.558-572
United Nations (UN) (2015) Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Sustainable development knowledge platform. Accessed at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/partnership/?p=8936.
Vazquez-Calvo, B., Shafirova, L., Zhang, L. T., & Cassany, D. (2019). An overview of multimodal fan translation: Fansubbing, fandubbing, fan translation of games and scanlation. In M. Ogea Pozo & F. Rodríguez Rodriguez (Eds.), Insights into audiovisual and comic translation. Changing perspectives on films, comics and videogames (pp. 191–213). UCOPress
Yeh, E., & Mitric, S. (2021). Social media and learners-as-ethnographers approach: increasing target-language participation through community engagement. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 1-29.
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