We are still dealing with multiple pandemics including COVID-19, which disproportionately affects minoritized people, as well as significant incidents of police brutality directed toward Black people. The purposes of this study are to visually document these multiple pandemics from our Black children’s perspectives as well as elevate their visual texts to advocate for hope and change. This article highlights the ways 13 Black elementary school children drew out their ideas to depict this critical time. We believe studying how children witness crises is essential for documenting history, especially when Black children’s voices do not rise above white mainstream messaging. The research question guiding our study asks, how do elementary-aged Black children visually represent this critical time in history? Findings suggest that our Black elementary-aged students not only were successful at creating visual texts that document this historical time but also that their drawings reflected hope and social change.
Visualizing Hope Through Black Children’s Multimodal Messages Reflecting the Multiple Pandemics
Reka Barton is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Leadership and Education Services at the University of San Diego and a visual researcher at the Center for Visual Literacies at SDSU who employs multimodal methods to examine the educational experiences of Black girls at the crux of language, race, and literacy. She has recently published in Children’s Literature in Education and the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.
Marva Cappello is a Professor of Literacy Education at San Diego State University, where her focus is on literacy and qualitative research methods. Dr. Cappello is Director and Founder of the Center for Literacies (CVL), which spotlights visual-based methods as equitable practice for pedagogy and qualitative research. Recent publications of her visual-based research have been published in English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Ubiquity, and The Reading Teacher.
Reka Barton, Marva Cappello; Visualizing Hope Through Black Children’s Multimodal Messages Reflecting the Multiple Pandemics. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 1 June 2023; 12 (2): 54–72. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2023.12.2.54
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