Research: Archival Encounters via Podcasts: Diversity and Voice in Practice

Abstract

This study reveals the affordances and limitations of introducing a new instructional framework—archival-based pedagogy—into a digital literacies course for English language arts educators in the fall of 2020 in the midst of COVID-19. Its purpose was to document how seven students in the course went about choosing archival content for the podcasts they created as part of their final project. The conceptual framework of artifactual critical literacy guided the study’s methodology, analysis, and interpretation of the participants’ descriptions of how the archival artifacts they selected became centerpieces in their podcasts and reflected their personal and/or professional identities. Findings from the study are presented through the seven participants’ narrative reflections, created during the spring of 2021. Implications are discussed for furthering archival-based pedagogy as a curricular alternative to traditional online teaching and learning.