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In Search Of Development In Video ProductionThe products of video production courses arise from the activities of students, sometimes with direct participation by teachers or other people from outside the official group of participants, within the constraints enforced, and in response to the course, school, student, and other ideologies. They potentially demonstrate changes over time in the activities of students, sometimes when there is more than one project by the same group and sometimes within a project. Every project shows some of the differences in experiences between students. This section explores how these changes and differences relate to “development” or the use of the video medium to intentionally communicate. A discussion of qualities that might suggest development and certainly describes some of the meanings and struggles of high school video production is presented. Although references to video projects that were not copied have and will continue to be made, the 16 projects that have at least in part been obtained are the main source of data for the remaining analysis. They are briefly described in Appendix B. Of these 16, one group of students has been selected from each school for the most detailed analysis. The selection was made primarily to meet the needs of the analysis to be described in the next chapter: that the projects maintain some improvisation in the recording phase. The changing composition of groups and suitability of projects led to the selection of one focal project from each school, but in terms of development, a comparison between as many of the projects as possible serves to highlight similarities and differences. One project, “The Good, the Bad, and the Techies” (Project 5), will particularly be considered throughout this discussion to provide continuity. The project serves to elaborate upon the method because its numerous deficiencies illustrate what is present in many other projects. It should be noted that there are reasons to doubt that any meaningful, systematic, “developmental” changes occurred in student activity. Reilly (1998) sought to investigate the role of video technology in education and found little evidence of “critical literacy” in student activities. This project found such diversity in its programs that criteria with which to compare them must be broad, and the progress made—however small—is sought. The problem is how to recognize engagement with video activities that reflects—not the accomplishments—but progress toward quality work in the midst of abundant variation. Worth, who first studied informant-made work, struggled with how much to regard film as being like speech, specifically asking whether cultural differences in film-related meanings was more a matter of “cognitive style” or of “language” (1981, p. 72). Though he concluded that the similarities with language were limited, the essential resemblance of both being methods of communication is taken up and used for considering development. And in this sense, the cultural-historical approach to language development offers important insights. Bakhtin described speech development as one in which another’s word gradually becomes one’s own (1986, p. 163). It is in this sense that the “words” and genres of professional video, absorbed and comprehended, are gradually internalized so that meaningful utterances can be assembled. Children, particularly in the United States, grow up with video. If they pick up a video camera for the first time in high school—as was true for most of the students observed—video production could not have been entirely novel to them, unlike the Navajo with whom Worth and Adair (1972) worked. The moment they looked through the camera or even considered what they might record, the numerous images they had witnessed and found meaning in were provoked. They are to some extent like people who have listened all their lives to speech, reacting to it and perceiving the world through it, but who have been unable to utter their own words. The shift from consumer to producer can clearly be expected to pose mechanical problems—the struggle of trying to duplicate observed techniques—but what other problems arise in developing communication via videography? Particularly when considering the many obstacles students confronted in production—inadequate access to equipment, class periods that were too short, requirements to demonstrate a thorough plan, the relatively novel experience of working with others in a creative manner—students had a great many tasks to balance in order to complete a project. Video production, therefore, is conceptualized as a novel tool for communication that stresses the visual element so often left out of other literacies, with many changes in the quality of productions arising from contextual constraints and promotions. The search for communication that reflects the process of internalization is guided by the idea that change is happening in many areas simultaneously: “Development is viewed as occurring in several different (though interdependent) directions simultaneously and resulting in a structure best represented by a branching tree rather than a ladder” (Wertsch et al., 1993, p. 351). The way conceived to most adequately describe completed videos is to seek development through a number of characteristics that reflect upon the intent and success of communication. These characteristics represent different processes that must work together in production and arose from the investigation of videos and the contexts of production rather than from preconceived ideas in the manner of grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). After a discussion of the relation of unedited to edited video, the six characteristics that were found to be meaningful in the pursuit of development and their relations to one another are described. |
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