Ottawa Canada, CSSE 2015

The Canadian society for the study of Education, 2015 Annual conference. 

COT representatives: Martin Lalonde, Ching Chiu Lin, Juan Castro and Natalie LeBlanc.

“This second presence for me at the CSSE Annual conference was organized within the Arts Researchers and Teachers Society activities. During this multi-paper presentations along with researchers Ching Chiu Lin and Natalie LeBlanc, myself and Juan Carlos Castro were able to present a summary of our findings during our two years of investigation in the particular site of Maison Kekpart. Since we have published many professional articles and a book chapter on the topic of New Media Educational Practices by then, we decided to focus this paper on a specificity we were beginning to observe in the pedagogical model of particular establishment. Indeed, the fact that the educational program we were observing was framed as a professional internship, we have analyzed how this posture was influencing the outcomes of student’s productions and their perception regarding these productions.

The instructors of the La Relève program are also artists. When they are engaged by the administrators, they are also signing in for media production contracts that they have to realize beside their teaching activities. Producing awareness campaign material presenting the issues addressed by the consultant in the youth center, they are able to integrate their students as interns in a professional production setting. This approach is not unilateral, they would alternate between productions where the students lead the way to productions where there is a predetermined outcomes. Administrators insist on the fact that they expect a professionally rendered production by the end of the semester.

We have found that these constraints push the instructors to develop collaborative practices were their own artistic works is involved at some point in student’s productions. In the latest case we have observed, a video project involving a rap performance from student participants who already had their own group was coupled with the objective of promoting young women safe behaviour concerning couple relationship. Students were in a position where they had a professional opportunity to promote their own artistic agenda through a video production involving the various department of the La Relève program. During the presentation of our paper in Ottawa, we were able to describe how professionally designed med production was socially and professionally empowering. In this particular case, the formal result out of a long progressive process represented the key pedagogical element for those youth.

Our contribution to the C.O.T. study enabled us to establish foundations for a reflection on new media art curriculum theory. We hope that we will have the opportunity to foster and develop those reflections further by continuing the research on community sites where specific pedagogical development is occurring in parallel to formal educational settings. ” (Martin Lalonde)


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