Using Digital Technologies to Facilitate the Students' Interpretations of their Life Experiences

What is it about?

Identity formation is an essential component of human development. Since the publication of Erik Erikson’s stage theory of psychosocial development, in which adolescence is crucial to resolve one’s ‘identity crisis’ for the emergence of the healthy young adult, research has seen a significant surge of interest in the understanding of identity. This originated both in those who adhere to the modernist view of identity as a linear process that runs through every stage of human development, viewing life and selfhood as gradually internalized, as well as in post and late-modern views in which identity formation is not linear, much more complex and incapable of reaching unity and wholeness. In contemporary times Catholic Religious Education (CRE), as a curricular subject, has been increasingly justified by the support it can provide to students to become subjects of life, and by its potential to provide tools for finding purpose. Such functions of CRE are made more possible when educational activities explore identity through creative opportunities offered by digital technologies, especially photography and film-making. Such technologies that students learn how to use in Media Literacy Education(MLE), have the potential to increase engagement of the processes of interpretation and meaning-making, imagination, and critical reflection that are essential to education. Consequently, adolescents would establish coherence to their lives, making them more meaningful, fulfilling and receptive to the tenets of the Christian faith. This paper explores how the creative potential offered by MLE can be used in CRE to facilitate meaning-making and identity formation. In this way the pedagogy of CRE is positively redefined, gaining new significance. Also, the creative potential of these media/digital technologies can bring out metaphor’s power as a means to interpret reality and life experiences from the lens of the Catholic faith, thus giving a new dimension to the content and pedagogy to CRE.

Featured Image

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

Why is it important?

To facilitate creative ways how to use digital technologies to develop narrative pedagogies that serve transcendental reflection understood in terms of meaning-making.