Profiles in Mentoring: Kyra Dingle and Team on near-peer approaches to digital media literacy education

Kyra Dingle, a medical student at UC Irvine, and her team, noticed that digital literacy education tends to overlook the developmental needs of young people. Using Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and near-peer mentoring, they had high school students design and teach digital literacy lessons to 8th graders on group-chat conflict and persuasive design features, finding significant knowledge gains for both age groups alongside increased feelings of agency among the high schoolers. We recently had the opportunity to speak with Kyra and her team on adolescent development and digital media literacy, featured here in the Chronicle!

Chronicle (C): What drew you to study the intersection of adolescent development and digital media literacy, and was there a particular moment or experience that made you realize this was the work you wanted to pursue?

Kyra Dingle (KD): Our team of a high school teacher, a developmental psychologist, an education PhD student, and a medical student recognized how developmental needs and capacities are frequently omitted from digital literacy education. We recognized how older teens are media experts and can serve as remarkable role models to younger kids. We chose to leverage these things to help address a pressing need at a local school.

C: Your study found that high school students benefited just as meaningfully as the 8th graders they taught (gaining research skills, critical thinking, and a stronger sense of agency). Was that bidirectional impact something you anticipated going in, or did it surprise you?

KD: We started this project as a response to a pressing problem with the school’s 8th-grade around group-chat drama. We opted to use Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) methods because we, and others, have consistently found benefits of YPAR, in which youth are co-researchers, experts, and resources for their school community. We were not surprised, but still delighted to find that the high school students themselves were able to learn from the material they were teaching their 8th-grade peers and begin to think more critically about their own digital use, leading to even some self-reported behavioral changes.

C: Your study was conducted in a private school setting, which you acknowledge as a limitation. How do you imagine this model translating to public schools or under-resourced communities, and what adaptations might be necessary to make that work?

KD: We believe that such a project would easily translate to public schools and/or under-resourced communities, provided that adequate time is available to build a trusting research partnership, as YPAR requires. However, we do recommend that schools that want to target specific needs prioritize data collection with both the high school and younger peers to understand the students’ current digital literacy and media usage and concerns that are important to them.  This could be done with surveys, focus groups, or interviews and ideally would involve students in all aspects of this process. That way the YPAR approach can be tailored to meet the students’ specific needs and interests.

Read Kyra Dingle and her team’s paper here