Bring it to life: youth performing socio-politically in a northern urban environment.

This study seeks to problematize approaches to civic education in British Columbia schools by reframing the pedagogical paradigm from civic knowledge to sociocultural practices and activity. The study examines the ways in which socio-political agency is developed and enacted in three different sites, highlighting their differing approaches to civic subject-formation. Social action theatre, digital technologies and service learning provide contexts for considering differences across these sites in terms of the discourses, practices and cultural tools (Wertsch, 1998) at work and in play in young peoples’ representations and expressions of socio-political agency. A post structuralist paradigm informs the theoretical and methodological approach taken, focusing on divergent and potentially competing views and understandings of youth subjects.