Facilitating holistic identity formation of adolescents using digital media

Abstract

In recent decades, Catholic Religious Education (CRE) has been increasingly justified by the support it can provide adolescents to become subjects of life, as well as by its potential to provide opportunities for meaning‑making. Therefore, this chapter will explore how these functions of CRE can become more possible through the creative pedagogy of Media Literacy Education (MLE) and the digital technologies it utilises for storytelling, especially photography and videography. This exercise will also facilitate the exploration of ways through which creative story-telling can effectively become a means for transcendental reflection, thus promoting a narrative pedagogy for CRE that contributes significantly to holistic adolescent identity formation. This chapter will finally reflect on the results of a small scale qualitative pilot study that points to a potential dialogue between CRE and MLE. This chapter demonstrated how skills learnt in MLE, especially photography and film‑making, may be efficiently used to help students during CRE lessons interpret life experiences and discern their purposes in life through the lens of their Catholic faith, thus becoming subjects of their lives.