Masters Proposal

I'm still working out the purpose and subject of investigation for my masters of education. I've been running a youth group for a while and have been getting more involved with events at Kew High, thus starting to narrow down my focus:

Key questions:
What are the circumstances in which teenagers find themselves today?
What are the issues, restrictions and expectations facing them?
How do they understand themselves and their world - what are the realities they construct and why?
How do they engage with and respond to these factors they have identified and others such as the media, environmental issues, etc?
If they resist any of these forces how do they do it and why? - what is the nature of this resistance, what can be learnt from their approach? * linking to Naomi Klein's ideas of windows (pockets of resistance) and fences (hostile forces)

I want to write about:
representation and constructions of reality, youth voices and resistances to dominant ideologies/ways of seeing
eg constructions of identity as 'drawn' on the body through clothing, piercing, etc
propaganda and marketing directed at youth, constructions of youth by non-youth

How I want to research this:
- formal and informal group discussions/interviews with members of the callmesquare youth creative arts group (years 9-12 high school students from various schools in the Eastern Suburbs)
- youth creative arts projects in which students nominate community-focused projects to support and initiate. Thus forming very real responses/resistances to social forces and circumstances, validating and providing spaces to express their concerns and interests
- getting the students to develop and use their creative talents for very real audiences and purposes - using some of the material they create as artefacts for analysis
- asking the students to write reflections and co-write some of the pieces eg Emo Punk and Sca as a means to get them talking on their own behalf

End product:
A series of cultural studies style articles (eg Naomi Klein's No Logo or The Cultural Studies Reader) that narrate and reflect, each focusing on one aspect of youth culture or a dilemma facing youth

Main theorists:
* Stuart Hall: representation and meaning making
John Berger: Ways of Seeing
Baudrillard and Barthes: 'Reading' Fashion
Umberto Eco: hyper-reality/hyper efficiency, consumerism, decoding
The Subcultural Reader: subcultural characteristics and practices