Language and Literacy (Journal)
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\u27Doing Right\u27 By Melissa: An Inquiry Into School Spaces
No full textThis educational ethnographic case study explores Melissa’s literacy experiences in an urban elementary school. Using a modified domain analysis (LeCompte & Schensul, 1999), this paper focuses specifically on what it meant for Melissa to ‘Do the Right Thing’ in various school spaces. Her application of doing the right thing in different spaces complicates what it means to take ‘right action’. Therefore, ‘taking right action’ was divided into three domains: 1) Institutional Domain: Code of Compliance 2) Dominant Literacy Domain: School Code and 3) Personal Domain: Melissa’s Self- Reliance. While Melissa was considered a model fifth grader in her urban elementary school setting by her teachers and peers, her personal code of literacy often subsumed the dominant school discourse of ‘do the right thing’. Analysis generated prospective inroads for understanding how literacy learning is inextricably intertwined with relationships of space and discourse. Insights from this close analysis point to the need for nuanced recognition of students’ intellectual lives and underscore the plague of low expectations that narrowing curriculum imposes upon students
Barriers to Youth Literacy: Sociological and Canadian Insights
No full textThis paper explores the barriers in youth literacy with qualitative interviews with 22 young people and 22 youth service providers from Prince Edward Island, Canada. It then compares these perspectives with a review of literatures on youth literacy. The paper outlines a sociological framework for the study of youth literacy that makes visible the complex cultural nests of youth within which becoming literate is negotiated. Rather than relying solely on individual literacy scores as the only measure of if and to what level young people are literate in contemporary society, the study addressed how barriers are encountered and negotiated. The findings show that barriers exist in multiple contexts in school, community and family and that they are not easily interpreted or predictable. Even high school completion does not guarantee literacy for some youth and both service providers and young people provide similar and disparate perspectives on barriers and possibilities for better support
‘Tech FTW!!!’ Ninth Graders, Romeo and Juliet, and Digital Technologies
No full textThis article describes an action research study in which ninth graders composed digital responses to their study of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Their collaborative digital projects included e-zines, presentations, digital videos and photostories. Although meeting face to face in and outside of class, the students also used Ning (a social networking site) to share their products and to communicate about them throughout the unit. The paper will focus on what their communications reveal about the students’ participation and understanding during the composing process, including thinking, representing, actively engaged, creating, knowing, and social - summed up in the acronym TRACKS
Children’s Construction of Identity in Virtual Play Worlds – A Classroom Perspective
No full textThe formation of identity is inextricably linked to powerful meaning-makers in a child’s young life. In the 21st century, this typically involves engagement in virtual play worlds. This case study reports on the identity construction of young gamers in a classroom as perceived through an I/identity framework (Rowsell & Abrams, 2011), associative I/identity framework (Abrams, 2011) and informed by New Literacies through a socio-cultural lens. Children engage in Discourses (Gee, 2007; 2008; 2009) to experiment with early rehearsals and re-enactments, navigating fluidly among different roles and virtual world experiences. This study shows how children form affinity groups and social connections with other players in their real world play spaces and online, thus creating a meaningful interplay of their real world and virtual I/identities in a variety of ways
Creating Identity: The Online Worlds of Two English Language Learners
No full textThe online activities of new English language learners can reveal rich and varied literary behaviors, which are almost invisible in the middle grade classroom. While these non-native English speakers may experience cultural and linguistic apartness and struggle to express their identities at school, many develop online identities using their literacy skills in a highly productive, engaged, and anonymous fashion. When viewed through a New Literacies (Gee, 2000; Street, 1995) and Multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) perspective, closer analysis of the predispositions, social attitudes, and activities of these students reveals significant educational advantages that may go largely undetected by educators in the traditional classroom. This article presents a qualitative case study, involving two English language learners, who actively sought out and engaged in online spaces where they could establish identities, practice multimodal literacies, and seek out affinity groups in keeping with their personal interests and abilities. This research is of significance to educators as it demonstrates the manner in which digital technologies can provide equitable access to literate practices for English Language Learners in the classroom
Preparing Teachers to Become Lifelong Learners: Exploring the Use of Fiction to Develop Multiliteracies and Critical Thinking
No full textDrawing upon research from a SSHRC grant entitled Creating a Canadian “Voice”: Lifelong Learning, the Craft of Fiction Writing, and Citizenship, we examine how multiliteracies and critical thinking can be fostered using a framework of lifelong learning for teachers. We provide examples from authors and key informants who discuss learning and fiction writing to argue that there are benefits for diverse learners in using wider, more inclusive definitions of literacy associated with multiliteracies. We also provide examples of how multimodal technologies can foster learning connected to critical thinking and multiliteracies.
Obstacles and opportunities for literacy teaching: A case study of primary core French classrooms in Ontario.
No full textMore and more, Canadian educators are being told that literacy development can occur across subject areas of the curriculum. Few studies have focused on whether this applies to core French as a second language (CF). This article reports on a study investigating the literacy teaching practices of Ontario primary core French teachers (n = 3), focusing mainly on the practices of Christine, whose activities, strategies and perspectives highlight the potential for CF instruction to echo literacy principles taught in homeroom English (L1) classrooms, and for both languages to benefit. Context-specific constraints identified by all participating teachers will also be discussed
Charting new directions: The Potential of Actor-Network Theory for Analyzing Children’s Videomaking
No full textThis paper represents preliminary efforts to understand what Actor-Network Theory (ANT) might contribute to our interest in analyzing what we hope are enhanced educational practices for second language (L2) learners. This theory encourages us to examine more closely the things, the tools, the non-human actants that are active in particular educational practices, and how those tools and not others, “exclude, invite and regulate particular forms of participation” (Fenwick and Edwards, 2010, p. 7). We identify aspects of ANT that are relevant to our work on videomaking, describe our videomaking research and provide two illustrations of how we began to see what ANT might offer in analysis of our video data and to consider its potential for guiding our ongoing fieldwork. We argue here that ANT highlights the importance of paying attention to the production of networks between both human and non-human actors during the videomaking process to understand how these interactions shape the school experiences of language learners