Language and Literacy (Journal)
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Teacher Resources Online
No full textThe role of the internet is becoming ever more significant in the production and circulation of resources for literacy teaching, and in the process is changing teachers’ relationships with educational resources and professional communities. In this paper, we present case studies of four online resource networks established specifically for educational practitioners: TeacherTube, TES, TWRC Tank and Teacher Toolbox. We explore how and why the managers of these sites engage teachers, the online activities of educators using the sites, and the kinds of literacy teaching resources that are available to them. Based on an analysis of literacy teaching resources and associated activity on these websites, we argue that teacher professionalism in contemporary times involves new digital literacy practices in addition to conventional modes of using textual resources in teaching
University Students as Digital Migrants
No full textSouth African university students are on the frontline of a global world. Whether they are attending university in the rural Eastern Cape or urban Johannesburg, the social practice of using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has enabled virtual global mobility. The internet has opened up an opportunity for them to easily cross beyond the borders of South Africa and become part of an experience in another part of the world while the cellphone has facilitated this mobility anytime any place. This paper focuses on the students who are migrants into this digital world through analysis of their technology discourses and the role this has in how they engage with and within this digital environment. Using Gee‘s notion of big ‘D’ and little ‘d’ D(d)iscourses (1996), I have examined the meanings held by students in relation to technology. This analysis of language provides insights into students’ educational and social identities and the position of globalisation and the information society in both facilitating and constraining their participation and future opportunities
Mobility and Literacy: Development of the Public Network Concept
No full textThis paper briefly historicizes English language mail services, postal reform, and the inauguration of global delivery systems for material mails in order to outline the origins of junk mail and discursive excess in network concepts and systems. These historical developments not only made mail services affordable to common people, but also created the conditions necessary for inexpensive, rapid delivery---and dumping---of bulk advertising and circulars (the precursor of spam email) throughout the literate field of personal correspondences. From a contemporary perspective, electronic mail alters conventions that have evolved through epistolary practices. Situated on a background of a formal, dialogical ethos of personal answerability among a distributed public, mass mail makes global populations the object rather than a dialogical subject of literate relations, with consequential changes to social and cultural habits and attitudes toward personal correspondence. To conclude this paper explores global dynamics of digital correspondence that place unanswerability at the core of twenty-first century dialogical relations
Furrows in the field, or down in the jungle: re-membering domestic literacy in the early years
No full textEmbracing qualitative methods in an approach situated at the interface between education, social science and philosophy, the author offers a phenomenologically-oriented account of early family literacy, as experienced by a five year-old girl in Alsace, France. The paper seeks to enliven a fresh look at what we believe we see/understand and how we choose to disseminate this, thus it interrogates orthodoxies with regard to academic discourses and research methodology. The author proposes that to learn is to be in media res in the interminable flux of possibility. It is a never-ending story, which can only be told at a particular cross-section of time and place. Much follows from this insight, foremost among which is to accept that to attempt to understand and learn from learning, and to write academic ‘readings’ of learning, entails abandoning measurables and product-driven orientations in favour of processual ones.
The Content and Purposes of Talk that Accompanies Oral Reading Events:Insights from a Mother-Daughter Case Study
No full textThis article investigates the substance and possible purposes of talk that accompanies oral reading events within a mother-daughter case study. The findings presented in this paper are from a case study that was part of a larger Family Retrospective Miscue Analysis study that assisted parents in becoming strategic partners who build on the strengths of their children when reading with them. This article presents the functions of talk that accompany oral readings, the insights gained about reading as a meaning-construction process, and how parents can benefit from listening to their children’s talk during oral reading sessions
Navigating Mandates: Teachers Face "Troubled Seas"
No full textThis descriptive research study presents the voices of four participating teachers who share how mandates have affected their classroom practices and their students. The teachers describe how they have struggled to maintain effective best literacy practices within this “pressure cooker” accountability culture. They discuss tools and coping strategies used by literacy specialists and classroom teachers to deal with conflicts and communicate with multiple stakeholders. The article describes Phase III of a longitudinal investigation conducted by a research team from 10 States (Phase I and II), focusing only on the mandates data from the large-scale study. Three of the 11 original literacy professors of the team who began Phase I of this research, conducted a more in-depth investigation of four cases/teachers who represented varying stances in response to the mandates. A continuum of teacher responses to restrictive mandates is presented
New Literacy Opportunities and Practices of Latino/a Children of Poverty In and Out of School
No full textThis case study examines new literacy opportunities and practices of 28 Latino/a children from grades one to seven in a South Texas colonia, or unincorporated area. Data sources were 24-hour literacy logs, two rounds of interviews, and participant observations. The children reported limited school work related to digital literacies; the technology they accessed outside of school focused on entertainment, communication with friends, and mostly non-challenging video games. We discuss participants’ ingenious ways of circumventing any lack of access, their underlying social practices of community sharing, and Thirdspace possibilities of the tutorial center that respondents attended
The Effects of Manuscript, Cursive or Manuscript/Cursive Styles on Writing Development in Grade 2
No full textIn the research area of writing development, an increasing number of researchers suggest that graphomotor skills could be much more important than they appear to be (Christensen, 2009). Few researchers have studied the link between handwriting and teaching practices, despite the fact that some studies indicate its importance (Graham, 2010). The general objective of this study is to explore the relationship between different handwriting styles and the development of writing skills among 715 children in Grade 2. Generally, our results show that the three handwriting styles (manuscript/cursive, manuscript, and cursive) have different effects on writing development (speed, quality, word production, and text production)
What kind of pen do I need to use to write my culture and my language?
No full textThrough a form of narrative inquiry involving the use of vignettes and ruminations about present and past, the author examines the role(s) of orality, literacy, and aurality in the intergenerational transmission of his language and culture. Weaving together stories from childhood, memories, and translations of his grandmother’s poetry, the author raises questions about how we, as Indigenous peoples, might ensure that we are able to teach our own next generations our spirits, hearts, being/knowing of the world and who we are as human beings now that oral cultures are being discarded--or worse, written down