New Literacies

Cultural shifts, multimodal representations, and assessment practices: A case study

by Jen Scott Curwood

Published in E-Learning and Digital Media

Multimodal texts involve the presence, absence, and co-occurrence of alphabetic text with visual, audio, tactile,... more Multimodal texts involve the presence, absence, and co-occurrence of alphabetic text with visual, audio, tactile, gestural, and spatial representations. This article explores how teachers' evaluation of students' multimodal work can be understood in terms of cognition and culture. When teachers apply a paradigm of assessment rooted in print-based culture to multimodal texts created with digital tools, they may fail to capture students' content learning and meaning-making processes that draw on diverse semiotic resources and involve multiple modes of representation.

...if we were cavemen we'd be fine

by Owen Barden

This is a draft. The final, definitive version is forthcoming via Blackwell Synergy and the UKLA in Literacy: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291741-4369

This article is derived from a study of the use of Facebook as an educational resource by five dyslexic students at a... more This article is derived from a study of the use of Facebook as an educational resource by five dyslexic students at a Sixth Form College in north-west England. Through a project in which teacher-researcher and student-participants co-constructed a group Facebook page about the students’ scaffolded research into dyslexia, the study examined the educational affordances of a digitally-mediated social network. An innovative, flexible, experiential methodology combining action research and case study with an ethnographic approach was devised. This enabled the use of multiple mixed methods, capturing much of the rich complexity of the students’ online and offline interactions with each other and with digital media as they contributed to the group and co-constructed their group Facebook page. Social perspectives on dyslexia (Cooper, 2006; Herrington & Hunter-Carsch, 2001) and multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Gee, 1996; Street 1984 & 2003) were used to help interpret the students’ engagement with the social network and thereby deduce its educational potential. The research concludes that as a digitally mediated social network, Facebook engages the students in active, critical learning about and through literacies in a rich and complex semiotic domain (Gee, 2004, 2005 & 2007). Offline dialogue plays a crucial role. This learning is reciprocally shaped by the students' developing identities as both dyslexic students and able learners. The findings suggest that social media can have advantageous applications for literacy learning in the classroom. In prompting learning yet remaining unchanged by it, Facebook can be likened to a catalyst.

Before Coffee, Facebook: New Literacy Learning for 21st Century Teachers

by Audra Roach

Co-authored with Jessica J. Beck. In Language Arts, March 2012, Volume 89(4).

This article documents how one middle school teacher’s everyday writing life on Facebook launched a professional... more This article documents how one middle school teacher’s everyday writing life on Facebook launched a professional inquiry and led to the development of a classroom unit of study on writing for networked audiences.

Using Blogs to Promote Literary Response during Professional Development

by Amy Hutchison

This paper demonstrates how the use of a social network and blog facilitated response to literature. Results indicate... more This paper demonstrates how the use of a social network and blog facilitated response to literature. Results indicate that the social space encouraged participants to expand their reading preferences and respond to literature in different ways.

Teachers’ Perceptions of Integrating Information and Communication Technologies Into Literacy Instruction: A National Survey in the United States

by Amy Hutchison

Co-authored with David Reinking

This research explores literacy teachers’ perceptions of integrating information communication technologies (ICTs)more This research explores literacy teachers’ perceptions of integrating information communication technologies (ICTs)
into literacy instruction. To this end, a national survey of 1,441 literacy teachers in the United States was conducted.
The survey provided data concerning the types and levels of reported availability and use of ICTs, beliefs about the
importance of integrating ICTs into literacy instruction, and perceived obstacles to doing so. The analysis of data
included descriptive statistics, an exploratory factor analysis, and a path analysis used to test a model hypothesizing a
relation between teachers’ perceived importance of technology and reported levels of integration. Results revealed
relatively low levels of curricular integration, consistent perceptions about obstacles to integration, and technological
rather than curricular definitions of ICTs and of integration. The path analysis suggested several characteristics and
influences associated with higher levels of integration and use. The findings advance understanding of the extent to
which ICTs are being integrated into literacy instruction and what factors should be considered toward profitably
increasing integration consistent with expanding definitions of literacy.

Education and Technology Seen under Instrumental and/or Socio-cultural Perspectives

by IOLC Conference

Daniel Ferraz
Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
danielfe@usp.br

Literacy Actor-Networks: Compared Case Studies from Brazil

by Marcelo Buzato

Draft only

This paper summarizes the findings of a two-year long study of non-school and school literacies of young university... more This paper summarizes the findings of a two-year long study of non-school and school literacies of young university students in Brazil. The project that included the present study focused on developing, theoretically and empirically, a relational conceptualization of (new) literacy(ies) capable of accommodating the relationship between technology, space-time and sociocultural meanings of reading and writing in the context of digital culture. Using insights from Actor-Network Theory, the research produced and compared case studies in which informants were taken as the central entrepreneurs of literacy actor-networks. Empirical data included (i) records of the informants online activities produced by specialized software (ii) participant and non-participant observation of literacy events and practices in which the informants were involved, and (iii) semi-structured interviews before, during and after (i) and (ii). The findings include, first, the identification of a set of boundary objects and boundary practices which allowed informants to productively connect local activities distributed in different institutional, spatiotemporal and thematic contexts to a more global enterprise identified with the production of their own subjectivities. Second, a set of resemiotization and recontextulalization strategies used by the informants to mobilize interests and meanings across literacy networks. These results are discussed in the light of current efforts by institutional actors in Brazil to promote the use of digital technologies in schooling and as a strategy for social inclusion.

Literacy Teachers’ Perceptions of Professional Development That Increases Integration of Technology into Instruction

by Amy Hutchison

This article is in-press. Do not cite without permission of the author.

A national survey of 1,441 literacy teachers in the U.S. was conducted to understand the integration of digital... more A national survey of 1,441 literacy teachers in the U.S. was conducted to understand the integration of digital technology into instruction. This paper reports results from open-ended questions in the survey aimed at determining teachers’ perceptions about how to improve professional development in the area of technology integration. Data were analyzed using qualitative methods. Respondents identified four factors that they believe would contribute effectively to their own professional development: (a) time- time to explore, practice, and prepare for literacy instruction into which they integrate technology; (b) access- access to equipment during and after professional development; (c) knowledge- access to higher-level knowledge, knowledgeable presenters, and relevant background knowledge; and (d) support- ongoing, follow-up, and small group support. Implications for the improvement of literacy teachers’ professional development and student learning are discussed.

Exploring the Use of the iPad for Literacy Learning

by Amy Hutchison

This is an in-press paper. Do not cite without permission of the author.

The goal of this investigation was to explore how a fourth grade teacher could integrate iPads into her literacy... more The goal of this investigation was to explore how a fourth grade teacher could integrate iPads into her literacy instruction to simultaneously teach print-based and digital literacy goals. The teacher used iPads for a three-week period during her literacy instruction and selected apps that provided unique approaches to helping the students meet their literacy learning goals.
An explanation of how to develop lessons that meaningfully integrate iPads is presented, as well as lessons learned from the project. Considerations for integrating tablets, such as the iPad, into literacy instruction are provided.
Because iPads and similar tablets are relatively unexplored as tools for literacy learning, this work may provide a foundation for teachers and leaders making decisions about whether mobile devices such as these can be useful in literacy classrooms.

Teacher learning for new times: Repurposing new multimodal literacies and digital- video composing for schools.

by Suzanne Miller

Miller, S. M. (2008).  Teacher learning for new times: Repurposing new multimodal literacies and digital- video composing for schools. In J. Flood, S.B. Heath, D. Lapp (Eds.) Handbook of research on teaching literacy through the communicative and visual arts, pp. 441-460, Volume II. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and the International Reading Association.

This chapter discusses next what research suggests about professional development aimed at transforming teachers’... more This chapter discusses next what research suggests about professional development aimed at transforming teachers’ classroom uses of new multimodal literacies. I argue here that digital-video (DV) composing is a quintessential multimodal literacy that can play a key role in those professional experiences and have positive influences on students and classrooms. The term DV composing aims to conceptualize and emphasize the knowledge-assembling and communicative functions of this multimodal literacy practice.
The following first reviews the work on teacher professional development for integrating new literacies into the curriculum and then focuses on what research says about what does not work and what seems to be promising. In the remainder of the article, teacher professional development for learning to integrate DV composing into the curriculum as a new multimodal literacy practice is reviewed, followed by an overview of a growing body of work situated in a DV composing program that examines both teacher learning and subsequent changes in student engagement, learning, and school performance.

Towards a multimodal literacy pedagogy: Digital video composing as 21st century literacy

by Suzanne Miller

Miller, S.M. (2010). Towards a multimodal literacy pedagogy: Digital video composing as 21st  century literacy, pp. 254-281. In P. Albers & J. Sanders (Eds.) Literacies, Art, and Multimodality. Urbana-Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

In new times of digitally accessible multimodality for designing texts for social purposes, changes are needed in... more In new times of digitally accessible multimodality for designing texts for social purposes, changes are needed in schools.  Scholars examining these trends in research have reached a clear consensus: facility with interpreting and designing multimodal texts will increasingly be required by human beings to communicate, work, and thrive in the digital, global world of the 21st century. In this article I propose a framework and a method for drawing on these new social practices and developing performance knowledge for learning in schools. In a long-term project professional development a multimodal composing project provided point-of-need support for English teachers in workshops and in their classrooms to help them expand their beliefs about literacy and critically reframe their pedagogical practices. The focus on digital video composing provides teachers and students with multimodal learning in an authentic, high-status, social and media practice with powerful attention-getting qualities and expert models in the real world. Analysis of teachers successfully integrating DV composing for students in their classrooms revealed four principles representing the key changes needed for teachers to transform the teaching and learning in their classrooms towards multimodal composing.  The components that provide teachers direction toward this reframing include: (1) providing explicit multimodal design instruction and attention; (2) co-constructing authentic purposes for representing multimodal meaning for an audience; (3) designing multimodal composing activities that invite students to draw on their identity lifeworlds as resources; and (4) creating functional social spaces for mediating multimodal learning.

From Screen to Page: Secondary Teachers' Perspectives on Redesigning Their Teaching of Literature in a New Literacies Era

by Elizabeth Lewis

Published in the 58th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (2009, Leander, K. M., Rowe, D. W., Dickinson, D. K., Hundley, M. K., Jimenez, R. T., & Risko, V. J. Eds.)

Co-authored with Dr. Kelly Chandler-Olcott, Syracuse University

From Screen to Page: Secondary Teachers' Perspectives on Redesigning Their Teaching of Literature in a New Literacies Era

by Elizabeth Lewis

Published in the 58th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (2009, Leander, K. M., Rowe, D. W., Dickinson, D. K., Hundley, M. K., Jimenez, R. T., & Risko, V. J. Eds.)

Co-authored with Dr. Kelly Chandler-Olcott, Syracuse University

“We’re superhuman, we just can’t spell.” Using the affordances of an online social network to motivate learning through literacy in dyslexic sixth-form students.

by Owen Barden

Full EdD Thesis

This is a study of the use of Facebook as an educational resource by five dyslexic students at a Sixth Form College in... more This is a study of the use of Facebook as an educational resource by five dyslexic students at a Sixth Form College in north-west England. Through a project in which teacher-researcher and student-participants co-constructed a Facebook group page about the students’ scaffolded research into dyslexia, the study examines the educational affordances of a digitally-mediated social network. An innovative, flexible, experiential methodology combining action research and case study with an ethnographic approach was devised. This enabled the use of multiple mixed methods including participant-observation, interviews, video, dynamic screen capture and protocol analysis. This range of methods helped to capture much of the depth and complexity of the students’ online and offline interactions with each other and with Facebook as they contributed to the group and co-constructed their Facebook page. The philosophy and concepts of the New Literacy Studies and multimodality (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996, Kress 2010), and rigorous qualitative analytical procedures are used to construct a substantive grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) of the students’ engagement with the social network and hence its educational potential. The study assesses the students' motivation to learn through literacy, the role of identities, and considers the pedagogical principles their use of the network evokes. It concludes that Facebook offers an affinity space which engages the students in active, critical learning about and through literacy (Gee, 2004 & 2007). Little if any research has apparently been documented on the potential of digital media to engage and motivate dyslexic students, nor to integrate models of dyslexia, radical perspectives on literacy and social models of disability (Herrington & Hunter-Carsch, 2001). This study begins to address this oversight and imbalance.

A Critical Close-Up: Three Films and Their Lessons in Critical Literacy

by Amanda Hodges

Teachers as learners: What makes technology-focused professional development effective?

by Jen Scott Curwood

Published in English in Australia

Prompted by calls for research on technology-focused professional development, this article investigates how learning... more Prompted by calls for research on technology-focused professional development, this article investigates how learning communities influence secondary English teachers’ use of digital tools. Findings from this year-long study in the United States indicate that the ways in which technology is integrated within the English curriculum are still very much dependent upon teachers’ beliefs, values, and skills. This has particular implications in Australia, where the federal government is investing billions in educational technology in schools in line with broader education reforms, including the Australian Curriculum. This study suggests that technology integration can be supported by professional development that features: sustained dialogue around teachers’ curricular goals and students’ learning outcomes; hands-on learning with digital tools; the ongoing analysis of student work; and a view of knowledge as a social construction.

The nexus of continuity and change: Digital tools, social identities, and cultural models in teacher professional development

by Jen Scott Curwood

Disseration at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Prompted by calls for research on technology-focused professional development, this dissertation investigates how... more Prompted by calls for research on technology-focused professional development, this dissertation investigates how teachers' participation in learning communities influences technology integration within the secondary English curriculum. The year-long multiple-case embedded research study draws on cognitive anthropology and sociocultural theory to examine how English teachers' everyday discourse reveals their cultural models, pedagogical beliefs, and instructional practices with literacy and technology. In addition, it attends to the role of dialogic narratives in shaping teachers' identities in ever-changing learning environments. Situated within a reform-oriented approach to professional development, the analysis focuses on teachers' discourse at a micro level to understand how their pedagogy is shaped by macro-concepts, social institutions, and cultural shifts. While digital tools can shape adolescents' engagement in participatory learning, multimodal authoring, and critical thinking, findings from this study indicate that the ways in which these practices take root in the English curriculum are still very much dependent upon teachers' beliefs, values, and skills. Technology integration can be supported by professional development that features: hands-on learning with digital tools and new literacies; sustained dialogue around teachers' curricular goals and students' learning outcomes; the ongoing analysis of students' digitally mediated work; a view of knowledge as a social construction rather than as a commodity; a recognition that school-based discourse shapes teacher identity; and an understanding that teachers' cultural models about language, literacy, and technology impact their pedagogy.

Including imagination and identity into grammar teaching through the use of multimodality

by Tuba Angay

Technology, learning, and instruction: Distributed cognition in the secondary English classroom

by Jen Scott Curwood

Published in Literacy; Co-authored with Mary Louise Gomez, Melissa B. Schieble, and Dawnene D. Hassett

In this paper, we analyse interactions between secondary students and pre-service teachers in an online environment in... more In this paper, we analyse interactions between secondary students and pre-service teachers in an online environment in order to understand how their meaning-making processes embody distributed cognition. We begin by providing a theoretical review of the ways in which literacy learning is distributed across learners, objects, tools, symbols, technologies and the environment in modern English language arts classrooms. This is followed by a case study where we identify how programme values, textual resources and cultural schema function as distributed tools. In traditional schools, with an emphasis on taking standardised tests, the learning environment is designed on the view that learning is a transaction that happens solely ‘inside the head’. Unfortunately, this pushes many students to the margins of classroom engagement and participation. By analysing students’ and pre service teachers’ online discourse, we argue that virtual spaces can facilitate critical dialogue and can act as catalysts for a distributed theory of mind.

“Just like I have felt”: Multimodal counternarratives in youth-produced digital media

by Jen Scott Curwood

Published in the International Journal of Learning and Media; Co-authored with Damiana Gibbons

A key concept that we introduce and develop in this article is multimodal counternarrative, the way in which... more A key concept that we introduce and develop in this article is multimodal counternarrative, the way in which individuals employ multiple modes of representation to push back against oppressive master narratives. In order to identify and analyze this form of counternarrative, we develop and explicate an analytic tool called multimodal microanalysis. We use multimodal microanalysis to study a digital poem produced by a high school sophomore who identifies as gay, Asian, and a second-generation immigrant. Our analysis indicates that this young man uses digital media in four key ways to create his multimodal counternarrative: by remixing stories and traditions, mixing modes, using functional load to foreground identity, and creating dialogic space for his audience. We conclude that youth can create counternarratives in school contexts by employing multiple modes within digital media production to simultaneously highlight and resist cultural ideologies that may otherwise function to marginalize them or silence their voice.