Week 7 Post

Digitally Mediated Literacies

The articles this week really have me thinking about the affordances and limitations that digitally mediated literacy and more traditional material literacies have when thinking about the way identities are performed, represented and become visible over time. In some ways, as I was reading Wargo's (2017) piece, I began considering how material literacy and digital literacies might offer similar affordances. For example, in his study of photographs, Wargo (2017) noted that photos are ways that people (specifically LGBTQ youth) might choose to represent their identities as fluid. So, I thought. One could do that with a physical picture (using a camera as technology/digital layer, of course) and a scrapbook/photo album or one could do that via a digital platform (such as Tumblr in the article). The key difference for me was the affordance that digital media offers in terms of watching identities shape, form, shift and even contradict one another over time (p. 572). For this reason, I was particularly drawn to the way that researching digital media platforms allows a researcher to attempt to unpack these shifts in ways that perhaps could be done with traditional material literacies but not nearly with the speed, date/time stamp reliability and additional layer of user comments/feedback which add depth to the co-construction of these identities.

Pieces I also enjoyed from Wargo (2017) were his discussion of the discursive approach (Bucholtz & Hall) that included mediating and semiotic meaning making, positionality and indexicality. I'm pulling specifically on indexicality as I think about digital platforms and the ways that users might overtly mention specific categories or labels with which they identify but also how users might choose to situate their posts within specific hashtags which then get sucked into an even larger figured worlds of other categories/labels and the taking up/performing of identities.

I build on this idea of indexicality and seemingly thinking about identities as sedimented as taken up in Wargo's (2017) piece to consider intersectionality theory as described in Compton-Lilly et al (2017). I think that perhaps this idea of intersectionality theory is one of my favorites as it is letting me think about the way our identities might really just be viewed as one big jumbled mess, or, as intersectionality theory puts it more nicely…networks of self which involve, "intersectional identity negotiations that can be tracked across time, providing information about how identities are contextualized, negotiated and renegotiated" (p. 122). As I think about this idea of intersectionality, then, I go back to the ways that some of the digitally mediated artifacts in Wargo's (2017) research seemed to represent disagreements or conflicting views between one another and/or the described identities participants shared in interviews. Perhaps, using intersectionality theory as a guide, we might consider how these pictures represent negotiations and renegotiations over time within one's network of self as opposed to mere contradictions.

Transitioning…

This was probably my favorite quote in thinking about the link between identity and intersectionality and its implications for classrooms:

"Theories of intersectionality blur the possibility of simple causal arguments that connect race, class, culture, and/or language to academic inequity. Intersectionality reveals the complexities of children's identities and the ways in which literacy learning overlaps with, interacts with, and entails multiple ways of being that cannot be untangled" (Compton-Lilly et al, 2017, p. 136).

To consider ideas of academic inequity and the ways that these inequities are tied up in very complicated systems that cannot be untangled, I began thinking about the ways that Black young men are represented in research as literate…or, more often, failing in their literacy lives. This, then, leads me to the Haddix and Sealey-Ruiz (2012) piece in thinking about the way digital literacy is taken up in classrooms as representations of identity but also as a legitimate literacy practice. I began thinking about the ways Anna is using Padlet in her classroom with her students to offer students a place to use digital media unique to their interests and their own identities. In this way, she gives students agency as Anna mentioned that she doesn't want her students to be bogged down by all staring at the same website. How lucky Anna's students are, I thought, as I considered spaces and classrooms that do not receive or think about specific digital literacy platforms in the same way. I've actually read a few articles now about what Haddix and Sealey-Ruiz (2012) raise as a specific concern for classrooms not valuing and even demonizing the use of certain technology (read: especially cell phones) as a literacy tool. In other spaces, though, especially affluent, largely White classrooms, the use of something like a cell phone is not seen as a "dumbing down of students' literacy skills" (Haddix & Sealey-Ruiz, 2012) but rather a resource that recognizes and legitimizes that literate lives students lead across their figured worlds.

What are the implications for attempting to shift pedagogy toward a "framework for freedom" (Haddix & Sealey-Ruiz, 2012, p. 191)  that values the use of digitally mediated literacy tools, especially in classrooms where students' own literacies have never been valued?

Week 6 Post

Sedimented identities, Habitus and Capital

"'Becoming literate is as much about the interaction one has with others around oral and written language as it is about mastering the alphabetic system'" (Bartlett, 2007).

This was my favorite quote this week. The setting and participants in Bartlett's (2007) study immediately brought me back to much of the love I have for Freirean thinking. The way Bartlett framed the study, though, is what had led me to consider how ideas of literacy practice, identity and artifacts related to my own students. This idea of attempting to "seem" literate that can look starkly different in varying spaces made me think about the way my students performed their identities in different ways during different times of the school day. I'll stick with the same student I began talking about in class last week as a specific example.

Drew very regularly participated in what Holland described as forming and performing his identity in practice (cited by Bartlett on p. 56). He did this by using cultural artifacts that were material and conceptual. Drew was very in tune with reading the clothing, language choices/styles, gestures, gait patterns and hairstyles of the students in his high school that he referred to as the "big kids." This single sentence contains a combination of cultural artifacts that are both material and conceptual. He saw his construction of "big kids" (applied to nearly 1,500 students in the school who did not attend class with him) as a group possessing a great amount of cultural and social capital which made them extremely literate in the comings and goings of high school life. Here, I find it valuable to bring in the game analogy that Compton-Lilly (2014) offered:

"While people are not consciously following rules as they engage in everyday life, they are strategically competing for resources, positions, and opportunities. Being successful in the game is easier if 'one is born into the game' and has embodied ways of being, or dispositions, that are valued within the field" (p. 376).

In an effort to obtain more social capital, having not been born into the 'able' game so many of his peers had been, Drew used artifacts readily available to him (that held significant meaning for him) to attempt to "seem" and "feel" literate (Bartlett, 2007) in a figured world that had very specific sets of rules and expectations, differing drastically from the literacies of an academic space.

To continue to stick with this example, I'll bring in the concept of Habitus (Bourdieu) that Drew participated in in this specific social context outside the classroom. Drawing specifically on the figure we discussed in class, I'm thinking about the way that Drew's ways of being, doing and acting changed across time and space (Roswell & Pahl, 2007). Drew entered high school as a transfer student, having just moved in with a new foster family. After a few months, he began to realize that there was a different social order to the space in our classroom than the space in the broader high school (specifically the cafeteria). This, in turn, led to his use of artifacts (this is a significant digression and oversimplification for the purpose of getting to the point). Drew changed his gait pattern in an effort to imitate what he thought was "cool walking." Sweatshirts were extremely important because he could have the hood up-an important act of resistance since having hoods up was strictly forbidden in the school. On and on his use of artifacts went.

Cultural artifacts as sources/tools for agency (resistance)

Then…something happened in this habitus. Two young women who Drew considered to be "big kids" invited him to sit at their lunch table. This shift in practice was not something that came out of thin air but was rather impacted by the small moves made by Drew over time. This, in turn, impacted his structure of interaction with peers. He had gained limited social capital (especially over those with whom he attended class) which came with new ways of interacting, being and becoming alongside these young women and the peers in his classroom. Still, Drew's habitus hadn't changed in as drastic a way as he might of liked.

He gained limited acceptance and access to these new peers. His access to their lunch table did not mean that they considered him someone "literate" enough in their social practice to hang out with after school or with whom they'd exchange phone numbers. Rather, he was permitted access to their lunch table as a limit of his habitus, which, as Compton-Lilly offers (2014) lies in "historical and social conditions" (p. 375). Drew's diagnoses and the historical and social implications and conditions accompanying these as well as his positioning in the school put limits on how literate he could be or be considered in this group. As much as Drew attempted to seem and feel literate in this space with these people, the amount of capital he could gain was held down despite his best efforts.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I'm going to shift here, perhaps leaving this part of Drew's every-evolving story very unfinished, but as I'm thinking about sedimented identities (Rowsell & Pahl), I'm also considering the kinds of texts Drew produced in the classroom that represented his layered identities over time. I mentioned above that Drew came to the high school where I worked after he had arrived at a new foster home. Drew is perhaps the student I think of most vividly when I consider how sedimented identities appear through artifacts we produce.

Drew had a strong preference for Thomas the Tank (read: the paradoxical nature of "big kid" implies that Drew, then, potentially sees himself as a "little kid"). Drew also had a history of emotional and physical abuse from both his biological family members as well as historical abuse from other foster guardians. He often demonstrated anger in the classroom, refused to conform to the expectations of authority figures and participated frequently in acts of resistance (e.g., putting his hood up purposefully to defy rules imposed on him). All of these aspects of his identity, and many more, appeared in the texts he produced (which were most often a combination of picture and written text).

Drew's text productions and designs often referred to a very specific episode of Thomas the Tank in which the trains are demonized.

His designs included him in the narrative, referring to himself most often as a "demon boy." For me, these texts and memories were concrete examples as I'm trying to hold onto this idea of "laminated" and layered identities (Holland & Leander-as cited by Rowsell & Paul). How were the ways that Drew was performing and forming his identities play into his designs? How were these "finished" artifacts representations of his sedimented identities?

Drew is multidimensional and he continued to make meaning of himself through his texts as he worked through many of the aspects of his identity that had been co-constructed based on his participation and positioning in the various, often drastically shifting figured worlds he has occupied over the course of his life. This was a representation of his habitus in texts which as Rowsell and Paul (2007) write, "can be understood as being a way of conceptualizing the way in which households bring particular ways of being and doing to a number of sites and these sites include representation as well as practice" (p. 395). The way Drew was, is and continues to become are shaped in the representations he produces as well as the practices in which he engages.

Week 5 Post

This week, I found the jutxtaposition of  the pieces by Street (2013) and Knobel & Lankshear (2014) to be excellent jumping off points in reminding me of some of the aspects of New Literacies with which I'm already familiar and then pushing my thinking to include pieces I had either let fall away from memory or had never considered.

A piece of Street's (2013) piece that I found extremely helpful in framing how I read new literacies this week, was this idea of literacy practice as opposed to a literacy event. This idea (largely resulting from Heath-excited to hear more about her next week from Beth!), that a literacy event occurs within the social models of literacy that readers bring with them to an event or literacy encounter was a theme I saw throughout. To put it more eloquently in Street's (2013) words, new literacies consider literacy practice to be "not only attempts to handle the events and the patterns of activity around literacy events, but to link them to something broader of a cultural and social kind" (p. 78). For me, this statement incorporates issues of identity, agency and power.

We come to literacy practices, having experiences that have shaped and formed our identities. The shaping, authoring and re-authoring of those identities occur within the context of broader cultural and social processes, which, in turn, provide us instances of agency in resisting or conforming to the ways in which our identities are co-constructed (thank you, figured worlds). The degree to which we have access to opportunities for agency and re-authoring in our cultural and social contexts, though, is largely impacted by existing power structures.

But wait…

When I think about New Literacies, I thought I was supposed to be focusing in on technology???

 

Enter: Knobel & Lankshear (2014)

I was happy to have read this piece second because Street (2013) did a nice job of setting me up with some grounding theoretical ideas to then enter this piece. The biggest takeaway I added from Knobel & Lankshear (2014) was framing New Literacies as focusing "on ways in which meaning-making practices are evolving under contemporary conditions that include, but are not limited to, technological changes associated with the rise and proliferation of digital electronics" (p. 97).

Ahhhhh, I see now (at least I think I see…for today). The mistake I had made in interpreting New Literacies was a lack of acknowledgement of the way that meaning making occurs in contemporary conditions. I appreciate the vagueness of this language because it allows me to think about how identities may be interpreted in contemporary ways differently than they ever have been before. For example, Anna began mentioning a GSA beginning at her school last week, and Christina brought up the importance of fluidity in queer theory. New Literacies, then, allows me to think about how someone in Anna's school might author and reauthor themselves very differently in a school setting today (contemporary times) than 20 years ago (or maybe not). What this theory is letting me think about more is time. In our conversations related to figured worlds, we discussed the importance of reaching into the past and being aware of future self, but I don't think I paid as much attention to the idea of "contemporary" in the same way this theory is allowing.

Finally, there were a few key points that I took away from Knobel & Lankshear (2014) that strongly filtered my reading of Wohlwend (2009). This idea of New Literacies having a different "ethos" from traditional literacies was particularly powerful, specifically this shift in literacy practices that are more participatory and collaborative in nature rather than individually-focused. This willing collaboration, then, which Knobel & Lanksehar (2014) linked nicely to literacy worlds within technological spaces, values input from others who are not necessarily experts related to the authoring.

Without Street's (2013) initial frame and Knobel & Lankshear's application of these ideas to cyberspace, I don't know if I would have read Wohlwend's (2009) piece through a New Literacies lens. If I'm not mistaken, I don't know that she states that she's drawing directly on New Literacies, but rather frames her theoretical lens as a "critical sociocultural approach." Then, I thought, but wait…that describes exactly what new literacies is. DUH.

After reading Wohlwend's (2009) first few sections, I was like, GIRL, you've got so many theories tied together in here. Please write my synthesis paper for me. Mediated discourse, social semiotics, cultural studies of media, feminist postructuralist perspectives on girlhood…and she wove them so well!

What I took from this piece, within the frame of New Literacies, was the idea that this small group of little people, acting often as a collaborative group and valuing the input of their peers over experts (i.e., teachers or movie creators), entered into these various activities (as used by Wohlwend's model) in very contemporary times, which, in turn, framed the way they played out these literacy practices. I'm specifically thinking about the film that Zoe authored near the end of the piece. She was actively resisting identity norms that have been authored by large multi-million dollar production companies as to what it means to be a princess. She does this in school but she also brings with her larger cultural and social experiences that frame her literacy practices. She collaborates with her peers (to a certain extent) to negotiate meaning in the contemporary times in which she lives, adding layers to her identity as well as those around her.

Week 4 Post

As I begin to write this post, I'm not exactly sure how to structure my response in a way that will equitably include all of the readings while addressing each question in an organized way that doesn't span pages and pages of content. That said, I'm going to talk briefly about three of the readings and what stuck out to me in terms of the questions at the beginning of my post and follow that with a more in depth analysis of the article that was of particular importance for my learning this week.

Childhood Figured Worlds: Navigating Figured Worlds as white British and British Pakistani

Something I really appreciated about this piece from the start was the way that Barron (2013) included a rich amount of detail when outlining the driving theoretical framework for this project. As I entered into reading about the ways that the children were navigating their figured world school but also larger social contexts based on their ethnic and racial experiences, I was struck by the statement that figured worlds can be "helpful in supplementing how young children's ethnic identities have been conceptualized by critical race theorists and socio-cultural theorists" (Barron, 2013, p. 2). For me, this connected to how we've discussed the way using figured worlds in research might pair well with other theories, even, in this case, conversations from multiple paradigms.

The positional and figurative identities that the children performed during this research project were "constantly in complex interaction with each other" (Barron, 2013, p. 10). For example, Barron's (2013) example about Mitchell's rationale for not celebrating Eid because he's "not dark" was an example of using his positioned identity of whiteness to assign the way he participates in cultural experiences.  This specific example not only included his identity but also the way he is interpreting his figured worlds and the sociocultural norms accompanying those worlds that ultimately hold power over which individuals "are supposed to" celebrate certain holidays and which are not.

As a result of these socially constructed norms that the children interpreted, Barron (2013) writes,

" only particular figured worlds were available to the children for much of the time. The children had few, if any, opportunities to make things up from scratch" (p. 14-15). The connection, then, to the ways these sorts of "access" points interweave themselves into whose knowledge is valued in schools and whose isn't was an important lead in to discussions of power within these figured worlds and how they potentially play themselves out over long periods of time in granting and denying access to students.

Materiality and Power in Teacher's Figured Worlds

As I was reading the Gelfuso & Dennis (2017) piece, I was particularly aware of the questions related to the ways that artifacts and power enter into figured worlds. Specifically, for this research study, that happened to be the figured worlds of life as a teacher as well as the figured world of teaching and learning literacy. Rather than rehash the entire study here, I'll highlight two important moments.

Within the discourses analysis of the conversation between Sherry and Megan, the central theme that emerged was discussion of materials. These physical and tangible artifacts seemed to drive the conversation between the two, serving as central to the "teaching and learning" aspect of the figured worlds. The tie in, then, to the ways that these specific materials were driven by district standards, which were often "checked up on" by those in positions of power, was insightful in thinking about how much of focus physical materials can become.

The sociocultural norms that existed in this space dictated the importance of materials as well as using practical knowledge to drive instruction. While not specifically honing in on the identities of either of the participants, this study did make me wonder about the ways that identities of teachers are performed in the figured world of school spaces. That also, then, led me to wonder the ways in which teachers might use agency in classrooms to resist or conform to the existing power structures. In the case of this 20-minute conversation, it appears that both Shelly and Megan were complicit in conforming to expectations. But were they? Wouldn't it be necessary to ask them questions about the way they navigate expectations in order to glean insight?

Resisting Heteronormative Norms through Artifacts

Before I even begin to unpack here, I'll start by saying I really enjoyed reading Blackburn's (2002) piece. Of all that I read for this week, the piece seemed to flow so nicely and read almost like a story.

As Blackburn (2002) unpacked the figured worlds that Justine occupied within the context of the research (i.e., school and youth center), the ways that "authoring" was used in this piece was something I appreciated when discussing the way agency was enacted. For example, Blackburn (2002) writes about the way Justine authored herself into the first poem where she shifts the use of the word "dyke" from how she is positioned as a young woman of color identifying as a lesbian into a different figured world in the poem where she had agency to fight the hatred that accompanied her lived experience with that word. Not only does she write the poem, though, as an act of resistance against powerful heteronormativity, but she goes a step further by reading it aloud to a group in which she can be empowered by those around her.

The ultimate example of the artifact produced by this piece culminates in Justine's video that she chooses to share in both of her figured worlds. In this piece, she combines artifacts within artifacts (e.g., photos and words within a video) in an act of agency to validate her identity in a figured world where sociocultural norms indicate that her identity as a lesbian is problematic.

Grappling with Manufactured Differences in Separate Figured Worlds

I'll end with a reflection on Bagatell's (2007) piece since the content of the research study was the closest to my researcher heart. There were several methodological moves that I really appreciated about this piece. I thought the decision to report findings through narrative was especially insightful in demonstrating the ways that the two different figured worlds in the article (i.e., living in the "neurotypical" world and living in a world with other individuals with autism) was helpful in seeing the ways that artifacts, identities, power and sociocultural norms all worked together within each of these spaces.

Throughout the narrative, Bagatell (2007) successfully highlights the multiple ways that Ben is positioned within his dominantly viewed identity of being someone who "has autism." The reader sees the often ignored aspects, especially within the disability world, of mental health and depression that accompany being positioned in social spaces as an outcast or someone who needs to "conform" to "being normal." The reader then sees Ben's attempts at enacting agency as a younger child when he discusses actively resisting the sociocultural pressures to "act normal" which, he later decides, are sometimes pressures he will conform to in order to engage in social relationships with peers. 

Soooooo…now that I answered some of the questions about this piece…I wanted to offer critique about the way that Bagatell (2007) portrays these figured worlds.

First, Bagatell (2007) offers no framework though which she's going to discuss disability which, for me, is an essential element if you're going to do this kind of research. Disability as a concept or label or IDENTITY goes unproblematized and unexamined. Based on the way the piece presents, I'm inclined to say that Bagatell (2007) is using a medical model of disability to do this work, which, in my opinion is problematic.

This is why: (the video is a bit long but does a nice job of explaining the medical v. social models of disability if you're not familiar):

Secondly, throughout Bagatell's (2007) discussion, there is a definite development of the "neurotypical" figured world that Ben occupies (which, presumably, so does Bagatell). Power structures and sociocultural norms are outlined and the ways that Ben resists and conforms are brought to light. The discussion in this piece, though, of the figured world in which Ben goes to interact with individuals who share his diagnosis in really underdeveloped. There is discussion about the ways that this figured world is more comfortable for Ben and how there are differing sociocultural norms in place. However, there is only 1 statement I could find in the entire piece that mentions issues of power in which Bagatell (2007) highlights that those with "higher functioning" autism have more control than those who are "lower functioning."

Based on my experience with this world, there are far more existing power structures than this. The way it is presented in the piece, this figured world is "paradise." In a lot of ways, it may have been positioned that way based on Ben's lived experience in his less desired figured world. However, the ethnographic work on this end seemed weak to me in that there was a lack of exploration into the ways that communities of individuals who have aspects of shared identities are also governed by rules and often driven by conformity.