Friday, February 23, 2018

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?




5 comments:

  1. Monica, I love your question regarding what the shift would look like towards a "framework for freedom" pedagogy. I think that before we can make the shift, we have to recognize - as I have recently done - that we (educators) can often take on the roles of oppressor resultant of our own education and the educational policy and systems in place that relegates and marginalizes others - historically black and brown persons, immigrants of color, LGBTQ persons, etc. In other words there is a requirement for educators to also shift or reframe their way of thinking about and valuing the contributions of all members of their communities. Additionally, we as educators need to reconceptualize our definition of literacy. Literacy is not stagnant, just as we and and our identities - meaning making, figured worlds, pivots, what have you - are in constant motion and evolution. It is reimagining literacy as fluid, akin to our identities, and being receptive to the possibilities. It's crazy me talking about this now - a few years ago my view of digital literacies and its function in the classroom was much different - back then digital literacies was not a process it was a thing - a thing that I (the teacher) controlled.

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  2. Monica, you make my work this week sound so much neater than it is. It has definitely been a messy process filled with stress, disappointment, learning, and readjustment. Z is my teacher-heart story. His is the story I hope to see. On the other side is the story of my 8th graders who have wasted class time, procrastinated on their Expert Boards, and chose topics that were superficial. As I cling to Comption-Lilly et al. (2017) saying "recognize and provide time and space for children to work through the challenges they face as they negotiate who they are through texts, conversations, and multimodal representations" and juxtapose this wisdom with Wargo's (2017) reminder that this identity work can often include resistance to an identity, I begin to ask myself "What were the 8th graders resisting?" Overall, I have seen a big difference in the identity performance of the students who took up my invitation to choose a current passion or a topic they feel might be a future passion and those who chose topics that they either feel dispassionately about. Inviting students to become experts and to perform that identity seems to be a struggle for some. As we continue to read about the importance of viewing identity over time through sedimented artifacts--both digital and not--I realize that I have something to learn from my students and their Expert Boards about the identities they take up and those they resist.

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  3. Monica, for the second week in a row, you have left me with more questions than answers. Your final question at the end is something I have thought about too this week. Maybe it has to start from re-defining what the world outside academia considers as literacy. I think if the notion of what is literacy and who is literate does not change, it will remain difficult. However, I like to believe that the more we incorporate digital literacies into the classroom, the more "other literacies" will be embraced. For now it seems "other literacies" do not count while in school.

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  4. "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?"
    Don't you feel this question is what we are constantly asking surrounding students learning? To me it seems this would allow students to have a passion for literacy when it relates to them, yet systems want to make it harder by molding everyone into the same box and thinking outside that box causes too much resistance. These passions could lead to further exploration of identity and create purposeful learning. I'm not sure how to shift pedagogy toward providing digital literacy learning, but I do think it's worth a discussion.

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  5. Monica,

    What your discussion this week has me thinking about how digital literacies and popular culture intersect with places and spaces. Traditionally, schools have not been places where technology and popular culture have been welcomed. I tried to think of other places where there is so much resistance to allowing it. (Still working on that - can think of "figured worlds" but not places). Why is it that this place doesn't allow it? In addition to wanting to maintain power over and control of young bodies (Haddix & Sealey-Ruiz, 2012), it allows different "spaces" to be created. It is these new spaces, and the unknown they bring, that I think why schools so tightly resist recognizing digital literacy use and proficiency. Students navigate these new spaces they create, which in turns allow for them to explore their different networks of self. I think it is challenging for some educators to recognize and "allow" this identity exploration because there is still this traditional view of what a student identity is and is not. I am hopeful that our current and future preservice teachers will be better prepared to understand and use these new spaces with students.
    ~Sarah

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