Alyson Simpson

Integrating technology with literacy: using teacher-guided collaborative online learning to encourage critical thinking

This paper reports on classroom-based research that was designed to monitor the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) in a teacherguided collaborative online learning context to encourage students’ critical response to literary texts. The study investigates the premise that an ICT project where children read books and then use email communication to exchange responses with other learners will support critical thinking. Videos of classroom observations, journals and rap sheets were analysed for individual students’ levels of critical awareness. Improvements in critical thinking were measured using linguistic analysis. Teachers and students were also interviewed for attitudes to technology use related to learning. Although there were gains in critical thinking, there was little student engagement with technology. The discussion problematises the integration of technology in the classroom through a repositioning of collaboration in a blended learning context known as book raps.

‘I want them better than me’: Pedagogical strategies employed by four immigrant parents in the face of perceived forms of exclusion by school authorities

In Australia, students from Chinese and Arabic language backgrounds form the largest minority language groups in the New South Wales (NSW) public school system. Yet the mainstream academic performance of students from these two communities show marked differences in their levels of attainment. This article explores the home literacy practices of two immigrant families – one from a Chinese background and the other of Lebanese heritage – in order to obtain insights into how parents support their children in the acquisition of mainstream literacies. It documents parents’ perceptions of their interactions with school authorities in relation to their children’s educational needs. Findings indicate that despite a plethora of inclusive policies adopted by the children’s schools, the families in our study perceived school authorities as exclusionary in their practices. The article chronicles the sense of powerlessness and alienation experienced by both families when confronted with the rigidity of a school system they neither knew nor understood. Despite the similarities in their experiences, the Chinese family succeeded in the acquisition of mainstream literacies while the Lebanese family continues to struggle with the demands of the school curriculum. We present the contrasting solutions adopted by the two families to meet the educational needs of their children and indicate how their culturally derived responses go part way in explaining the different levels of school achievement experienced by the two families.

Designing pedagogic strategies for dialogic learning in higher education

This article focuses on the pedagogic value of dialogue to strengthen pre-service teachers’ reflective practices and improve their knowledge about the power of talk for learning. Dialogic learning was introduced to a unit of study taken by a final-year cohort of students in an initial teacher education degree at an urban university in Australia. Various opportunities for dialogue were designed into the unit through blended learning such as face-to-face tutorials, social networks and Viva Voce contexts. In the face of mixed opinion on their efficacy, the author profiles the use of social networks as a means of incorporating more interactive discourse through Web 2.0 platforms in higher education. The mixed-methods study reports on data collected from focus group interviews run at the end of the semester. An analytical framework based on Alexander’s principles of dialogic learning is used to interrogate the data set. The results illustrate the positive impact that dialogue employed as a pedagogic tool had on the value students perceived of their learning experience. It is recommended that designs for learning in higher education incorporate iterative exchanges across a variety of blended learning contexts to encourage productive interactions between students, peers and tutors.

Dialogic teaching in the initial teacher education classroom: “Everyone's Voice will be Heard”

Abstract This study examines the impact of dialogic teaching as core pedagogy in the higher education context. It investigates how instructional design informed by Alexander’s dialogic principles and educational linguistics encouraged pre-service teachers and in-service teachers to develop professional capabilities to first recognise and then harness the power of talk for reflective learning. A discussion-based pedagogic strategy called Literature Circles was used to help reframe critical understanding of literary texts and prompt meta-awareness of dialogic teaching. One group of participants in the study was a final year cohort of pre-service teachers in a Bachelor of Education (Primary) degree at an urban university in Australia. Another group of participants were teachers in a primary school who were reviewing their use of Literature Circles. The third group of participants the school students who took part in the Literature Circles. Qualitative data from video interviews and/or focus group discussions with the three groups of participants were triangulated. Coding of data was achieved by content analysis, cross-correlating close linguistic analysis with an analytic framework based on Alexander’s five principles to create categories for the identification of perceptions about dialogic teaching. Findings from the study show that the linguistic lens provided new insights to dialogic teaching at all levels of education.

Children’s literature in the digital world: How does multimodality support affective, aesthetic and critical response to narrative?

Purpose – This paper aims to interrogate the place of literature in the digital world and the way a narrative is represented in digital spaces. In the changing landscape of digital, mobile and virtual texts, the authors aimed to examine how multimodal and animated elements in digital narratives engage young readers and encourage affective and aesthetic reader response? Design/methodology/approach – The study was an exploratory, interpretive qualitative research study undertaken in a classroom of 28 10-year-old boys in grade 5. The investigators analysed data recorded during a lesson where students responded to the textual conventions and literary features of a traditional story read in print and multimodal digital format. Two coding systems were used to identify students’ understanding of textual conventions along with the nature of their responses. Findings – The results suggested that when students are prompted to attend to the impact of multimodal layering in digital literature, affective, aesthetic an...

Multimodal Layering: Students Learning with iPads in Primary School Classrooms

The chapter discusses the concept of ‘multimodal layering’ as both a theoretical perspective and a methodological framework for analysis. It helps the researcher explore points of potential meaning making coherence created through digital platforms such as iPads. Multimodal layering refers to the multiplicative effect (Lemke in Visual Communication 1(3): 299–325, 2002) when semiotic modes closely associated with a text are reframed in new contexts as users make meaning in digital spaces. The effect occurs in the constant shift between the material and immaterial layers of screens, modes and texts through which individual students need to navigate when reading and writing in learning events (Walsh and Simpson in Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 37(2): 96–106, 2014). This layering is made even more complex when meaning is constructed in the social context of the classroom in the dynamic operationalization of iPads/tablets in private and public spaces. We propose that the multiplicative effects existing within the semiotic boundaries of a text alter when multimodal layering occurs as the text is repurposed in a new interaction and the learner is repositioned to respond to the reconfiguring of semiosis.

Mobile Literacies: Moving from the Word to the World

In this chapter, we explore and critique the concept of ‘mobile literacies’ and consider how it has been interpreted through this book in relation to tablet use. We find that, rather than offering another definition of literacy within new digital environments, it is a paradoxical concept with flexible interpretations. While it may suggest unlimited boundaries with new technologies, it can in fact be limited by both its creators and users. Throughout the book the authors have provided grounded insights through complex research studies that allow us to problematise the term mobile literacies. The chapters explore challenges arising from theorisations of relationships between bodies, texts and devices entangled in widely varied social contexts. Each study provides a lens through which literacy practices can be viewed as ways of making meaning in a technologically mediated world.