Jennifer Rowsell

Literacy and Education: Understanding the New Literacy Studies in the Classroom.

Introduction Taking Account of the Local The New Literacy Studies and Teaching Literacy Where We Were and Where We Are Going Multimodal Literacies New Ways of Reading and Writing Childrens Texts go to School Bridging Local and Global Literacies Literacy and Identity Who are the Meaning-Makers? Navigating New Literacies for New Times Shaping Curriculum and Pedagogy Conclusion Literacy Today ... and Tomorrow

The (im)materiality of literacy: the significance of subjectivity to new literacies research

This article deconstructs the online and offline experience to show its complexities and idiosyncratic nature. It proposes a theoretical framework designed to conceptualise aspects of meaning-making across on- and offline contexts. In arguing for the ‘(im)materiality’ of literacy, it makes four propositions which highlight the complex and diverse relationships between the immaterial and material associated with meaning-making. Complementing existing sociocultural perspectives on literacy, the article draws attention to the significance of relationships between space, mediation, materiality and embodiment to literacy practices. This in turn emphasises the importance of the subjective in understanding how different locations, experiences and so forth inflect literacy practice. The article concludes by drawing on the Deleuzian concept of the ‘baroque’ to suggest that this focus on articulations between the material and immaterial helps us to see literacy as multiply and flexibly situated.

Fostering multiliteracies pedagogy through preservice teacher education

Teacher education for literacy teaching is often fairly narrow in focus. New approaches are needed that are sociocultural in orientation and take due account of the diversity of language forms, both traditional and contemporary, formal and informal, literary and non‐literary. We believe this need can be met by largely adopting a ‘multiliteracies’ approach as articulated by the New London Group. This research examined the ideas and practices of 10 literacy faculty in a large school of education and 22 first year literacy teachers from the same institution. It found that despite some important advances in a multiliteracies direction, many shortcomings remained. Part of the difficulty was lack of clarity about the nature and purpose of multiliteracies pedagogy. This paper has two main purposes: first, to attempt to clarify the nature and importance of a multiliteracies approach; and second, to report on the successes achieved and challenges encountered in moving in this direction in one school of education.

Preparation for the First Year of Teaching: Beginning Teachers' Views about Their Needs

In this study we asked beginning elementary teachers about their needs as first-year teachers and the adequacy of their preservice program in helping to meet them. The new teachers varied in satisfaction with their preparation but showed considerable consensus on their needs. They felt the study of both theory and practice should be conducted in depth and focused on certain key areas. The main areas mentioned included comprehensive planning for the whole year, how to set up the program, assessment and evaluation, and implementation of effective group work.

Envisioning New Literacies Through a Lens of Teaching and Learning

What are new literacies and how do they mesh with core curriculum? Classroom teachers who find their students’ interests and bases of knowledge about new technologies expanding exponentially often ask this question. While broadening the definition of new literacies beyond internet literacy this article explores the history of new literacies and offers an answer to the question of how to blend new literacies while not losing the focus of the core curriculum. An example of how one teacher remixed new literacies, core curriculum, and intentional instruction to support critical literacy is shared to illustrate the reality and possible process of weaving new and existing literacy instruction.

Digital literacies as placed resources in the globalised periphery

The focus on electronic media as placed resources in this Introduction to this special issue draws attention to the varied and specific ways that media resources are taken hold of in divergent social settings. We argue that communicative resources of all kinds, in their uses and functions, are shaped by context and place, and we examine what that means for people engaging with new media resources, particularly people who are not part of the global mainstream. The case is made that research needs to take account of the specificity, affordances and limits of place, conceived both in geographic terms and as social sites that are shaped by politics, history, economics and cultural practices. At the same time, research has to pay attention to ways that electronic media offer translocal resources and practices for engagement. Digital media exist in the local and offer agency to users in the papers presented here, but not without the constraints that mark their status as persons located on the globalised periphery.

Visual Literacy as a Classroom Approach

Living in an increasingly visual culture, Rowsell, McLean, and Hamilton illustrate the importance of critically evaluating the potential of visual literacy as a dimension of the school context. They first situate visual literacy within the school arena and then examine its relevance to learning through different visual genres. In an effort to illustrate the power of visual literacy to enhance cross-curricular learning, the authors conclude by sharing examples of students conceptualizing and extrapolating visual literacy through the consumption and production of texts.

Carrying my family with me: artifacts as emic perspectives

Barack Obama’s depiction of the boundaries of East Harlem and Manhattan creates a picture in your mind. If you have been there, you can visualize it, if you have read about it, then you extemporize, even embellish on the details. Uninviting, treeless, soot-colored walk-ups with heavy shadows resurrect colours, sounds, textures, and shapes. In this short excerpt, Obama materializes a place for a reader; he captures materialities-in-place and he does so through evocative details and speaking to the senses. There is a difference between living these senses, visiting these senses, and reading these senses. The subtle, yet important distinctions are the subject of this article in a special issue about combining ethnography with multimodality. The topic of the article is seeing an artifact, and its sensory world, through the optic of its owner as a coupling

(Re)designing literacy teacher education: a call for change

The article features a graduate literacy teacher education course that compelled students to think in terms of design and multimodality. In an effort to innovate our own literacy teacher education work, we came together to devise a course that encouraged students to adopt a design lens to their thinking, planning, and assessing of literacy learning. We saw this qualitative case study as a way to understand the interrelationships of learning processes, principles of design and multimodal texts, and how these might inform pedagogy. Building on years of work in the areas of multimodality and multiliteracies, we observed how eight teachers with varying degrees of comfort with multimodality moved into a design-oriented approach to literacy education. The article presents our research on design-oriented teacher education work, but the findings illuminate how the adoption and inhabiting of different mindsets and metalanguage can make a difference.

(Re)designing writing in English class: a multimodal approach to teaching writing

Based on a 2-year ethnographic study in an urban secondary school in Toronto, the article presents how a teacher and a researcher teach Grade 11 students through a design-based approach to teaching and learning in English class. Built on research and pedagogy on design, the authors designed a programme of study as an alternative to more traditional approaches to writing. After framing five core principles of design, students completed a series of writing assignment that focused on particular modes such as sound, visuals and materials. Focusing on specific modes for each lesson, students considered design concepts and design epistemologies to complete assignments about texts covered as a part of their programme of study. The authors conclude the article by summarizing the theoretical and methodological orientations that were developed while adopting design principles and the pitfalls of taking such an approach.