Lynde Tan

Portraits of New Literacies in Two Singapore Classrooms

The need to broaden the notion of literacy has been continually emphasized within the field of New Literacy Studies in recent years. This is necessary because of the advent of information and communication technology (ICT) in our everyday, school and workplace literacy practices. A broader notion of literacy is needed to pay attention to the rearrangement in the constellation of modes of representation from print to screen which has profound consequences for meaning making and communication in the classroom (Kress, 2003). In this paper, we present our exploratory study in a Singapore high school whereby a multiliteracies curriculum was designed and implemented. We document our collaborating teacher’s changing perceptions towards meaning making and how her shifting perceptions change her pedagogical practices in her two English Language classrooms of 14-year-old students. We conclude with a discussion on the implications of developing new literacies for language teaching in Singapore.

Learner-generated designs in participatory culture: what they are and how they are shaping learning

Interactive Learning Environments (ILE) journal represents strong scholarly work on giving learners control of their own learning (e.g. Volume 23, Issue 1, 2015) with the use of innovative learning technologies (e.g. Volume 23, Issue 2, 2015). We believe that positioning learners as active meaning makers is changing the landscape of what we may call interactive learning environments. ILE is concerned with “all aspects of the design and use of interactive learning environments in the broadest sense” (ILE, n.d.). In this special issue, we purport to interrogate and further our understanding of the commonly cited term, design, specifically learner-generated designs. This issue brings together scholars from multiple disciplines, including learning sciences, literacy studies, science education, digital media, and pedagogy, to examine the notion of learner-generated designs in both formal and informal learning environments. Multidisciplinary perspectives provide ways of understanding how learners take hold of their culture of learning, shaping it to be more participatory, communicative, collaborative, and digital. Throughout the special issue, the authors suggest an emergent culture of learning that engages learners in reifying their knowledge and identity through artifacts and discourse. This is the common thread weaving through each paper’s examination of learner-generated designs. We argue that learner-generated designs provide opportunities for learners to bring in their objects or ideas of significance to engage in pedagogic discourse with their peers and teachers or mentors. Learner-generated designs focus the discourse on the learners’ ways of being, doing, and knowing; identity; and embodied experiences of artifacts in different domains of their lives. In this editorial commentary, we draw on the authors’ research to elucidate the notion of learner-generated designs. The individual contributions showcase empirical analyses of learners’ artifacts of learning and group discourse to examine learner-generated designs and their practices of participating in both online and offline learning environments. Their research questions address how their pedagogical designs bring out learners’ agency as well as what learners’ designs mean in their contexts. Drawing on Engle and colleagues’ (2011) notion of Expansive framing, Zuiker and Wright (2015, this issue) connect gardening practices with scientific practices, which relocate science learning in the everyday setting of the school garden. Other authors attend to young people’s digital media productions such as online writing

Learning by Doing in the Digital Media Age

There is a general agreement that adolescents are not only using a wide range of digital media but also developing a new culture of learning as they use it. Drawing on two separate studies on adolescent digital literacy practices, this chapter expounds on the commonly cited term, learning by doing. We argue that learning by doing is integral to the adolescents’ school and everyday lives. The arguments put forward in this chapter are drawn from a social view of literacy to understand adolescents’ use of digital media in and out of school. Using an ethnographic perspective to researching adolescents’ literacy practices, this chapter provides illustrative ethnographic accounts of how learning by doing is enacted in adolescents’ school and out-of-school literacy practices. We hope that the ethnographic accounts are able to inform educators on the emerging culture of learning in adolescents’ digital literacy practices and open up new vistas for redesigning learning environments that are more relevant to adolescents’ lifeworlds in the digital media age.

The affordances of informant design in educational game development

This paper argues that in ‘educational’ game development, there is often a gap between design and learning. It suggests how involving learners in the design process, known as the informant design approach, is able to close this gap. One key affordance of such an approach is the provision of learning opportunities for the learners themselves where designing and learning are intertwined. Specifically, learners had opportunities to use their experiences as their resources for learning and game design. They were capable of drawing on their knowledge of their lifeworlds, particularly adolescents’ gaming culture and Earth phenomena, when suggesting game ideas for learning.

“Perhaps This Can Be For Education”: Learners’ Cultural Models for Educational Game Design

Infusing games into classroom teaching and learning has been a keen interest among researchers and educators. Game-based learning offers potentials for creating twenty-first century learning environment that promises to better engage our digital generation. Yet, creating educational games that both engage learners and address schools’ educational goals remains a challenge when designing games for education. As a response to the perennial problem, we suggest it may be worthwhile to draw on students’ funds of knowledge and practices of playing games and learning in and out of school when developing games for learning. We shift the educational gaze on this issue from the teachers’ perspectives to that of the learners’ to examine the cultural models of the latter’s lifeworlds, related to learning with games. Specifically, we present the cultural models of learning, technology, and aesthetics that learners themselves surfaced in an informant design approach. In this approach, five progressive design workshops were conducted as part of a three-year research program conducted with two Singapore secondary schools. Twenty-two students between the age of thirteen and fifteen participated as design partners or informants where their ideas about Earth and computer games were explored. The cultural models presented in this chapter constitute a part of the findings from these workshops. This chapter puts forward the merits of positioning learners as resources not only for their own learning, but also as co-designers of the game to be used as a learning tool. We conclude that accessing learners’ cultural models is important to avoid designing twenty-first century pedagogies that are based on assumed needs.