Literacy Events Research Articles

A Design-Oriented Analysis of Multimodality in English as a Foreign Language

This empirical article investigates multimodality in English as a foreign language, both as seen in the use of multimodal texts as artefacts and pedagogical texts for learning, and through an analysis of the multimodal learning designs. We present observations from a year 10 classroom in Norway that worked with the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Alexie, 2007). We explore a four-week teaching sequence, asking how different modes were involved when the educator designed literacy events around the novel, and how multimodality is present in the students’ meaning making. Our aim is to make explicit and discuss some of the silent literacy practices in English teaching at lower secondary level in Norwegian schools.

A PARTICIPAÇÃO DE ADULTOS ALFABETIZANDOS NA SOCIEDADE E O SEU DOMÍNIO DA MODALIDADE ESCRITA DA LÍNGUA

The goal of this article is to reflect upon the possible implicational relationships between the participation in different literacy events of two adult women who are at the beginning of their process of literacy and the mastery that they develop in the written modality of the language. As methodological tools, a semi-structured interview, as well as a dictation of words and sentences were formulated. The discussion was based on literacy theories, and the dictation was analyzed according to the implicational stages of writing. The result of the research points to the possibility of understanding that the participation in distinct literacy events happens in such a way that it increases the mastery of the subjects as it pertains to the written modality of the language.

Developing Readers: Understanding Concept of Word in Text Development in Emergent Readers

A child’s ability to fingerpoint accurately to words while reading aloud a memorized text showcases his/her development of concept of word in text. This ability demonstrates the extent to which key early literacy skills are integrated (e.g., alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness). Research indicates that attaining a concept of word in text is a watershed literacy event that allows a reader to more readily acquire a store of sight words. Concept of word in text develops in a predictable fashion, progressing in three stages: developing, rudimentary, and firm. During the kindergarten year, teachers can foster children’s development of concept of word in text in order to accelerate children’s literacy learning. This article provides instructional suggestions that teachers can use to support this development.

Under the teacher’s radar: Literacy practices in task-related smartphone use in the connected classroom

In this article, we explore the role of smartphones in the classroom and how they interact with teaching. Drawing on examples of literacy events, we show how the students use the smartphone as a re ...

Peirce’s Concept of Signs and Kindergarten Literacy

This article focuses on Peirce’s writings about his concept of triadic sign relationships and applies his theory to analyses of multimodal literacy events in a kindergarten classroom where the author was a participant observer. Examples are provided to explain Peirce’s descriptions of the elements of sign relationships – object, representamen, and interpretant. Peirce’s theories are used to understand how the kindergarten children and their teacher make meaning from the children’s multimodal writing productions. Possible objects and interpretants of the children’s multimodal writings are explored. Figures of the children’s drawings/writings and diagrams of relationships among sign elements in the kindergarten classroom are included in the paper.  https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.17.5.7

Analysis of Different Views and Conceptualizations of the Literacy Practices of Pupils, Families, and Teachers in Costa Rican Primary Education

ABSTRACTThis article is based on a socio-cultural discourse model of literacy, whereby literacy events are regarded as being situated within social practices, creating various formal, informal, and non-formal literacy events that are part of multiliteracies. The aim of the research was to analyze primary pupils’ literacy practices (8–12 years) from the perspectives of 1,354 primary pupils, 1,020 family members, and 96 teachers in Costa Rica, using an ex-post facto design and a survey method. The findings indicate that the three groups of participants (pupils, family members, and teachers) have different views on and conceptualizations of literacy practices in school and in the community. The results show that young learners develop their literacy practices according to their different communicative needs inside and outside school. A multimodal literacy is promoted outside school to meet students’ daily communicative needs. However, the school promotes a monomodal literacy, which allows pupils to respond essentially to school needs.

ANALISIS FRAMING LITERASI LINGKUNGAN DI KAWASAN BEBAS SAMPAH KOTA BANDUNG

The challenge of managing waste in the future is to develop zero waste city, however the condition will never be achieved without community participation. In colaboration with NGO which work in waste and garbage management issue, the local government had developed the model of zero waste area in district level. This article is aims to explore the framing of waste management literacy event in Kampung Cibunut. Applying the framing theory of McLachan and Reid, the analysis arrive to the result that continuing interaction among facilitator and cadres and community member has built the shift framing and counter framing. There is also flixed framing which display the resistence to frame change or modification such as the indicators of zero waste area, and flexible framing which display the opennes to frame change or modification such as the implementation of skill transfer in public areas. Entire framing was develop from contextualization of the message delivered in literacy event.

Learning-by-Designing literacy-based concept-oriented play (LBCOP) activities: emergent curriculum for/with young CLD children and their teacher

ABSTRACTIt has been argued that developing interactive learning environments that involve learners in integrating contextualized literacy experiences leads to more successful concept formation in young children. This study attempts to revisit Vygotsky’s view of the dialectical relations between culture and individual psychological functioning as mutually constitutive. By highlighting a specific literacy event, this qualitative study investigates an emergent curriculum by designing literacy-based and concept-oriented play (LBCOP) activities to foster young culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children’s mathematical concept formation. The paper concludes with implications of co-designing LBCOP activities by the teacher and young CLD children for both children’s concept formation and teacher design work.

Literacy-as-event: accounting for relationality in literacy research

ABSTRACTResearch in New Literacy Studies has demonstrated how literacy consists of multiple socially and culturally situated practices illuminated through a focus on literacy events. Recently, this sociocultural perspective has been complemented by relational thinking that views literacy as an ongoing reassembling of the human and more-than-human. This conceptual article proposes that, in exploring how relational thinking might be deployed in literacy research and practice, it is helpful to revisit conceptualisations of literacy events. Specifically it proposes the notion of ‘literacy-as-event’ as a heuristic for thinking with the fluid and elusive nature of meaning-making, elaborating on three propositions: (1) event is generated as people and things come into relation; (2) what happens always exceeds what can be conceived and perceived; and (3) implicit in the event are multiple potentialities. Approaching literacy research through engaging with literacy-as-event promotes an expansive, reflective, and imaginative engagement with literacy practices that aligns with relational thinking.

Descrição de eventos de letramento no primeiro ano de um curso de graduação: plágio, paráfrase e ensino de escrita acadêmica

This case study describes literacy events that took place at a first year subject of a Brazilian undergraduate course on Languages. They include events promoted by professor efforts and those created as a response to student learning needs. Prominent among them was the need to overcome plagiarism as a writing strategy. This paper is based on teaching focused on student needs and on Literacies Approach to writing academic teaching (LEA; STREET, 1998). Data were generated by collection of student pieces of academic writing. Analysis of data shows that teacher educational intervention resulted in development of paraphrasing and using citation abilities and decrease of plagiarism in quantity and/or quality suggesting that responsiveness to students needs should be prioritized regardless of writing learning approach assumed by the teacher.

Breaking the “Fourth Wall” in Qualitative Research: Participant-Led Digital Data Construction

This article reconstructs the typical researcher-participant focus - where the participants are doing for us - instead we followed the participants’ lead in the construction of research. Using a qualitative literacy event case study as an example, we describe how participants unexpectedly co-constructed knowledge through a participant-led digital data collection. In this theoretical article, we provide an explanation of the original study, which used observations, semi-structured interviews, and home visits as a collective qualitative case study on parental participation in social literacy practices. The original investigation led to the important shift that occurred in participant-researcher roles. In this article, using an ethnographic perspective, we explain how unexpected digital data creations created by participants’ family members allowed for enhanced equity between researcher and participant through changing the research dynamic, hearing and seeing participant voice previously unavailable. Situated within socio-cultural construction and the concept of Diderot’s concept of the fourth wall (the invisible barrier between audience and actor), we explain how these new insights provide opportunities for other qualitative researchers to enhance their practices through an ontological shift, intentionally “breaking the fourth wall of research” to integrate participant co-construction of knowledge.

The Social Construction of Warranting Evidence in Two Classrooms

This study examines how instructional conversations revealed the ways two teachers’ argumentative epistemologies (ideational and social process) shaped literacy events focused on the warranting of evidence. A microethnographic study of the literacy events within each teacher’s respective instructional unit revealed that each teacher’s epistemology shaped how students were asked to consider differing sources, relevancy, and sufficiency for warranting evidence within the context of writing extended argumentative essays. Events within an ideational epistemology required students to generate warrants as ideas to be applied to arguments in on-demand writing situations. Within a social process epistemology, students constructed warrants as a social practice appropriate for a specific rhetorical context. Each teacher supported his or her students in developing differing understandings of the nature of warranting. These findings highlight the importance of analyzing the teaching and learning of argumentative writing not only as written products of instruction but as a socialization into argumentative writing practices.

Building health knowledge online: Parents’ online information searching on congenital heart defects

The study examines online searching as a digital health literacy practice and focuses on parents of children with congenital heart defects. Over the period of four years, we have conducted interviews with couples at different stages of pregnancy or parenthood and have encouraged them to reflect on their literacy practices when receiving a heart defect diagnosis, during the remaining time of their pregnancy and when living with a child with a heart defect. We have also read and analysed health blogs written by parents and focused on extracts where literacy events are described. Searching for information and support online is one of the most frequent practices amongst the participants in the study. The aim of this paper is therefore to highlight the complexity of looking for information online in order to take health decisions and provide care to a child with congenital illness. Based on what parents say they do when searching online, we focus on three main paths to knowledge: looking for medical facts, looking for other parents’ experiences and looking for practical information. We discuss digital health literacy practices as complex activities that often involve parents in the diagnosis and in the child’s medical care to such an extent that parents build up knowledge and become experts, not only in finding information and support but in talking and writing about their child’s illness. We also problematise the notion of trustworthy health information and show how facts and opinions often go hand in hand in platforms where health issues are discussed. Finally, we show some of the affordances and restrictions inherent in using the internet as a source for meaning making and learning about children’s health. The results reinforce our understanding of the socially framed nature of health literacy and make us focus on the digital as an additional important aspect in the practice of health literacy.

Flows of Literacy across Corporate and User-Produced Virtual Worlds

Background/Context Sociocultural research on young people's literate practices with digital media has generally focused on literacy events and practices that are grounded in distinct online locations, such as affinity spaces, specific websites, particular videogames, or virtual worlds. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Contemporary media landscapes have become networked to such an extent that a transmedial approach is needed to understand the social, cultural, and literate contexts that young people inhabit. Research Design In this article, we use qualitative and literary analyses of products and artifacts from the Hunger Games media franchise to explore young people's literacy practices as embedded in corporate and fan-produced transmedia ecologies. Conclusions/Recommendations Our analysis looks beyond spatial and structural boundaries to understand how flows of corporate and user-produced artifacts can shape, constrain, and expand young people's literate repertoires.

Literacy as Tardis: Stories in Time and Space

Background/Context This article draws on previous work about narrative, which regards the practice of storying our lives as a basic human impulse and one that draws on cultural resources to do so. Neophyte digital resources have fascinated and enticed us as devices to immerse ourselves ever deeply and widely to create shinier, polished narratives. Our new modes and media have impacted on the nature of our narratives, and we reflect on our lives as we read them back to ourselves. Yet the affordances of the devices have allowed us to play also with the modes of time and space. This article draws on theories suggested by Burnett et al.; Leander and Sheehy; Massey; and Lemke to unpack the slippery nature of these notions of space and time. Purpose/Objective/Research The article provides a series of examples from a range of scenarios and research projects to consolidate the proposal that the contexts of literacy events are difficult to delineate, that contexts slip and slide across space and time in ways that seem to defy absolute specificity—that they are “in motion,” mercurial, and subject to change. Nevertheless, within these uncertain spaces, individuals use the cultural resources at their disposal to make sense of who they are and what the world is, through the creation of stories. Research Design This is an analytical essay, which draws on the research of others to create a series of examples of “digital encounters.” Conclusions/Recommendations The article argues that despite the many changes that digital tools have brought to our lives, the narrative impulse and the desire to represent ourselves through images and other media have remained constant. The new tools seem to allow us, however, to play more explicitly with time and space and to incorporate these aspects into our meaning-making practices. We can use tools to explore new types of space and arenas for communication—not just because of our capacity to keep in touch across time and space (which is not new), but because we can disrupt how we perceive these concepts.

Evaluation of an Annual Community-Focused Agricultural Literacy Event

Agricultural literacy programs are effective pathways to informally teach the public about agriculture through stakeholder (attendee and exhibitor) interaction. Such programs are generally evaluated using attendee feedback but fail to include exhibitors’ experience. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a local community agricultural event by (a) exploring attendee agricultural literacy, purchasing behavior, and overall experience at the event, and (b) exploring exhibitor experiences at the same event. Attendees and exhibitors were given electronic surveys to provide quantitative and qualitative feedback as it pertained to the event’s educational programming aspects. Attendees reported positive attitudes and perceptions of locally produced agricultural goods. Exhibitors reported satisfaction with the event and found the interactive digital scavenger hunt to be an effective way to interact with attendees and increase exposure to their business. Suggestions from attendees and exhibitors were concerned with pre-event communication and event logistics. The findings identify areas where education could be beneficial (e.g., nutritional information, impact of purchasing locally grown agricultural products, and where to find/purchase locally grown agricultural products). We recommend including attendee and exhibitor feedback to evaluate and improve similar agricultural literacy programs to guide marketing strategies and to better engage attendees and exhibitors with integrated learning activities.

Infusions and Fumigations

Written texts, especially sacred texts, can be handled in different ways. They can be read for semantic content; or they can be materially experienced, touched, or even be inhaled or drunk. I argue that literacy ideologies regulate social acceptability of specific semantic and somatic text practices. Drinking or fumigating the Qurʾan as a medical procedure is a highly contested literacy event in which two different ideologies are drawn upon simultaneously. I employ the linguistic model of codeswitching to highlight central aspects of this event: a more somatic ideology of literacy enables the link to medicine, while a more semantic ideology connects the practice to theological discourses on the sacredness of the Qurʾan as well as to the tradition of Prophetic medicine. Opposition to and ridicule of the practice, however, comes from representatives of an ideology of semantic purity, including some Islamic theologians and most Western scholars of Islam. Qurʾanic potions thus constitute an ideal point of entry for analyzing different types of literacy ideologies being followed in religious traditions.

Cooking the books: what counts as literacy for young children in a public library?

AbstractAt a time when government funding cuts mean that public libraries face an uncertain future and need to make sure they stay relevant to young users and their families, this paper explores what counts as literacy for young children in a public library in a town in the East Midlands, UK. It is based on a study which adopted an ethnographic approach, drawing on Lefebvre's spatial theory to understand how a library space presents literacy to young children and their carers, and how this then shapes the literacy practices and events that happen in this space. The study shows that dominant discourses are bound up in what the library staff understand to be their role in promoting and supporting young children's literacy, and that, often, they organise the space and literacy events in ways that reflect these discourses. However this paper argues that it is not only the library staff that create space in the library, as carers and their children are sometimes seen to create alternative spaces which challenge and subvert the way the librarians would like the space to be used and understood.

Exploring the role of intertextuality in promoting young ELL children’s poetry writing and learning: a discourse analytic approach

This article probes into the social and discursive construction of intertextualities in young ELL children’s poetry writing process. It aims to explore the role of intertextuality in promoting young ELL children’s writing and academic learning through analysing naturally occurring classroom discourses. The research participants were 19 kindergarteners from six different cultural and linguistic backgrounds and their teacher. Primary data sources included participant observation, video recording, interviews and students’ artefacts over time. Microethnographic discourse analysis is conducted to examine the teacher–student moment-to-moment classroom interactive discourses in the chosen key literacy event of writing a poem about their stapler. Data analysis showed that the ELL children’s poem writing event was a robust learning process promoted by the teacher–student dynamic social and discursive construction of different intertextualities across different times and contexts. Based on the complex learning and intertextualities constructed in their writing process, the researcher advocates intertextuality as a powerful heuristic to transform the children’s experiences into meaningful learning and actions.

Becoming “Spanish Learners”: Identity and Interaction Among Multilingual Children in a Spanish-English Dual Language Classroom

ABSTRACTThis article explores the interactional co-construction of identities among two first-grade students learning Spanish as a third language in a Spanish-English dual language classroom. Drawing on ethnographic and interactional data, the article focuses on a single interaction between these two “Spanish learners” and two of their Spanish-speaking classmates that took place within the context of a classroom literacy event. Analysis involved examining the sequential organization of talk, as well as identifying the particular linguistic resources that speakers recruited in their conversational turns. Findings showcase the interactional mechanisms by which students’ identities were variously asserted, contested, and negotiated in everyday classroom talk. The article ends by offering implications and raising further questions with respect to the implementation of dual language education for multilingual students.