The digital reading path: researching modes and multidirectionality with iPads

This paper reports a study that examines the integration of tablet technologies such as iPads into literacy lessons to investigate how reading and meaning‐making occur within this digital medium. Specifically in this paper, we discuss the concept of reading paths as applied to physical and cognitive planes of meaning‐making. The paper reports on data collected as part of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded project involving researchers from Canada, the United States and Australia. The study is currently under way in schools in the three different countries where the researchers are observing students in classrooms in primary and secondary schools. The research is designed with a mixed methods approach coding video footage of dyads to enable close study of their interaction during literacy tasks incorporating iPads. Our findings show that the affordances of touch technology allow for multimodal, multidirectional reading paths. By tracking students' interactions with the digital platform through touch, it is possible to see navigation as evidence of the relationship between material and cognitive processes, which fosters metatextual awareness. These aspects of modes and new literacies construct a dynamic materiality for students' reading and writing. As a result, we propose that current awareness of the mode of gesture needs to be expanded to take into account haptic ways of learning.     

Literacy,media and multimodality: a critical response

In recent years, literacy educators have increasingly recognised the importance of addressing a broader range of texts in the classroom. This article raises some critical concerns about a particular approach to this issue that has been widely promoted in recent years – the concept of ‘multimodality’. Multimodality theory offers a broadly semiotic approach to analysing a range of communicative forms. It has been widely taken up by literacy educators, initially at an academic level, and has begun to find its way into policy documents, teacher education and professional development and classroom practice. This article presents some criticisms, both of the theory itself and of the ways in which it has been taken up within the wider context of curriculum change. It argues that, in its popular usage, multimodality theory is being appropriated in a way that merely reinforces a long‐standing distinction between print and ‘non‐print’ texts. This contributes in particular to a continuing neglect of the specificity of moving image media – media that are central to the learning and everyday life experiences of young children. Drawing on recent classroom‐based research, the article concludes by offering some brief indications of an alternative approach to these issues.     

Digital writing practices: a close look at one grade three author

This paper reports on the digital writing practices of a Grade Three primary school student as he used an iPad to plan, produce and share digital texts. The case study acknowledges that writing is undergoing a period of great change in many classrooms and works to show how a student author has interpreted and produced digital texts with new technologies. In particular, the specific practices, digital materials and literacy concepts will be explicated through analyses of two digital texts created by this author. This focus acknowledges the ways texts can be planned, produced and shared using multiple modes and media. These social practices and the wider learning opportunities afforded through the flexible and recursive ways students produce text have yet to be fully explored. This paper also extends current understandings about digital writing practices through its examination of the connections between and among multiple apps as an author crafts digital text.     

Challenging the tyranny of the five‐paragraph essay: teachers and students as semiotic boundary workers in classroom and digital space

This article addresses several challenges faced by educators and students in English classrooms in the US–Mexico borderlands region that will resonate with educators more broadly. I present how Ms Smith, the predominately Latino students in her high school writing class and I moved beyond what Ms Smith called the “tyranny of the five‐paragraph essay” used for standardised tests so that students were able to make personally and academically meaningful arguments in their writing. I examine how we collaboratively mobilised interests, motivations and diverse semiotic resources across out‐of‐school and in‐school contexts in the process of developing multimodal and hybrid genres and texts. First, I describe how Ms Smith and I crafted hybrid, digitally mediated classroom spaces and essay assignments informed by students' identity and literacy practices within digital networks. Next, I examine how three Latina students used semiotic resources and issues circulating in the different spaces of their lives to confidently argue their perspectives within the hybrid genres we created. From this collaborative work, I suggest that thinking of students and teachers as “semiotic boundary workers” provides a useful framework for practitioners who want to enable young people to draw on their practices and digital tools and engage their expansive, networked and creative affordances in academic contexts.     

Inequitable variations: a review of research in technology,literacy studies and special education

This essay presents the results of a review of research published in the last 10 years on the uses of what we term ‘productive’ digital technologies in special education contexts. There is little overlap between research on productive technologies such as digital storytelling in mainstream contexts and research on technology use to support literacy learning in special education classrooms. Analysis centred on theoretical frameworks, research methods, educational contexts and technologies used with children and youth labelled with special needs. The initial sample of refereed journal articles (n = 1,132) was reduced to 14 studies for review. Results suggest large variations in the knowledge base about why, how, when and to what effects productive technologies might be used with children labelled with special needs. The essay presents further areas for theorising and research in the juncture of these separate fields to address the inequitable variations and social justice issues engendered by current research and practice.     

New media,evolving multimodal literacy practices and the potential impact of increased use of the visual mode in the urban environment on young children's learning

This article looks at the way in which the changing visual environment affects education at two levels: in communication patterns and research methodologies. The research considers differences in the variance and quantity of types of visual media and their relationship to the written mode in the urban landscapes of Tokyo and London, using Google Street View to make comparisons. It reflects on the parallels this might have in the ways in which children encounter text in the environment. The data were analysed using Visual Content Analysis and colour coding. It found the Tokyo sample to have a higher density and diversity of visual media types at a wider range of heights. Visual and written communication also appear to be confined to more separately definable spaces with more equal weighting in the use of written and visual modes. Particularly, within the context of early childhood education it is hoped these findings will increase knowledge concerning young children's exposure to the visual mode, initiate wider discourse around this less researched mode's role within new multimodal communication practices and that the methodology furthers understanding of the potential of new media in image‐based research.     

Railways,rebellions and Rage Against The Machine: adolescents' interests and meaning‐making in the creation of multimodal identity texts

This paper draws on a Canadian qualitative case study grounded in multiliteracies theory to describe the meaning‐making processes of four students aged 13‐14 years as they created history projects. Students were invited to explore curriculum content in self‐chosen ways and to produce presentations in a range of formats. The data we present and discuss were collected through participant observation and in‐situ interviews with four students who selected digital formats. We examine these data using multiliteracies concepts: specifically multimodality and identity texts. We argue that multimodal literacy practices have potential to bridge gaps between students' in‐school and out‐of‐school lives and underscore the importance of allowing students to draw on their out‐of‐school identities and interests to guide explorations of curriculum content.     

#poetryisnotdead: understanding Instagram poetry within a transliteracies framework

Adolescents are more connected to the globalised world than ever before, with an increased prevalence of social media use amongst youth. Young people are composing multimodal creative works, including digital poetry, to share with an online audience, using platforms such as Instagram. Drawing on transliteracies theory, this case study found that three main themes appeared regarding the nature of literacy practices on Instagram. Community and interactivity were important to poets, especially in regard to feedback. The platform and complementary apps, especially those used for photo editing, afforded poets agency and fostered multimodality when composing, thus highlighting the changing nature of digitised writing practices. Value was placed on the mobility and accessibility of Instagram as a mobile app, for composing and consuming digital poetry. Young people may therefore be considered innovators of multimodal writing who employ ever‐evolving technologies to engage in authentic literacy practices in digital spaces. As a result, this study suggests that the implications of Instapoetry on English pedagogy include the increased exposure and relevance of poetry writing and appreciation, a space for student‐centred writing, reading, and analysis of poems, as well as a relevant method of peer review and collaboration.     

Teacher–writer–crafter–maker: an exploration of how making mattered for one writing teacher

This qualitative case study documents a secondary English teacher's making, writing and teaching. The focal teacher engaged in diverse making practices – including composing, crafting and digital fabrication. She also participated in a National Writing Project (NWP) Summer Institute that focused on both teacher writing and digital composing. Data include observations at this NWP Project Summer Institute and in the focal teacher's English classroom, as well as interviews and artefact collection related to her making practices. The findings describe how this teacher's making mattered for her understandings of writing and for her teaching (or not). The case offers insights into why it may be important to cultivate educator making, as well as potential tensions between experiencing making and incorporating it into writing pedagogy. Ultimately, it contributes to writing research interested in examining how various forms of production and making are enmeshed.     

Children's responses to the interactivity of storybook apps in family shared reading events involving the iPad

This paper reports on some data on the effects of screen‐based interactivity on children's engagement with storybook apps during family shared book reading that were gathered in a 2‐year, small‐scale ethnographic case study in Spain. Data analysis focuses on the complex interplay between the storybook app's interactive features and the children's responses to them. Our findings show that interactive elements increase the child's autonomy, as they tend to promote the importance of the reader, positioning him or her as a collaborator, storyteller, an author or an internal character in the fiction; something that can materialise in exciting narrative strategies that can trigger powerful responses to digital literary texts in emergent readers, including playing, creating new fictions or engaging emotionally with the story. Finally, we argue that the Reader Response models that have been used over recent decades to understand children's reading experiences with storybooks need to be revised to better understand their current experiences with interactive texts.     

“That's more like how they know me as a person”: one primary pre‐service teacher's stories of her personal and ‘professional’ digital practices

In contributing to debates about how student‐teachers might draw from personal experience in addressing digital literacy in the classroom, this paper explores the stories that one primary student‐teacher told of her digital practices during a larger study of the role of digital literacy in student‐teachers' lives. The paper investigates the ‘recognition work’ this student‐teacher did as she aligned herself with different discourses and notes how themes of ‘control’ and ‘professionalism’ seemed to pattern her stories of informal and formal practices both within and beyond her professional education. The paper calls for further research into how student‐teachers perceive the relevance of their personal experience to their professional role and argues for encouraging pre‐service and practising teachers to tell stories of their digital practices and reflect upon the discourses which frame them.     

“…If we were cavemen we'd be fine”: Facebook as a catalyst for critical literacy learning by dyslexic sixth‐form students

This article is derived from a study of the use of Facebook as an educational resource by five dyslexic students at a sixth form college in north‐west England. Through a project in which teacher‐researcher and student‐participants co‐constructed a group Facebook page about the students’ scaffolded research into dyslexia, the study examined the educational affordances of a digitally mediated social network. An innovative, flexible, experiential methodology combining action research and case study with an ethnographic approach was devised. This enabled the use of multiple mixed methods, capturing much of the rich complexity of the students’ online and offline interactions with each other and with digital media as they contributed to the group and co‐constructed their group Facebook page. Social perspectives on dyslexia and multiliteracies were used to help interpret the students’ engagement with the social network and thereby deduce its educational potential. The research concludes that as a digitally mediated social network, Facebook engages the students in active, critical learning about and through literacies in a rich and complex semiotic domain. Offline dialogue plays a crucial role. This learning is reciprocally shaped by the students’ developing identities as both dyslexic students and able learners. The findings suggest that social media can have advantageous applications for literacy learning in the classroom. In prompting learning yet remaining unchanged by it, Facebook can be likened to a catalyst.     

“How people read and write and they don't even notice”: everyday lives and literacies on a Midlands council estate

This article presents data from a British Academy‐funded study of the everyday literacy practices of three families living on a predominantly white working‐class council housing estate on the edge of a Midlands city. The study explored, as one participant succinctly put it, “how people read and write and they don't even notice”. This alludes to the ways in which everyday practices may not be recognised as part of a dominant model of literacy. The study considered too the ways in which these literacy practices are part of a wider policy context that also fails to notice the impact of austerity politics on everyday lives. An emphasis on quantitative measures of disadvantage and public discourse which vilifies those facing economic challenge can overshadow the resilience and resourcefulness of individuals and families in making meaning from their experiences. Drawing together consideration of everyday lives and the everyday literacies which are part of them, this article explores the impact of the current policy context on access to both economic and cultural resources, showing how literacy, as part of this context, should be recognised as a powerful means not only of constricting lives but also of constructing them.