Multimodaliating: Shipka (2005) Engineering Sound(ly); Smagorinksy, Zoss & Reed (2006) Composition

Toward a Theory of Multimodal Soundness

Shipka's work is based on what she calls activity-based multimodal theory of composing. She challenges her Composition students to really think about what it is they want to compose and decide what media and modalities they use. Each submits a mega-multi-genre project in the end (though she says it's not a multi-genre project). The projects that she cites go far beyond paper and ink; in the sense that genres change the way we think about a topic, then I think these projects do fall into that category. I love how she then has her students de- then re-construct their creations --

Check out activity theory.

That last line is one of my favorites:

In privileging rigorous play, purposeful choosing, alternate goal structures, and the articulation of choices in relation to goals, an activity-based multimodal theory of composing provides us with a way, but, perhaps more importantly still, it provides students with a way to begin attending to the various ways a greater variety of senses, modes, and materials might be brought together, if only briefly and if only in sound-for-now ways, to help them accomplish the kind and quality of work they are most invested in pursuing.

"Rigorous Play" is such a cool idea -- I thing Vygotsky would agree wholeheartedly. Csíkszentmihályi's ideas about bringing "flow" into activity has to do with personal control, a high degree of concentration and a distorted sense of time. Check out "group flow" where he suggests extrinsic means for creating a hospitable environment for flow (closely linked to rigorous play) to grow. She has a blog, too -- check out her "crazy" cards activity.

Complex Composition

Smagorinski et al are pushing notions of composition toward the borderlands of craft (as in craftsman) and of art. Despite the dissing that interior design as a high school course gets because of its cultural link to housewifery (which doesn't deserved to be dissed, either), Rachel taught it like the best of writing composition using study models (door styles, p. 303), prolonged consideration of student work, and small group and pair work. Again, the notion of flow comes up when Dee (repeatedly) loses track of time as the bell rings "too soon".

I think it's very cool that the researchers conducted the protocols with Dee in situ rather than in an artificial setting (ex situ?). The investigation of the composition process as it relates to literacy seems so critical nowadays -- how did he happen to do it? To look at interior design, and in that school, with that student (and her pretty fabulous teacher)? I wonder if people in the arts are getting at some of the same kinds of things?

...(W)e have argued that the notion of writing across the curriculum ought to be reconceived as composing across the curriculum to account for the limits of writing and the appropriateness and potential of other symbol systems in some disciplines (p. 327).

Are literacy people the only ones looking at composing across the curriculum?

Thomas (2004) Cybergirls; Lankshear & Knobel (2003) New Literacies; Hawisher & Selfe (2004) Info Age

"Digital Literacies of the Cybergirl" Angela Thomas
Feels like a research (article) rollercoaster. I find after reading Cybergirl that I'm more focused on the body de- and re- construction than on their skillful use of digital literacies. Seems like that "easy" conclusion about the avatars that are "complicit with patriarchal idealiogies idealising westernised feminine beauty" (p. 379) is an altogether legit place to come out. Check out this part of a chapter in An Introduction to Sociology: A Feminist Perspective (2005) by Abbott, Wallace and Tyler (pp. 319-320). It all seems pretty toxic. Christy had the discovery that cyberlife could be more than posing and pouting and powerful positioning -- she was genuinely excited about community building which is a more confidence inducing kind of "making" (p. 375) than spending all that time as subject and object of one's own fantasy life (p. 376).
Thomas's theoretical discussion is pretty fascinating -- she pulls from Film Theory, Freud, and Foucault among many others. This notion of performance of self, for the self is pretty interesting.

Lankshear and Knobel (2003) "Implications of 'New' Literacies for Writing Research"
This is going to be a sort of here and there response to a few points in the article --
I'd love to see a wiki-evolving list of New Literacies, and it'd be cool to see a genealogy of where each "comes from".
I'm particularly taken with scenario planning and their example of using it to train preservice teachers (a la Hawisher & Selfe) "...we might frame the question of what learning and teaching of literacy and technology might look like within educational settings for elementary school age children 15 years hence" (p. 4). It seems to me that scenario planning requires abilities to research, synthesize, collaborate, and critically evaluate -- a potentially powerful approach.
So is Jon Stewart's Daily Show culture jamming?
And. Lankshear and Knobel (again like their next-door neighbors Hawisher et al), pretty much implore writing researchers t "avoid as far as possible the 'schoolification' of the practice in question" (p 15) -- (shudder) in other words, don't kill it and pin it up by the wings. They then suggest that gaming manuals might hold a key to understanding the "new" practitioners of these "New Literacies".


Hawisher & Selfe with Moraski and Pearson (2004) "Becoming literate in the Information Age: Cultural ecologies and the literacies of technology"
Reminicent of Brandt's work, this piece is broad in scope. The authors assert that especially teachers of English approach literacies in a narrow, alphabetic, print kind of way. They say teachers don't see what the kids are interested in, and can't because they're invisible -- because they're not valued. Thus, teachers end up moving "instructional practices and values....further and further away from those [literacies] that students consider important" (p. 676). We have to meet the kids where they are with New Literacies as well as with ways of being. Interestingly, the authors suggest that a more open (and humble) attitude needs to originate with college faculty in the training of new teachers (p. 677).

Silences:Kamler (1994); Queer Youth: Blackburn (2003); Boys and Reading: Martino (2001)

Here's the link to Lauren Hill's amazing Doo Wop ode to gender

Gender and Genre in Early Writing
Two and a half years is certainly "prolonged engagement" during which to follow Peter and Zoe through five classrooms. Her data was well triangulated as well, and Kamler used an interesting and traceable Hallidayian analysis. Her results, though, were chilling: "free choice" was really an "April Fool's" kind -- none at all. I was struck at the damage that was done from the not-teaching -- no substantive feedback, and nothing that encouraged or moved the kids beyond the stuck or outgrown place where each was in their thinking as people in the midst of constructing their identity, and as young writers who needed real apprenticeships. Although she didn't say, I wonder if the classrooms were in a school or district where "process writing" had been mandated.
Check out p. 14 in Halliday's Linguistics and the Teacher -- social justice through linguistics.

Exploring Literacy Performances and Power Dynamics at The Loft
Maybe one of the big take-away points here is that in whatever (D)iscourse community we are involved -- and Molly Blackburn self identifies as gay, lesbian, and queer (p. 472-473) -- we need to trouble our literacy performances as performances of self in order to make visible power relations so we can work toward a more socially just world. Meeting these youth in their out-of-school site enabled her to see their strengths and not their deficits (p. 487). I had thought that "queer" was synonymous with "gay" -- wrong. Blackburn explains it as broader and more critical. Wikipedia explains queer theory as encompassing all sexuality. Was it a bit disparaging to call the glossarizing of terms "schoolish"? Or am I reading more into this? I sometimes think a call to glossarize tons of terms -- a grass roots effort (!) -- might be a step in the direction of shared understandings and elimination of a lot of rhetorical smoke and mirror work as well as plain ol' misunderstandings.

Boys and Reading: Investigating the Impact of Masculinities on Boys' Reading Preferences and Involvement in Literacy
When I read the words of the participants in Martino's article I was struck with repeated references to activeness and physicality. Their rejection is not of reading per se, but English class "type" reading (whatever that means). I wish he had discussed what that does mean because I am left to surmise that it might mean the literary analysis that commonly occurs in high schools -- Down Under, too, I assume.
Jen made a great point about how the feminized teaching profession no doubt affects some of how things are taught -- but certainly, how school is perceived by these young men. Yeah -- gender is socially constructed -- and Martino is right to call for more culturally relevant literacy teaching for boys. I was kind of surprised not to see any of Rosenblatt's work cited here. She asserted that it was our job to, first, engage the student with whatever it was that was of interest (probably not Playboy -- but everything in it's own time and place) then, respectfully and sensitively, move alongside the student toward a critical literacy, and toward a broader repertoire of readings.

Godley, Carpenter and Werner "'I'll speak in proper slang': language ideologies in a daily editing activity" ---

Like other teachers who are willing to participate in collaborative research with university folks, or who conduct taped, actions research, Cynthia Weber both making a real contribution AND was really shocked when she saw on tape, the disconnect between what she thought she was doing, pedagogically, and how those actioans actually affected her students (p. 124). She saw that her students were really and truly guessing at answers. And what a monolithic view of "correct" English she laid on her African American students. Inside herself, the article says that she wanted to take them to that place of equal access through explicit teaching -- like Delpit talks about. But, instead, she ended up belittling her students and "annoying" them. I'm suprised she didn't have an insurrection -- well, she did, I guess. It must have been agonizing to sit through week after week of unchanging Daily Language Practice -- for the researchers and the kids. I like the way the authors take us through a painstaking ascent to their vantage point and end up with a strong recommendation for creating critical dialogic classrooms and classroom cultures. That said, I also think Cynthia and other teachers whose work is studied are courageous in their service to the field as a whole. We all need to dust off those tee shirts and bumper stickers that said "Question Authority" ....