This book explores the impact of sensation, affect, ethics, and place on literacy learning from early childhood through to adult education. Chapters bridge the divide between theory and practice to consider how contemporary teaching and learning can promote posthuman values and perspectives. By offering a posthuman approach to literacy research and pedagogy, Affect, Embodiment, and Place in Critical Literacy re-works the theory-practice divide in literacy education, to emphasize the ways in which learning is an affective and embodied process merging in a particular environment. Written by literacy educators and international literacy researchers, this volume is divided into four sections focussing on: Moving with sensation and affect; becoming worldmakers with ethics and difference; relationships that matter in curriculum and place; before drawing together everything in a concise conclusion. Affect, Embodiment, and Place in Critical Literacy is the perfect resource for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of literacy education and philosophy of education, as well as those seeking to explore the benefits of a posthumanism approach when conceptualising theory and practice in literacy education.
The Handbook of Critical Literacies aims to answer the timely question: what are the social responsibilities of critical literacy academics, researchers, and teachers in today’s world? Critical literacies are classically understood as ways to interrogate texts and contexts to address injustices and they are an essential literacy practice. Organized into thematic and regional sections, this handbook provides substantive definitions of critical literacies across fields and geographies, surveys of critical literacy work in over 23 countries and regions, and overviews of research, practice, and conceptual connections to established and emerging theoretical frameworks. The chapters on global critical literacy practices include research on language acquisition, the teaching of literature and English language arts, Youth Participatory Action Research, environmental justice movements, and more. This pivotal handbook enables new and established researchers to position their studies within highly relevant directions in the field and engage, organize, disrupt, and build as we work for more sustainable social and material relations. A groundbreaking text, this handbook is a definitive resource and an essential companion for students, researchers, and scholars in the field.
Centered around the idea that literacy teaching is more than the transmission of strategies and skills, this volume serves as a foundation for approaching literacy from an identity perspective. Through incisive and accessible chapters from top scholars, it introduces readers to the concept of literate identities, examining them across ages and grade levels to present an overview of how scholars and educators can use this concept in their research and teaching. Organized by developmental level with sections on early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, and cross-age research, contributors reveal how literacy can be framed as an identity practice to engage students and support their development. Applying a range of theoretical perspectives and frameworks, each chapter identifies the identity theory used, explains the relevant methodology and research questions, covers implications for practice, and includes questions or prompts for discussion. The volume reveals how understanding literate identities is at the heart of effective and inclusive literacy instruction by addressing key topics, including culturally relevant pedagogy, intersectionality, and transnationalism, among others. Illuminating multiple pathways to understanding students as readers and writers, this book is essential for teachers, scholars, and researchers in literacy education, research methods, and multicultural education.
Applying an asset-based approach, Multimodal Funds of Knowledge in Literacy prepares educators to teach and support diverse students and their families as they negotiate multimodal aspects of literacy learning. Framed by sociocultural theory, multiliteracies, multimodality, and posthumanism, the text combats deficit narratives by providing concrete alternatives that push educators to rethink their practices and support students’ and families’ cultural and linguistic strengths. Chapters include case studies, vignettes, prompts, and learning samples that will leave readers with valuable insights and new understandings of multimodal funds of knowledge. Comprehensive and instructive, this book is a key text in literacy education, family literacy, and community engagement.
Supporting Early Childhood Practice Through Difficult Times encourages early childhood students and practitioners to take stock of current practices and pedagogies in light of challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic, ecological concerns, and regulatory pressures. The contributions from various scholars and practitioners present a range of theoretical concepts as well as innovative practice examples, inviting deep reflection on your own beliefs and attitudes. They examine and envisage different ways of working with and for young children, their families and communities for a better future. Chapters in this timely book include experts from around the globe examining key issues in early childhood education. The first section questions the increasing digitalisation in nurseries and pre-schools and its impact on staff members, parents and children. The second section focuses on workforce development, management systems and the role of parents in policymaking. The third section showcases innovative pedagogical approaches looking beyond widely accepted early learning goals, assessments and curricula to develop inclusive environments that foster all children’s development and learning. Lastly, the fourth section steps back from day-to-day practice and considers what concern for the environment, social justice and posthumanism means for early childhood education and pedagogy. This book will be a key resource for early childhood education and care practitioners, graduate students, policymakers and researchers facilitating the step from the here-and-now to revised future practice and policy that will enable all children to flourish.
In this volume, two notable scholars trace the monumental shifts in theory, research, and practice related to reading education and literacy, with particular attention to what they consider the central goal of literacy—making meaning. Each section describes a specific epoch, including a brief snapshot of how the reader of that period is envisioned and characterized by researchers and teachers, as well as a deep discussion of the ideas and contextual events of that era. These developmental waves are organized in rough historical sequence by a series of shifts in underlying theoretical and scholarly lenses—from the behavioral to the psycholinguistic to the cognitive to the sociocultural to the critical to the multimodal to the global. The book closes with a discussion of the various research frames and methodological approaches that paralleled these developments. Throughout, there is a profound recognition that all research and practice are ultimately directed toward how students make meaning, from sound to letter to word, to ideas and images. Book Features: Animates some of the revolutionary developments related to reading education and literacy in modern times. Each development is accompanied by a discussion of the aspirational reader that sets the stage for contemplating these shifts and their significance.Traces the research and theoretical developments to illustrate the origins of the shifts and their influences. Supported by a website with video lectures and conversations tied to the various waves of development.
This edited volume examines what the classic text The Ethnography of Reading (Boyarin ed., 1993), and the diverse ethnographies of reading it helped inspire, can offer contemporary scholars interested in understanding the place of reading in social life. The Ethnography of Reading at Thirty brings together new research and critical reflections from an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars who have kept their ears tuned to the voices in and around the texts they encountered and constructed in the process of bringing the ethnography of reading into the twenty-first century. Rather than operating from universalist assumptions about how people interact with and make meaning from written texts, each of the present contributors draw in one way or another on the theoretical, methodological, and creative legacies of The Ethnography of Reading. Under the broad umbrella of ethnographic reader studies, they collectively explore new relations between texts, social imagination, and social action.
Feminist Speculations and the Practice of Research-Creation provides a unique introduction to research-creation as a methodology, and a series of exemplifications of research-creation projects in practice with a range of participants including secondary school students, artists, and academics. In conversation with leading scholars in the field, the book outlines research-creation as transdisciplinary praxis embedded in queer-feminist anti-racist politics. It provides a methodological overview of how the author approaches research-creation projects at the intersection of literary arts, textuality, artistic practice, and pedagogies of writing, drawing on concepts related to the feminist materialisms, including speculative thought, affect theories, queer theory, and process philosophy. Further, it troubles representationalism in qualitative research in the arts. The book demonstrates how research-creation operates through the making of or curating of art or cultural productions as an integral part of the research process. The exemplification chapters engage with the author’s research-creation events with diverse participants all focused on text-based artistic projects including narratives, inter-textual marginalia art, postcards, songs, and computer-generated scripts. The book is aimed at graduate students and early career researchers who mobilize the literary arts, theory, and research in transdisciplinary settings.
This book presents a new vision of literacy that frames meaning-making and communication in relation to individual, collective, and ecological needs. Building on the concept of the pluriversal, Perry explores how literacy education can support multiple ways of being and becoming. In so doing, Perry rejects limiting and skills-focused definitions of literacy and instead embraces a more profound conceptualisation that reflects the boundless potential of literacy practices. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, Perry connects literacy education with semiotics, philosophy, sustainability studies, and geopolitics to argue for the urgency of a pluriversal model of literacy that combats a normative, neo-colonial understanding of reading and writing. Offering a unique contribution to the field of literacy studies, this book demonstrates how literacy is a semiotic process and literacy practices can connect learner needs with pathways to social, ecological, and cultural sustainability. With Perry as a guide, this illuminating book invites readers to join the journey into literacies beyond words, to arrive at a more holistic and inclusive understanding of what literacy practices are and can be.
Learning used to be confined to a physical place. Now, it’s no longer limited by walls or daylight or location. Learning happens in spaces that transcend these boundaries. These spaces can still have physical elements, but they are no longer defined by a physical footprint and constrained by the limitations of time, space, and matter. Learning can now take place on any device, in any place, and at any time. 21st century skills are one of the concepts we use most frequently when talking about innovative education. We see that the skills, referred to as 21st century skills, include cognitive skills such as creative thinking, problem solving, as well as many different social and emotional skills such as understanding, expressing, empathy and teamwork. Many educators now agree that not only academic knowledge is sufficient, but social-emotional skills play a role as much as academic knowledge in a person's success and happiness. Another accepted fact is the phenomenon of lifelong learning: the fact that education does not start at school but does not end at school, in fact, it is a process that should continue throughout life. While accepting all this, a subject that is not discussed much; how this holistic, lifelong learning is possible in a class in the form of 40 minutes lessons and 10 minutes of break. While we are designing various kinds of education programs for children to gain all these different skill sets in the classroom, do not we actually keep these skills in the easiest way, practically away from the environments they will acquire? In John Dewey's book, “Experience and Education” (1938), information obtained as detached from real life is depicted as wasted time and effort. Most teachers are already aware of this situation. For this reason, they try to explain math problems and literacy by linking them to children's experiences and lives as much as possible, and they do many big and small experiments in social sciences and science lessons. Can't we go one step further than this? Can't we make learning in life a part of our education system, instead of preparing small examples of real life for children? With many justified concerns such as assessment, security, teachers' pedagogical infrastructure, we miss out on the most important opportunities for education just because they are outside the walls of the school? This book aims to open new horizons in the journey of learning beyond the school walls in the world and contribute to the spread of learning in our society. In societies where constant change is the norm, schools today must prepare students to be successful in environments and contexts that may differ greatly from what we experience today. But, are we really thinking about the future? With contributions from seven continents, this book will reveal a ‘snapshot’ of some of our best thinking for building new education futures. Diverse experiences, visions, and ideas are shared to help spark new thinking among educators and policymakers, provoke conversation, and facilitate new ideas for meeting human development needs in a rapidly transforming world.
