E-Learning and Digital Media
ISSN 2042-7530

Volume 4 Number 3 2007

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

SPECIAL ISSUE
Researching New Literacies:
consolidating knowledge and defining new directions
Guest Editors: ROBERTA HAMMETT, MARGARET MACKEY &
JILL KEDERSHA McCLAY

Roberta Hammett, Margaret Mackey & Jill Kedersha McClay. Introduction, pages 222‑223
Colin Lankshear & Michele Knobel. Researching New Literacies: Web 2.0 practices and insider perspectives, pages 224‑240
Guy Merchant. Mind the Gap(s): discourses and discontinuity in digital literacies, pages 241‑255
Rebecca Luce-Kapler. Fragments to Fractals: the subjunctive spaces of e-literature, pages 256‑265
Teresa M. Dobson. In Medias Res: reading, writing, and the digital artefact, pages 266‑272
Jill Kedersha McClay, Margaret Mackey, Mike Carbonaro, Duane Szafron & Jonathan Schaeffer. Adolescents Composing Fiction in Digital Game and Written Formats: tacit, explicit and metacognitive strategies, pages 273‑284
Kathy Sanford & Leanna Madill. Critical Literacy Learning through Video Games: adolescent boys’ perspectives, pages 285‑296
Constance Steinkuehler. Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming as a Constellation of Literacy Practices, pages 297‑318
Margaret Mackey. Slippery Texts and Evolving Literacies, pages 319‑328
Anne Burke & Jennifer Rowsell. Assessing Multimodal Learning Practices, pages 329‑342
Roberta F. Hammett. Assessment and New Literacies, pages 343‑354
James Nahachewsky. At the Edge of Reason: teaching language and literacy in a digital age, pages 355‑366
Shelley Stagg Peterson & Jill Kedersha McClay. Teaching Writing in Five Canadian Provinces: a new literacies analysis, pages 367‑375

BOOK REVIEW VIEW FULL TEXT
Technology and the Politics of Instruction (Jan Nespor), reviewed by Michele Knobel, pages 376‑380 doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3. 376

E-REVIEW LINKS VIEW FULL TEXT
Michele Knobel, pages 381‑382 doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3. 381

Introduction

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.222

This issue of E-Learning is based on a workshop funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Society for the Study of Education. The workshop, ‘Researching New Literacies: consolidating knowledge and defining new directions’, took place on 16‑17 October 2006 at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St John’s. With the exception of Constance Steinkuehler’s article, ‘Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming as a Constellation of Literacy Practices’, which is included in this issue because of its particular resonance with the aims and character of the workshop, the contents of this issue comprise refereed workshop proceedings.

During the workshop, participants set out to explore such questions as:

• What new literacies engage children and youth, particularly out of school?
• How do schools encourage and capitalize on these engagements?
• What might these engagements mean for schools and classrooms?
• How might ‘critical literacies’ and ‘meta-level competencies’ (Lankshear, 1997) be encouraged and facilitated in these engagements?
• What impact have new literacies and information and communications technologies (ICTs) had on curriculum and literacy policy? What changes might/should be encouraged?
• What research directions might promote understandings of new literacies and ICTs, and their impact on schooling and knowledge making generally?
• How should new literacy research best be integrated into teacher education?

The Guest Editors wish to acknowledge the support of the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Society for the Study of Education for making this work possible. We are also grateful to Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel for their generosity and guidance in the development of this special issue of the journal.

The issue begins with two articles that were originally written to help identify and frame some discussion themes for the workshop. Colin Lankshear & Michele Knobel’s article, ‘Researching New Literacies: Web 2.0 practices and insider perspectives’, provides a conceptual definition of ‘literacies’, advances a framework for envisaging new literacies research agendas, and briefly discusses two cases of current research that illustrate this framework. In ‘Mind the Gap(s): discourses and discontinuity in digital literacies’, Guy Merchant provides an overview of current theory, thinking and commentary germane to mapping the field of digital literacy and, on this basis, identifies a range of key questions for research and policy development with respect to digital literacies.

Several of the articles consider writers’ and readers’ engagements with digital authorship, exploring the affordances, constraints, and metacognitive potential of digital tools. Rebecca Luce-Kapler describes composition in hypertext, concluding that fractals provide a useful metaphor for complex, interconnected and subjunctive space for creation of stories and identities. Teresa Dobson, pondering the complexity of the digital artefact, in particular how reading and writing differ in the context of new media settings, examines issues arising from a collaborative wiki-writing project. Jill McClay & Margaret Mackey contrast story creation using ScriptEase, a game-authoring software, with linked stories created in print text. These researchers contribute to our thinking about genre, narrative and format, as well as composition processes.

Through their critical examination of the content of computer games produced by boys in a game-making camp and of the boys’ interactions with peer instructors, Kathy Sanford & Leanna Madill develop an enhanced understanding of the literacies involved in game making. Constance Steinkuehler examines massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) to investigate the literacy practices in which players engage as they create characters, game play, and participate in online fandom. Margaret Mackey also looks at digital gaming to explore the concept of ‘slippery texts’ and understand the shifting terrain of new literacies.

Assessment frameworks have a role in solidifying and legitimizing literacy practices and pedagogies in schools. Two articles in the issue specifically address the theme of assessment of multimodal literacies. Anne Burke & Jennifer Rowsell present case study research to demonstrate children’s understandings of the materiality of web-based texts and of their composition, design and structure. Roberta Hammett builds on current criterion-referenced assessments in Newfoundland and Labrador to demonstrate that holistic and analytic rubrics could be developed for assessing new literacies, both in classrooms and in externally administered assessments.

The reality in classrooms and in teachers’ practices testifies to the complexity of the challenges. James Nahachewsky turns to the teachers who are also critical agents in the changing shape of literacy and explores their responses to new literacies. Shelley Stagg Peterson & Jill McClay report preliminary data from their national study of the teaching of writing in Canadian middle-level grades and draw attention to the gap between digital potential and current classroom practice.

Much of the research reported in this issue supports the conclusion of Stagg Peterson & McClay that mindsets associated with new technologies need to be explored and critiqued within pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes. Concentrated efforts to involve all in research of the potential of new literacies should be encouraged and enhanced.

Drawing on work with writers, readers and players in a broad range of media, the articles in this issue collectively help develop our understanding of what it means and what it is like to play and work in digital spaces – to write, to teach, to assess, to game, to become.

Roberta Hammett
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Margaret Mackey
University of Alberta, Canada
Jill Kedersha McClay
University of Alberta, Canada

Reference
Lankshear, C., Gee, J. P., Knobel, M., & Searle, C. (1997) Changing literacies. Bristol, PA: Open University Press.

Researching New Literacies: Web 2.0 practices and insider perspectives

COLIN LANKSHEAR James Cook University, Australia
MICHELE KNOBEL Montclair State University, USA

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.224

This article argues that ‘new literacies’ is a useful construct for recognizing and understanding the extent to which changes in the current conjuncture are extending social practices of using codes for making and exchanging meanings in directions that warrant serious rethinking of how and why we research literacies. It provides a conceptual definition of ‘literacies’, according to which literacies can best be described as new when they are constituted by ‘new technical stuff’ and ‘new ethos stuff’. On the basis of this account of new literacies the article advances a framework for envisaging new literacies research agendas and briefly discusses two cases of current research that illustrate this framework.

Mind the Gap(s): discourses and discontinuity in digital literacies

GUY MERCHANT Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.241

Meaning making in new media is rapidly presenting new opportunities and new challenges for those working in formal and informal educational contexts. This article provides an overview of current theory, thinking and commentary in order to map the field of digital literacy and to identify key questions for research and policy development. It identifies some of the discontinuities or gaps that exist between teachers, their students, and what technology can now deliver. Through two case studies the author tells the story of social practices that illustrate everyday digital lives and show how interactions involve a constellation of literacy events. This approach allows him to raise questions about the transfer of such practices into educational contexts and to explore the gaps between informal uses of digital literacy and current classroom literacy routines.

Fragments to Fractals: the subjunctive spaces of e-literature

REBECCA LUCE-KAPLER Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.256

This article chronicles the experience of two writers working in digital technologies to write fiction. One writer, the author of the article, describes how her experience writing with the software Storyspace influenced her writing of print fiction, changing her processes and challenging her notions of genre. The other writer, a 16-year-old secondary student, also wrote with Storyspace. While she did not find the form as challenging as the first writer, she followed similar processes of creation. The author compares the possibilities of digital and print text writing and suggests that there are different potentials. She also suggests that moving from a metaphor of fragments to fractals when thinking of hypertext writing may be a productive way to consider digital literary work.

In Medias Res: reading, writing, and the digital artefact

TERESA M. DOBSON University of British Columbia, Canada

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.266

In information systems and end-user computer research, ‘using’ appears to encapsulate a range of activities, such as reading, writing, viewing and so on. And yet it is a grossly inadequate descriptor for any of these activities, failing to account for the fact that texts – digital or otherwise – are produced and engaged by humans for a variety of purposes, from study to recreation. The wide adoption of ‘use’ as a descriptor for engagement with hypermedia reflects the challenges inherent in understanding and facilitating interaction with complex multimedia artefacts. It also points to a potential problem with research in this area: do attempts to accommodate the complexity of the digital artefact by devising terms that synthesize the range of literacy processes involved in human–computer interaction deter us from attending to the distinctiveness of those processes? The author takes up this question by considering how notions of reading and writing have been construed in relation to digital media, and whether such notions are in fact useful in furthering understanding of digital literacy.

Adolescents Composing Fiction in Digital Game and Written Formats: tacit, explicit and metacognitive strategies

JILL KEDERSHA McCLAY, MARGARET MACKEY, MIKE CARBONARO, DUANE SZAFRON & JONATHAN SCHAEFFER University of Alberta, Canada

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.273

This article reports on a study of 23 tenth-grade students who created fiction in digital game and written formats. The researchers observed them at work, analysed their stories in both formats, and interviewed selected students to learn what affordances and constraints they demonstrate and/or articulate in such authoring. The students used ScriptEase, a software tool that supports the creation of digital stories, based on the game engine of Neverwinter Nights (Bioware). The authors consider the theoretical literature about narrative and games, focusing especially on indicators of verbal tense and mood. They discuss the overlaps and differences between digital and written stories, drawing in particular on the work of two students, and they conclude with implications for theoretical understandings of contemporary narratives in multiple formats and implications for literacy education.

Critical Literacy Learning through Video Games: adolescent boys’ perspectives

KATHY SANFORD & LEANNA MADILL University of Victoria, Canada

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.285

The rapidly growing phenomenon of video games, along with learning that takes place through video game play, have raised concerns about the negative impact such games are reputed to have on youth, particularly boys. However, there is a disconnect between the discourse that suggests that boys are failing in learning literacy skills, and the discourse that suggests that they are learning highly sophisticated literacy skills through engagement with video games. This article reports on a research project investigating the literacy skills boys are learning through video game play and explores whether these skills are actually beneficial and whether they aid learning or distract from more useful literacy learning and healthy pursuits.

Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming as a Constellation of Literacy Practices

CONSTANCE STEINKUEHLER University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.297

The claim that video games are replacing literacy activities that is bandied about in the American mainstream press is based not only on unspecified definitions of both ‘games’ and ‘literacy’ but also on a surprising lack of research on what children actually do when they play video games. In this article, the author examines some of the practices that comprise game play in the context of one genre of video games in particular – massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Based on data culled from a two-year online cognitive ethnography of the MMOG Lineage (both I and II), the author argues that forms of video game play such as those entailed in MMOGs are not replacing literacy activities but rather are literacy activities. In order to make this argument, the author surveys the literacy practices that MMOGamers routinely participate in, both within the game’s virtual world (e.g. social interaction, in-game letters) and beyond (e.g. online game forums, the creation of fan sites and fan fiction). Then, with this argument in place, she attempts to historicize this popular contempt toward electronic ‘pop culture’ media such as video games and suggest a potentially more productive (and accurate) framing of the literacy practices of today’s generation of adolescents and young adults.

Slippery Texts and Evolving Literacies

MARGARET MACKEY University of Edmonton, Canada

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.319

The idea of ‘slippery texts’ provides a useful descriptor for materials that mutate and evolve across different media. Eight adult gamers, encountering the slippery text American McGee’s Alice, demonstrate a variety of ways in which players attempt to manage their attention as they encounter a new text with many resonances. The range of their start-up approaches provides insight into changing forms of literate behaviours. Players varied in the degree to which they emphasized focusing on the story or on the controls of the game in their initial approach to this text, but all made some use of the intertextual understanding they brought from other versions of Alice. A kind of good-enough gaming was sought, in order to make progress in the early stages of the game.

Assessing Multimodal Learning Practices

ANNE BURKE Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
JENNIFER ROWSELL Rutgers University, USA

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.329

The authors examine how to assess multimodal reading practices with a group of middle school students attending an elementary school in Eastern Canada. They argue that to assess new reading practices, we need a fine-grained account of what students do, when they do it, with whom, why they do it, and finally, where they go in web space. The authors explore and introduce a framework for considering children’s reading of multimodal texts.

Assessment and New Literacies

ROBERTA F. HAMMETT Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.343

This article argues that if multimodal and new literacies are to become common practices in schools, they have to be included in both school and provincial/state large-scale assessment programmes. Building on current criterion-referenced testing in Newfoundland and Labrador which assesses a range of literacies (viewing, reading, writing, representing, speaking and listening), the article suggests criteria which might be considered in developing holistic and analytic rubrics for assessing new literacies in ways that are productive for learners. The article describes an interactive website that may be used to familiarize teachers and education students with rubrics for assessing children’s written and graphic responses to linguistic, graphic and spoken texts.

At the Edge of Reason: teaching language and literacy in a digital age

JAMES NAHACHEWSKY University of Winnipeg, Canada

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.355

Canadian schools are witnessing widening gaps between traditional definitions of literacy, which include reading and writing, and contemporary literacy practices like interactive multimedia use and online communications. Language and literacy teachers are called upon daily to bridge these contradictions through the pedagogical and textual choices they make in their classrooms. This article reports work in a study funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). This study comprised a qualitative inquiry into three teachers’ experiences and textual stances of authority within the rapidly evolving environment of language arts classrooms. Situated understandings of the teachers’ personal and professionally situated literacies complicated their daily pedagogical and textual choices. Theorized divisions between modernist literacy approaches and evolving postmodern practices emerged as a more complex set of discourses within the contact zone of contemporary language arts classrooms than originally anticipated, including a ‘horizontality’ to the classes’ critical literacy practices. These findings have implications for the education of pre-service teachers, the development of literacy pedagogy, and the continuing debate as to what it means to be literate in today’s information society.

Teaching Writing in Five Canadian Provinces: a new literacies analysis

SHELLEY STAGG PETERSON OISE/University of Toronto, Canada
JILL KEDERSHA McCLAY University of Alberta, Canada

doi: 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.367

This article presents the results of the initial stage of research on grades 4‑8 teachers’ writing instruction within rural and urban contexts across Canada. Teachers’ goals and their use of digital technologies and multimedia are examined within rural and urban schools in five eastern provinces. Through half-hour telephone interviews with 54 teachers, the authors found that perceptions of the value of writing within their communities and the kinds of support for writing that students were given outside school divided along teachers’ perceptions of students’ social class lines. Language spoken in students’ homes also influenced teachers’ goals for their students. Only 5 of the 54 teachers interviewed provide opportunities for students to compose on computers. In most teachers’ classrooms, computers were used for retyping drafts, and often used at home, to create ‘good copies’ that students handed in for grades.

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