In Canada, there is the perception that boys are scoring consistently below girls in academic ranking, particularly in the area of literacies. Is there a bias? Is the school system promoting a certain type of 'boy'? Is hegemonic masculinity regularly promoted within the Grade 1 classrooms, in particular regarding literacies? If so, how? Are alternative masculinities encouraged and performed by the boys? This research was conducted over six months, from January to June 2009, in four Grade 1 public school classrooms in two schools in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Along with participant-observation in these classes, interviews were done with students, both individually and in groups. A theoretical framework supported by Butler's idea of performance of gender and Foucault's notions about the creation of self guide this exploration. The findings of this research concluded that, though alternative masculinites were performed, hegemonic masculinity was still regularly promoted within the schools.

In Canada, there is the perception that boys are scoring consistently below girls in academic ranking, particularly in the area of literacies. Is there a bias? Is the school system promoting a certain type of 'boy'? Is hegemonic masculinity regularly promoted within the Grade 1 classrooms, in particular regarding literacies? If so, how? Are alternative masculinities encouraged and performed by the boys? This research was conducted over six months, from January to June 2009, in four Grade 1 public school classrooms in two schools in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Along with participant-observation in these classes, interviews were done with students, both individually and in groups. A theoretical framework supported by Butler's idea of performance of gender and Foucault's notions about the creation of self guide this exploration. The findings of this research concluded that, though alternative masculinites were performed, hegemonic masculinity was still regularly promoted within the schools.

Thesis advisor: Leigh Patel / Digital literacies have become central in today's society, used in various personal and public incarnations (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008), occupying prominent space in social and professional worlds (boyd, 2014; Leu et al., 2011). Despite digital literacies' centrality in society, schools have a notoriously difficult time integrating these into curriculum and instruction (O'Brien & Scharber, 2008). Accordingly, I asked: How do teachers in a large, public comprehensive secondary school navigate the challenges and benefits of digital literacies within the structure of Washington High, the curriculum, and their pedagogy? Using a case study design both ethnographic and collaborative in nature, I examined teachers' beliefs and practices to investigate how digital literacies were being used in the classroom, as well as why. Data included a school-wide survey, participant interviews and observations with six teachers, and informal meetings with school staff, most notably the vice-principal. Data was analyzed through the lens of theories of literacy curricular design (New London Group, 1996) and an eye toward New Literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006). Notable results include the finding that technology at Washington often plays out in fairly traditional, teacher-directed, "wine in new bottles" (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006, p. 55) sorts of ways. However, this study also concludes that why this is so moves far beyond these teachers' individual beliefs and practices. Their contexts (unreliable technology, control of uses imposed by the administration), their cultures (narratives of adolescents needing protection from themselves and others), and compulsory schooling itself (traditional conceptions of time and space, narrow definitions of success, high-stakes testing and teacher evaluations) all play dynamic and complicated parts in how digital literacies get taken up, along with teachers' own beliefs and practices. As such, I draw upon theories of complex personhood (Gordon, 1997) and complexity thinking (Davis & Sumara, 2008) in positing ways digital literacies may be utilized in relationship to schools. Implications address these practices' collaborative, creative potentials to transform schools. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This research study exploring multiple first grade literacy practices draws from the notion of multiliteracies. Literacy is dynamic and complex. New technologies are reconfiguring how we conceptualize literacy in work, home and school communities. A variety of factors including access to technology, governmental interventions in literacy instruction, public discourse, and teacher beliefs facilitate what constitutes literacy in schools today. Literacy teachers are caught between policies which advocate for a standardized test score as an appropriate literacy measure and enacting instruction that allows students to successfully acquire literacy that is captured by national and local testing. This study explores these tensions in the broader context of shifting definitions of literacy. Modes and media of communication expressed, valued, and counted as legitimate literacy are explored. The teacher's literacy instruction is examined, noting her knowledge and beliefs that reflected the constraints of mandated literacy instruction or embraced a multiliteracies perspective. How children were positioned in the classroom according to this perspective sheds light on social status and power relationships in association to highly valued literacy practices of reading and writing. Key findings from this study affirm that proficiency with print is critical in today's classrooms because of standardized test measures and subsequent mandates from governmental bodies. Schools that are identified as in need of assistance according to NCLB find themselves positioned as recipients of highly prescribed literacy instruction. Teachers who are required to follow mandated literacy instruction begin to doubt their own knowledge and beliefs when instruction is scrutinized under these mandates. Results from this research suggest that privilege associated with proficiency in print cuts across other modes and media as does struggle with the alphabetic code. Those children who have proficiency also have opportunities others do not.

This study explored beginning and advanced pre-service teachers’ Internet use and their experience, confidence, and competence in using new literacies of the Internet. In addition, this study compared the pre-service teachers to same-aged business and engineering students. Through using an online survey, this study recruited 1350 students from the various disciplines. This study conducted comparisons between a) underclassmen across the three majors, b) seniors across the majors, and c) underclassmen and seniors within the majors. This study found that as digital natives, education, business, and engineering students used the Internet frequently. However, they were relatively unfamiliar with using new literacies of the Internet during their high school and university educational experiences. Overall, the three majors’ students were confident but they were not competent in using new literacies of the Internet including locating and evaluating information on the Internet. Comparisons between and within the majors revealed that education underclassmen were less confident and competent than engineering underclassmen peers and senior education students in evaluating information on the Internet. Education seniors were comparable to business and engineering seniors in their confidence and competence in both locating and evaluating information on the Internet. The findings imply that teacher educators need to understand the weaknesses of their pre-service teachers and provide them with appropriate opportunities and training to know how to effectively use and furthermore teach new literacies of the Internet.

No description available.

Multiliteracies theory extends the notion of literacy well beyond the traditional linear text-based definition of reading and writing (New London Group, 1996). It addresses the saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity and the multiplicity of communication channels and media available in our rapidly changing world. Multiliteracies involve engagement with multiple design modes, linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, spatial, and multimodal being a combination of the different modes. This research emerged from the need to open a space for students in an international languages school teaching Arabic language to engage in creative, aesthetic, alternative, and multimodal forms of literacy that involve the integration of the various semiotic resources in their meaning-making and design of texts. It is about a lived teaching-learning journey that draws on the concept of living pedagogy and dwelling in the in-between spaces of curriculum-as-plan and curriculum-as-live(d) (Aoki, 1991). In this research journey, I share the possibilities that opened up when students between the age of eleven and fourteen years old engaged with multiliteracies in an international languages classroom that teaches heritage language. This research journey also presents how the participative type of inquiry and collaboration between the researcher and classroom teacher contributed to the enhancement of their knowledge and learning about multiliteracies practices. After listening to and discussing a literary text presented by the teacher, students responded by creating their own texts to show their understanding of the narrative genre. They produced multimodal arts-based (Barton, 2014; Sanders & Albers, 2010) and digital based texts (Knobel & Lankshear, 2013). Through a multiliteracies/multimodalities theoretical, epistemological, and methodological perspective (Albers, 2007; Jewitt & Kress, 2008; Morawski, 2012; Rowsell, 2013), and drawing from approaches such as participatory action research (Chevalier & Buckles, 2013), and bricolage (Kincheloe, 2004), I developed this research story through a process of braiding and interweaving of various modes of texts and genres to produce a métissage (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo, 2009) of the live(d) narratives of my research praxis. This inquiry offers a glimpse as to how opening the space for creative approaches in the teaching of literacy engages students in the design of texts using both linguistic and non-linguistic semiotic resources and incorporating multiple modes of representation from which they produce arts, digital, and multimodal texts.

Zines are small circulation media that amateurs make and distribute. Inspired by both the lack of ethnographic research on the do-it-yourself (DIY) culture of zine-making in urban studies and the growing interest in ethnographically oriented research in literacy studies, rhetoric, and linguistics this research explores the people, places, and practices behind zine publication in New Orleans, Louisiana through participant observation at two specialized loci—the Iron Rail and punk shows—as well as semi-structured interviews with people who make, distribute, and consume zines. This research argues that zine-makers use zines to reinterpret urban space in search of an authentic relationship with the city. They then share these interpretations with others who participate in DIY punk culture. In doing so, zine-makers refuse conventional rules developed for classroom literacy and resist capitalism in their zines' content and in their methods of publishing by both building on local knowledge and opposing corporate media.

<i>Activist Technical Communication at Girls’ Technology Camps: Building Girls’ Confidence in Digital Literacies</i> presents a mixed-method empirical study investigating the capacity of a girls’ summer technology camp, Girls Go Digital, to foster girls’ confidence and interest in STEM subjects. I build on the work of a growing number of university technical communication and composition programs hosting local digital camps for middle school-aged girls, responding to the gap in STEM confidence that grows between boys and girls after middle school. My dissertation works in partnership with a large, national, for-profit version of these camps, and I utilize a community engagement approach. Though some may see the aims of a for-profit tech camp as incompatible with engagement ethics, I argue that we ought not to ignore the potential for community impact offered by their resources and reach. With a camp design targeted to reach girls who may feel discouraged by a mixed gender setting, a week of camp at Girls Go Digital leads to statistically significant positive impacts on girls’ confidence in their technology skills, as well as attitudes relating to technology. These findings contribute not only to strategies for technofeminist interventions, but also to the growing body of technical communication scholarship with social justice aims. In order to build girls’ confidence at camp, technical instruction is intertwined with instructors’ roles as emotionally supportive mentors for their campers. Complicating technical communication’s prioritization of clarity and efficiency, my study suggests that for girls learning STEM subjects, and for many other disenfranchised audiences, truly effective technical communication must also be trust-building advocacy work.

In the field of adolescent literacy studies, writing has been neglected in both research and instruction (Juzwik, Curcic, Wolbers, Moxley, Dimling, & Shankland, 2005; Graham & Perin, 2007; Scherff & Piazza, 2005; Troia, 2007), especially in urban settings. Given the importance of writing instruction in secondary education, this qualitative case study investigates the writing experiences of five urban adolescent writers in a high school in a major city in the Southeastern U.S. Research questions included: (1) What are the writing experiences of urban adolescents in and out of school? and (2) In what ways do urban adolescents make use of multiliteracies in their writing experiences? This multicase study (Merriam, 1998; Stake, 1995) includes data collected from interviews, observations, field notes, samples of student work, and electronic messages. For a period of six months, five key participants acted as co-researchers by providing feedback and collaborating on inductive analysis of the data. Findings revealed that students employed multiple modes and genres of writing, and that they viewed social and technological contexts as important factors in their composing experiences. Despite these findings, the students did not have many opportunities to take advantage of recent advancements in 21st century writing approaches. The new ―Age of Composition‖ (Yancey, 2009) has not arrived in urban environments where concerns of power and access remain. This study contributes to the field of literacy studies by illuminating the experiences of the participants and providing recommendations for educators in urban contexts. As Yancey recommends, educators need to design a new model for 21st century composition instruction. The findings of this study suggest the following instructional implications for secondary classrooms: 1. 21st century composition instruction should include multimodal compositions and multimedia projects. 2. 21st century composition instruction should give a central role to the use of technology. 3. Students should have opportunities for personal expression and identity exploration. 4. Teachers should create composition lessons that engage and empower students. 5. 21st century composition instruction should be transformative.