The Significance of Relationships Between Material and Immaterial Dimensions of Space to Meaning-Making

• In Event: (Im)materializing Literacy: Making Sense of New Contexts for Research

Abstract

Objectives

This presentation explores our first proposition: relationships between the material and immaterial are relevant to how literacy is spatialised and this in turn is significant for meaning-making. It highlights how different dimensions of on/offline space are foregrounded or backgrounded during interactions with texts. I will present data drawn from a study of four elementary classrooms to illustrate how young children may shift between varied and multiple spaces as they interact with digitally mediated texts.

Theoretical framework

This work draws on spatial theory which explains how space may be framed by and reproduce dominant discourses but also be over-layered with other kinds of meaning. This produces hybrid spaces that are constantly under construction. (Lefebvre, 1991; -Massey, 2005). Applying such perspectives to literacy practices has highlighted the role that literacy practices play in the production of space and also how they are in turn inflected by the kinds of social spaces available (Leander and Sheehy, 2004). In this presentation, spatial theory is used to examine meaning-making around digital texts. As Leander and McKim (2003) explore, digital literacy practices span real and virtual networks, and therefore it is important to explore space-making across on and offline contexts (Leadner and McKim, 2003). They suggest that rather than identifying ‘sites’ for online practices, it is more appropriate to investigate ‘siting’ as an active process across online and offline spaces. (Leander and McKim, 2003: 213). This helps us focus on the ongoing negotiation of shifting social spaces as people move within and between online and offline worlds.

Methods

The presentation draws on data generated in a study of four classrooms in the United Kingdom over a period of six months. The study used an ethnographic approach, including observation of classroom practices, interviews with children, textual analysis and discussions with teacher participants to contextualise and provide further perspectives on the data.

Findings
This presentation focuses particularly on a series of micro-incidents that occurred during the study period. These are used to illustrate how children interacted with and around online texts to site spaces in different ways so that space was bounded differently for different participants at different times. This highlights the spaces that seemed to open up or close down around texts as the material and immaterial interacted in different ways.

Scholarly significance

This work contributes to debates around conceptualising the situatedness of literacy. It highlights how the qualities and boundaries of space, and associated relationships and meanings, seem to change from moment to moment and differ for individuals or groups as they interact with and around online texts. This problematises notions of context and location.

References

Leander, K.M. and McKim, K.K. (2003). Tracing the Everyday “Sitings” of Adolescents
on the Internet: A Strategic Adaptation of Ethnography across Online and Offline
Spaces. Education, Communication and Information, 3(2), 211–40.Leander, K. & Sheehy, S. (Eds) (2004) Spatializing Literacy Research and Practice. New York: Peter Lang.Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell.
Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage.

Author

• Cathy Burnett, Sheffield Hallam University