Making a Place for Literacy: Embodied Activity and Affective Intensity in the Design of a Learning Lab

• In Event: Embodied Literacies Across Contexts

Abstract

This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study of youth that captures their embodied engagements in design activities. We maintain that a powerful means of exploring the relationship of innovation to educational research—as called for in the conference theme—is to deeply understand how embodied activities and affective intensities are co-articulated in literacy practices. We ask first how the youth themselves become affectively engaged, and second, how affect informs and guides their goals for designing new places. The students’ affective practices with design work (as a form of literacy) as well as the significance they assign to affect for designing places for literacy learning both underscore the power of affect in moving toward research for innovation.

Authors

• Ty Hollett, Vanderbilt University

• Kevin M. Leander, Vanderbilt University