What Teachers Are Not Being Told About Students’ Out-of-School Fan Literacies

• In Event: Poster Session 2
  In Poster Session: Contexts for Learning: A Focus on Media and After-School Programs

Abstract

This presentation describes the results of a sociocultural-linguistic media study that examined how fanfiction, an out-of-school fan literacy practice, has been described in publications written for United States public school teachers. Some educators believe that bringing fan literacies into public school classrooms will motivate students' interests in peer-oriented creative writing, while others claim that public school teachers cannot authentically replicate fans’ democratic literacies. At the heart of this debate is the issue of whether teachers have been provided with accurate information about fan literacies. This presentation describes how media frame analysis was employed to determine what teachers have been told about fanfiction literacies, and what implications this has for teaching students’ out-of-school literacies in public schools.

Author

• Drew Berkowitz, Montclair State University