Pokémon Creations: Investigating the Intersection of Identity, Social Practice, and Critical Literacy in Youths' Engagements With Manga-Inspired Trading Card Games

• In Event: 61.026 - Comics and Critical Engagement in Literacy Education and Research

Abstract

Objectives:
Studies have documented youths’ engagements with popular cultural forms like gaming and graphica as meaningful forms of literacy with relevance for teaching (Alvermann & Hong Xu, 2003; Bromley, 2004; Gee, 2008; Dyson, 2003; McGinnis, 2007; Vasquez, 2003, 2005). This paper explores Pokémon-inspired artwork and perspectives of youth who participate in Pokémon gaming communities.

Theoretical Frameworks:
This paper draws on critical literacy (Janks, 2010) and New Literacy Studies (Street, 1995) to analyze youths’ cultural production and social practices related to Pokémon. Gee (2007, 2008) has documented how gaming activities, including strategic card games like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! Are socially embedded literacy practices (Street, 1995) involving unique cultural forms, discourses, and aspects of identity (Author 2, 2012).
Cultural forms like Pokémon have been shown to have meaningful implications for classroom instruction. Blair & Sanford (2004) explore how boys “morph (adapt, reshape)” interests in popular culture for school-based purposes. Dyson (2003) documents how popular culture shapes classroom learning for children, arguing for the need to rethink what counts as “literacy” and “literacy development” in relation to students’ engagement with forms of popular culture.

Data Sources:
Data include interviews, observations, and analysis of adolescents’ writing and drawing. This includes youths’ Pokémon creations -- manga-inspired drawings of their own characters based on Pokémon -- which were designed as writing prompts in a grade eight classroom. I interviewed one focal student who participated in this classroom, and other youth who participated with him in a gaming community.

Methodology:
This research involved participant observation, ethnographic immersion, and phenomenology. Analysis is informed by multimodal and design-based frameworks (Jewitt, 2008; Kress, 2003; Rowsell, 2012; Rowsell, Kress, Pahl, & Street, 2012; Siegel, 2012). I attend to the interrelationship of visual and linguistic modes (Cromer & Clark, 2007), contextualizing interpretations within the social, cultural, and relational dimensions of youths’ literacy practices.

Findings:
Findings from this research confirm earlier studies that suggest that:

1. Children’s engagements with popular culture deeply shape their literacy development, social relationships, and literate understandings (Dyson, 2003).
2. Pokémon creations include elements of “redesign” (Vasquez, 2003). Youths’ cultural production draws on principles based upon characters, aesthetics, design principles, and other features of Pokémon. I use the phrase “Pokémon creations” as a way of naming and recognizing these aspects of children’s productions.
3. These games are situated within affinity groups (Gee, 2010) and connected to social practices that inform relationships within and outside the classroom. Findings demonstrate how insider knowledge of gaming can create meaningful connections among children who are differently located socially and culturally.

Scholarly Significance:
Researchers have explored videogaming (Gee, 2007) and implications of popular culture more generally in classrooms (Dyson, 2003), yet relatively little has been written about the instructional relevance of strategic card games like Pokémon (Bromley, 2004; Knobel, 2006; Vasquez, 2003). This study can inform conceptions of how youth produce, utilize, and engage with popular cultural texts, and how educators can capitalize on these multimodal practices in ways that are directly relevant to the lives and learning of students.

Author

• Rob Simon, University of Toronto