Capturing Boisterous Play and Sacred History on Paper: Who Is "Author-ized" to Write This Down?

• In Event: Roundtable Session 50
  In Roundtable Session: Writing and Literacies SIG Roundtable 7. Aesthetes Then and Now: A Bricolage of Historical, Artistic, and Material-Discursive Meanings

Abstract

This paper moves across the boundaries of the playground, school, and home to understand how a community of elementary-aged children collectively engaged in co-authoring an embodied game over nearly a decade. The focal data facilitate an exploration of the effects of one child publishing the first written rulebook in the history of the game. The rulebook prompted intense and contentious negotiations between children. Using mediated discourse analysis, three forms of classroom interaction are examined in relation to the new rulebook: 1) online comments on a publicly shared Google doc, and 2) face-to-face classroom discussions, and 3) formal written documents. Findings suggest that the rulebook disrupted the historical nexus of practice constituting the game, producing a transformative series of classroom events.

Author

• Beth A. Buchholz, Indiana University