From Imagination to Action: Architectural Ingenuity and the Role of Play in a Summer Book Writing Program

• In Event: 44.034 - Children's Books, Dungeons & Dragons, Twitter, and Coding: Tools for Ingenious Negotiations of Nondominant Learner Roles

Abstract

Objectives and Theoretical Framework
Teachers and students access both informal and formal learning environments by drawing on common-sense notions regarding the nature of their individual roles within the learning relationship (Haney-Lopez, 2003; Mendoza, 2014). These notions, or schemas, are informed by cultural models (Lee, 2001, 2003) of teaching, learning, and authority that manifest both ideally and materially in their interactions (Cole, 1996, 1998; Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003).

Through the use of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Cole & Gajdamashko, 2009; Engeström, 2001), this paper looks at how teaching and learning are a culturally modelled enterprise that moves across context, time and space, and that is characterized by practices (embodiment, gestures, linguistic expressions) that are imbued with history and ideology. The following explores transforming teaching and authority schemas and embodied practices and linguistic cues that occurred for first-year intern teachers and a group of K-8 non-dominant youth, as intern teachers completed a summer teacher education course and engaged directly with non-dominant youth in a summer book authorship and publishing project.

Methods/Data
Data were collected over a period of six weeks, during the summer semester of a teacher education course on early literacy and concurrent youth book writing project. Sixteen intern teachers and twenty K-8 youth served as participants of this study. Data were collected in the form of video and audio recordings that were transcribed. In addition, personal reflections, field notes, and final case studies that were written by the Intern Teachers also served as data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teachers, which were audio-recorded and transcribed.

The multiple data sources were triangulated using two main processes. First, the open-ended and thematic codes (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Dyson & Genishi, 2005) of observational field notes, writing, and interviews were developed. Through these analyses we elucidate the nature of individuals’ and groups’ engagement; their semiotic, linguistic, and social choices, intentions, and aspirations; and their evolving student/teacher relationships. The second process was a robust video analysis, consisting of time-lapsed video logs and transcriptions (Erickson, 2006) that paid special attention to gestures and how those were culturally modeled scripts of teaching.

Findings
Our study revealed embodied practices that both conform to and challenge common sense models of teacher/student relationships. Of note is the shifting of expertise and authority that occurred with the presence of a child-centered object of activity (publication of a child-authored book), as well as the informal nature of the summer program. This speaks to the overwhelming power of cultural models imposed by historical institutions and are reinforced in the imaginary of teachers in training. However, these findings also elucidate ingenious and agentive moves towards establishing relational equity (DiGiacomo & Gutiérrez, 2015) in a context where established roles are contested.

Significance
This study has implications for the complicating and reformulating of informal versus formal learning dichotomies, and the role of culture in the articulation and re-articulation of binary learner and teacher identities (Gutierrez & Vossoughi, 2010; Rogoff, 2003).

Authors

• Arturo Cortez, University of Colorado - Boulder

• José Ramón Lizárraga, University of California - Berkeley

• Nicola McClung, University of San Francisco