Materialities in Early Literacy and Progressive Curriculum Reform

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Possibilities and Limits of Posthumanist Inquiry for Reimagining Literacy Education as the Practice of Justice

Abstract

Materiality, once referred to in literacy research as “the stuff of literacy” (Kress, 1997) has expanded in meaning to include socio-material relations (Pahl & Rowsell, 2010), and more recently, posthumanist notions of intra-active relational agencies (Barad, 2003) between objects and young literate learners (e.g. Thiel, 2015; Kuby, 2016). While this ontological rethinking of materiality pushes us to consider how materials may act on us through literacy engagements, it also raises issues around privilege and access to different materialities of literacy in public schools. In New York City for instance, where the bodies of children are continually sorted into highly segregated and unequal school spaces (Kucsera & Orfield, 2014), what materialities are produced through both the circulations of curricular resources and other materials, and bodies in and through a divided school system?

This paper draws from a six-month study of the materiality of one classroom undergoing curriculum reform in an urban public elementary school. I adopted a “network case study” (Nichols et al., 2012) approach, whereby case study methods are combined with concepts primarily drawn from Actor Network Theory (Latour, 1999; Law, 2007), viewing a case not as bounded and curriculum not as solely human-driven but rather constituted through mobile networks of relations and agentically co-created by humans and non-humans. This allows me to analyze the curriculum not as a thing but rather a network effect (Author, 2015), requiring the mobilization, enrollment, and alliances of many actors networked within and beyond classroom walls.

Data for this paper include an ecological survey (Nichols, Rowsell, & Nixon, 2012) of one Kindergarten classroom, fieldnotes from enacted curricular events and interviews from students, teachers, administrators, and parents. I trace materialities present in the data to reveal multiple dynamic networks—shifting school zones, neighborhoods, and curricular trends—that mobilize various bodies and materials into one seemingly stable public school classroom. For instance, present within one moment of enacted curriculum were rotting pumpkins, pocket charts and cheese sandwiches intra-acting with environmental nonprofits, DOE officials, and cafeteria staff, all entangled in solving the problem of food waste in one observed classroom meeting. Finally, I discuss how these materialities translate and mobilize (Latour, 1999) “progressive education” reforms in this school, and how this also becomes entangled with larger networks enacting neighborhood gentrification and changing student enrollment.

Author

• Daniel E. Ferguson, George Mason University