Navigating Contradictions: Shared and Contested Tools in the Design of Literacy Learning Opportunities With/for Adolescents

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Issues in Literacy Research Roundtable 3

Abstract

This qualitative study was a collaboration with students and their teacher at a public high school to co-design literacy instruction that foregrounded meaningful engagement with texts as an alternative to traditional approaches to reading intervention. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory guided the present analysis, which focused particularly on tool use. We coded classroom data and interview transcripts to answer two questions: What tools mediated student-student and student-teacher interactions? How were these tools taken up by the teacher and students within and beyond the classroom? In our analyses we identified tools that were existing and tools that were introduced as part of the evolving activity system; introduced tools were either shared between students and the teacher or contested by the students.

Authors

• Katherine K Frankel, Boston University

• Susan Fields, Texas A&M University

• Alessandra Ward-Goldberg, Boston University