Techné in the Making: Literacies, Technologies, and Wonder in Research and Practice

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium uses Susan Delagrange’s (2011) Technologies of Wonder to frame a collective inquiry into relationships among making, literacy, and technology -- and traces their implications for research and practice. While making has enjoyed recent resonance in education, the panel aims to dig beneath its current cachet and, instead, examine making as a technology-of-inquiry -- or, as techné, in Delagrange’s parlance. Building on this notion, presenters consider how making braids together modes of aesthetic and affective expression and, in the process, helps point to alternate possibilities for theorizing literacies. Such “possibilities” not only align the panel with the larger conference theme, but also make legible critical tensions that may require attention if maker-based pedagogies are to better support equitable student flourishing.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chair

• Jon Michael Wargo, Boston College

Papers

• Making Civics, Civic MakEY: Examining Techne as a Nexus of Practice for "Writing" Civic Action - Jon Michael Wargo, Boston College

• Making Spaces for Literacy: A Nonlinear History of "Innovative" Arrangement - T. Philip Nichols, Baylor University

• Technology-Making Children or Technology Making Children? - Anna Keune, Indiana University - Bloomington; Karen E. Wohlwend, Indiana University - Bloomington; Kylie A. Peppler, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Maker: Sensorial Wonderment in the Maker Literacies Research Project - Jennifer Rowsell, Brock University; Amélie Lemieux, Brock University

Discussant

• Yasmin B. Kafai, University of Pennsylvania