Fabricating Response: Examining Prospective Teachers Mobilizing 3-D Printing as Response to Children's Literature

• In Event: 28.091 - Sheraton Roundtable Session Two - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 28.091-9 - Making and Materiality in Literacy Practice and Method

Abstract

This paper examines 3D printing – an emerging technology that facilitates the creation of objects through material design – as a mechanism for fabricating response to children’s literature. Using the twin-lens of multiliteracies and reader-response theory, it explores how prospective teachers in an instructional methods course used innovative technologies of design to promote rigorous responses to children’s texts about immigration. Findings highlight the aesthetic, technical, and conceptual nuances of prospective teachers taking on the “reader-as-designer” role and detail how response became a structured and ideological artifact. Providing an on-the-ground look at how prospective teachers mobilize 3D design as response to children’s literature, this study’s significance lies in its potential to democratize literary response through multimodal design.

Author

• Jon Michael Wargo, Boston College