Humanizing Digital Literacy Development Through Participatory Networks in Teacher Education

• In Event: 63.083 - Humanizing Digital Literacies: Tracing the "Human" Affect and Effect in Digital Texts and Tools

Abstract

OBJECTIVES/PURPOSE

Research points to a need to integrate new media literacies and tools into pre-service teacher training (Ajayi, 2010). However, digital texts and tools have both humanizing affects and effects that must be considered with these explorations. The present study positioned preservice teachers as designers of learning experiences (Author, 2018) and traced the semiotic consequences of digitally-mediated participatory networks for educators as designers of learning experiences. This study identified and described the affective literacies and new relationships for meaning-making that emerged. Findings illuminate the importance of engaging humanizing components in the development of new media literacies.

THEORETICAL FRAMING

A humanizing approach to digital literacies necessitates honoring literacy practice as socially-situated (Street, 1984; Gee, 2005). Given the networked, global and multimodal demands of literacy in today’s learning ecology, digital literacy involves not just facility with technological tools, but media literacy, networked publics, and peer-based learning (New London Group, 1996; Ito et al, 2013; Thoman & Jolls, 2004; Knobel & Lankshear, 2014; NCTE, 2013). This study pushes socially-situated literacy considerations to the forefront by highlighting the affective literacies (Rice, 2008) and collegial meaning-making that occurred as participants engaged in a digitally-mediated participatory network.

Affective literacies involve emotional, political and networked dimensions. They are collective rather than just individual (Masny & Cole, 2009; Deleuze & Guarttari, 1991). Moody & Haworth define affect as “the notion of taking something on, of changing in relation to an experience or an encounter,” (2009, p. 79). Affect is an agentive intensity that traverses the self and society (Massumi, 2002; Seigworth & Gregg, 2010). Humanizing digital literacies development recognizes the cultural historical positioning of learning as repertoires of practice (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003) replete with social dimensions.

DATA SOURCES/METHOD

This study is a digital ethnography. Its site was a closed, asynchronous platform (Google Plus community) created for a graduate-level teacher education course. The participants were preservice teachers who took part in the course over the 2017-18 academic year (n=14). Data analyzed for the study included blog posts and responses, online use logs, and field notes from the course, as well as student-generated lesson plans, in-class reflections, and multimodal digital compositions (infographics and Google Slides presentations). Data were coded using two emergent themes (Miles, Huberman & Saldana, 2013) “affective literacy” and “collegiality,” followed by several subcodes to identify and document instances of teacher meaning-making that occurred.

FINDINGS

Instances of affect were found across data sources. Participants engaged affective literacies as they designed learning experiences. Affect appeared in text as teachers made choices about their content, technological tools, and pedagogy, supported their colleagues, and shared resources. The rhetorics of the digital space afforded engagement of affective literacies through memes, emojis, and +1 voting.

SCHOLARLY SIGNIFICANCE

The study addresses a gap in research to consider the humanizing digital literacies that must be taken up in teacher education. It also expands our understanding of digital literacy development to consider affect as one lens through which we develop repertoires of practice with technological tools. Its implications extend to connected learning in teacher education as well as digital literacy education.

Author

• Cherise McBride, University of California - Berkeley