Writing for Digital Video Composition: Examining Child and Teacher Practices and Perceptions

• In Event: Interrogating the Status of Digital Writing in Practice and Pedagogy

Abstract

Objectives
Researchers adopt multimodal frameworks for studying video production (Burn, 2015); classroom teachers likewise teach via overtly non-logocentric pedagogies (Hobbs & Moore, 2013); policymakers have increasingly written digital production into learning standards (Mills & Exley, 2014). However, although we have theorized digital writing, we know little about what children and teachers think about the role and practice of writing in the composition of digital videos.
Theoretical Framework
Writing is viewed here as a communicative practice (Bakhtin, 1981) through which we make and share our ideas. It is fundamentally social, and requires the use of technologies to create texts (Vygotsky, 1986). Much research on writing examines multiple modes via which children make meaning (Jewitt & Kress, 2003). Research has also shown the ways children recognise and enact the inherently multimodal quality of written text (Dyson, 2008). In the case of digital video production, however, “writing” often becomes something one must do in order to get to the more engaging technology of the digital tool (cf. Rowsell & Decoste, 2012). To understand this phenomenon from the perspective of participants, I asked: How do children and teachers use and perceive the use of writing on paper in digital video composition? I then asked, what are the results of juxtaposing participants’ practices and perceptions with theoretical definitions of writing and writing as defined in national standards?
Methods and Data Sources
In the larger study of children's digital video composition from which these data are drawn, children ages 8-10 created 2-3 videos per year on a variety of topics as part of their regular language arts and social studies curricula. Children and teachers were interviewed individually after 5 of the 9 videos, yielding 90 in-depth child and 6 teacher interviews (Weiss, 1994). Field notes (Sanjek, 1990) and multimodal transcripts of children’s videos (Flewitt, Hempel, Hauck & Lancaster, 2009) were created throughout. I thematically analyzed field notes and multimodal transcripts, and then interview data, to answer questions about practices and perceptions. I then juxtaposed findings with theoretical definitions of writing and definitions and instantiations of digital writing in the US Common Core State Standards.
Results
Findings suggest that children and teachers had complex perceptions of the use of writing in digital videos. Children’s perceptions were affective and binary; they and teachers saw writing along a continuum of utility; and children’s comments evidenced was a collapsing of orality and literacy. Theoretical definitions of writing (cf. Hayes, 1996) seem somewhat constrained and narrow in light of children’s utilitarian approach. Further, definitions of writing in national standards are simultaneously vague and constrained compared to what children and adults actually do in classrooms.
Significance
Findings alert us to the emotions intertwined with writing for teachers and children; the ways children see the utility of writing more plainly than do adults; and the ways children collapse boundaries between writing and speech in their discussions of writing and their writing practices. Educational researchers need to work with local and national stakeholders to more clearly define what counts as writing for children and teachers in a digital age.

Author

• Jessica Zacher Pandya, California State University, Dominguez Hills