Reading Comics Collaboratively and Challenging Literacy Norms in a Social Studies Classroom

• In Event: 42.083 - Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 42.083-10 - From Posthuman Literacies to the Arts: Fictocriticism, Comics, Poetry, and Songwriting

Abstract

This study documents the planning, implementation, and assessment of working with comics and graphic novels in a school setting. For this ethnographic study data was collected over a single school year, across curriculum areas. This essay focuses on how reading and discussing comics collaboratively in a social studies classroom impacted the school space and challenged deeply engrained norms in the school. Collaborative reading challenges how many schools measure learning and theory around comics and graphic novels as structured for an individual reader. Ultimately, this study considers what counts as literacy in a school and how literacy counts in a school.

Author

• Ashley Kaye Dallacqua, The University of New Mexico