Literacy into action: digital games as action and text in the English and literacy classroom

Using data gathered from a three-year research project exploring digital literacy and pedagogy with respect to video games, including classroom games-based pedagogy and curriculum and ethnographic research on students' digital game playing, this article locates and explores a key conceptual problem facing the incorporation of digital games into English and literacy classroom activities. This challenge is defined as "action" and refers to the non-visual and non-textual elements of gameplay. This challenge is explored both theoretically and through a practical discussion of various strategies developed by teachers in the project to approach this issue. The article draws on contemporary game studies in order to map out and highlight several key areas where action-based projects lead to critical reflection.

The importance of digital literacy in the knowledge era

 Digital literacy is an essential skill in the knowledge era. This research found that occupational therapists recognise the importance of digital literacy and are willing to use digital technologies yet barriers exist. Improving digital literacy is a shared concern, to be addressed at the individual, institutional, professional and societal levels.

Multimodal literacy, digital games and curriculum

Digital games offer enormous potential for learning and engagement in mathematics ideas and processes. This volume offers multidisciplinary perspectives—of educators, cognitive scientists, psychologists and sociologists—on how digital games influence the social activities and mathematical ideas of learners/gamers. Contributing authors identify opportunities for broadening current understandings of how mathematical ideas are fostered (and embedded) within digital game environments. In particular, the volume advocates for new and different ways of thinking about mathematics in our digital age—proposing that these mathematical ideas and numeracy practices are distinct from new literacies or multiliteracies. The authors acknowledge that the promise of digital games has not always been realised/fulfilled. There is emerging, and considerable, evidence to suggest that traditional discipline boundaries restrict opportunities for mathematical learning. Throughout the book, what constitutes mathematics learnings and pedagogy is contested. Multidisciplinary viewpoints are used to describe and understand the potential of digital games for learning mathematics and identify current tensions within the field.Mathematics learning is defined as being about problem solving; engagement in mathematical ideas and processes; and social engagement. The artefact, which is the game, shapes the ways in which the gamers engage with the social activity of gaming. In parallel, the book (as a textual artefact) will be supported by Springer’s online platform—allowing for video and digital communication (including links to relevant websites) to be used as supplementary material and establish a dynamic communication space.

Navigating 21st century multimodal textual environments : a case study of digital literacy

In the 21st Century young people have the opportunity to create texts that were unimaginable for previous generations. Today’s children live and learn while immersed in a technological world that is fast paced and constantly in a state of change. As technology becomes more and more accessible and specifically marketed to children of the 21st century, educators are challenged to re-consider the literacy skills required to be successfully and safely literate, and the repertoire of literacy pedagogies teacher must have to effectively engage these young people in learning. While there is much evidence to suggest that schools and teachers are not all meeting this challenge, there are some inspiring examples in which schools, communities and teachers are taking up the challenge. This paper presents one case study, which is explored through a 21st century literacy framework that allows us to interpret and analyse the multimodal texts and the processes students use in their creation. Attention is paid to how the case study teacher created meaningful learning experiences and opportunities for them to create and interact within multimodal communications environments, both within and beyond the school.

What is good practice in the development, assessment and evaluation of digital literacy for graduate employability?

This report seeks to identify the features of good practice in the development, assessment and evaluation of digital literacy for graduate employability.

The report forms Stage 2 of a two-stage literature review. The results of the first stage of the review are reported in: Towards an understanding of ‘Digital Literacy(ies)’. The current report draws on some of the same literature to that of the Stage 1 report and covers the same time period – up to the end of 2012. In addition, the current report covers literature that provides discussion and accounts of good practice in digital literacy – particularly practice that is embedded in course curricula.

The literature provides numerous examples of standalone digital literacy practices. While such practices may be effective for some purposes, they may be less effective than course-integrated practices in contributing to graduate employability. However, there are few accounts of course-integrated practices in the literature and fewer still that provide a compelling case for their positive contribution to graduate outcomes. Accordingly, the report identifies eight criteria of good practice in digital literacy for the assurance of graduate learning outcomes. It then identifies types of broad teaching and learning practices that appear to best encompass these criteria and which provide meaningful contexts in which to develop the digital literacy competencies of students.

Writing, digital culture and English curriculum

In their out-of-school lives, young people are immersed in rich and complex digital worlds, characterised by image and multimodality. Computer games in particular present young people with specific narrative genres and textual forms: contexts in which meaning is constructed interactively and drawing explicitly on a wide range of design elements including sound, image, gesture, symbol, colour and so on. As English curriculum seeks to address the changing nature of literacy, challenges are raised, particularly with respect to the ways in which multimodal texts might be incorporated alongside print based forms of literacy. Questions focus both on the ways in which such texts might be created, studied and assessed, and on the implications of the introduction of such texts for print based literacies. This paper explores intersections between writing and computer games within the English classroom, from a number of junior secondary examples. In particular it considers tensions that arise when young people use writing to recreate or respond to multimodal forms. It explores ways in which writing is stretched and challenged by enterprises such as these, ways in which students utilise and adapt print based modes to represent multimodal forms of narrative, and how teachers and curriculum might respond. Consideration is given to the challenges posed to teaching and assessment by bringing writing to bear as the medium of analysis of, and response to, multimodal texts.

Designing open-ended problems to challenge preservice teachers' views on mathematics and pedagogy

This study examines preservice elementary teachers' reported experiences of posing open-ended mathematics problems. Responses of 33 students in a mathematics teacher education course were analysed for the strategies participants used, what they learned and the challenges encountered from an opportunity to collect digital images and pose open-ended problems related to those images. Results indicate that preservice teachers reported a shift in the ways they viewed mathematics and how it might be taught. The school curriculum both constrained and provided possibilities for preservice teachers in noticing mathematics beyond the textbook and mathematics classroom. This study adds to our understanding of teaching as a learning practice and the art of posing mathematical problems as a significant aspect of that practice.

Within and against performativity : discursive engagement in adult literacy and basic education

The field of adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) has undergone dramatic changes in recent years with the advent of labour market programs, accreditation, competency-based assessment and competitive tendering for program funds. Teachers' working conditions have deteriorated and their professional autonomy has been eroded. ALBE has been increasingly instrumentalised to fulfil the requirements of a marketised economy and conform to its norms. The beliefs and value systems which traditionally underpinned the work of ALBE teachers have been reframed according to the principle of 'performativity' and the demands of the 'performative State' (Lyotard, 1984: 46, Yeatman 1994: 110). The destabilisation of teachers' working lives can be understood as a manifestation of the 'postmodern condition' (Lyotard 1984; Harvey 1989): the collapse of the certainties and purposes of the past; the proliferation of technologies; the impermanence and intensification of work; the commodification of knowledge and curricula; and the dissolving of boundaries between disciplines and fields of knowledge. The critiques of the modernist grand narratives which underpin progressivist and critical approaches to adult literacy pedagogy have further undermined the traditional points of reference of ALBE teachers. In this thesis I examine how teachers are teaching, surviving, resisting, and 'living the contradictions' (Seddon 1994) in the context of struggles to comply with and resist the requirements of performativity. Following Foucault and a number of feminist poststructuralist authors, I have applied the notions of 'discursive engagement' and 'the politics of discourse' (Yeatman 1990a) as a way of theorising the interplay between imposed change and teachers' practice. I explore the discursive practices which take place at the interface between the 'new' policy discourses and older, naturalised discourses; how teachers are engaged by and are engaging with discourses of performativity; how teachers are discursively constructing adult literacy pedagogy; what new, hybrid discourses of 'good practice' are emerging; and the micropractices of resistance which teachers are enacting in their speech and in their practice. My purpose was to develop knowledge which would support the reflexivity of teachers; to enrich the theoretical languages that teachers could draw upon in trying to make sense of their situation; and to use those languages in speaking about the dilemmas of practice. I used participatory action research as a means of producing knowledge about teachers' practices, structured around their agency, and reflecting their standpoint (Harding 1993). I describe two separate action research projects in which teachers of ALBE participated. I reflect on both projects in the light of poststructuralist theory and consider them as instances of what Lather calls 'within/against research' (Lather 1989: 27). I analyse written and spoken texts produced in both projects which reflect teachers' responses to competency-based assessment and other features of the changing context. I use a method of discourse mapping to describe the discursive field and the teachers' discursive practices. Three main configurations of discourse are delineated: 'progressivism', 'professional teacher' and 'performativity'. The teachers mainly position themselves within a hybridising 'progressivist /professional teacher' discourse, as a discourse of resistance to 'performative' discourse. In adapting their pedagogies, the teachers are in some degree taking the language and world view of performativity into their own vocabularies and practices. The discursive picture I have mapped is complex and contradictory. On one hand, the 'progressivist /professional teacher' discourse appears to endure and to take strength from the articulation into it of elements of performative discourse, creating new possibilities for discursive transformation. On the other hand, there are signs that performative discourse is colonising and subsuming progressivist /professional teacher discourse. At times, both of these tendencies are apparent in the one text. Six micropractices of resistance are identified within the texts: 'rational critique', 'objectification', 'subversion', 'refusal', 'humour' and 'the affirmation of desire'. These reflect the teachers' agency in making discursive choices on the micro level of their every day practices. Through those micropractices, the teachers are engaging with and resisting the micropractices and meanings of performativity. I apply the same multi-layered method of analysis to an examination of discursive engagement in pedagogy by analysing a transcript of the teachers' discussion of critical incidents in their classrooms. Their classroom pedagogies are revealed as complex, situated and eclectic. They are combining and integrating their 'embodied' and their 'institutional' powers, both 'seducing' (McWilliam 1995) and 'regulating' (Gore 1993) as they teach. A strong ethical project is apparent in the teachers' sense of social responsibility, in their determination to adhere to valued traditions of previous times, and in their critical self-awareness of the ways in which they use their institutional and embodied powers in the classroom. Finally, l look back on the findings, and reflect on the possibilities of discursive engagement and the politics of discourse as a framework for more strategic practice in the current context. This research provides grounds for hope that, by becoming more self-conscious about how we engage discursively, we might become more strategic in our everyday professional practice. Not withstanding the constraints (evident in this study) which limit the strategic potential of the politics of discourse, there is space for teachers to become more reflexive in their professional, pedagogical and political praxis. Development of more deliberate, self-reflexive praxis might lead to a 'postmodern democratic polities' (Yeatman 1994: 112) which would challenge the performative state and the system of globalised capital which it serves. Short abstract Adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) teachers have experienced a period of dramatic policy change in recent years; in particular, the introduction of competency-based assessment and competitive tendering for program funds. 'Discourse politics' provides a way of theorising the interplay between policy-mediated institutional change and teachers' practice. The focus of this study is 'discursive engagement'; how teachers are engaged by and are engaging with discourses of performativity. Through two action research projects, texts were generated of teachers talking and writing about how they were responding to the challenges, and developing their pedagogies in the new policy environment. These texts have been analysed and several patterns of discursive engagement delineated, named and illustrated. The strategic potential of 'discourse polities' is explored in the light of the findings.

Digital media and girling at an elite girls' school

In this article, I draw on Judith Butler's notion of performativity to investigate the role of digital technologies in processes of gendered subjectification (or ‘girling’) in elite girls' education. Elite girls' schooling is a site where the potential of digital technologies in mediating student‐led constructions and explorations of ‘femininity’ sits alongside school‐produced digital media in the form of promotional texts, in which young femininity is regulated by discourses of ‘girl power’. Whilst such schools are well equipped with digital resources that might be utilised towards students' interrogation of how ‘femininity’ is understood, thus politicising the girling process, school‐produced digital media inscribe a more prescriptive picture of ‘who’ an elite school‐girl can ‘be’. Lyla Girls' Grammar School (LGGS) is an elite secondary school in Melbourne, Australia. I report on research undertaken at two institutional levels of LGGS: the ‘school’ level in which digital media representations of young women are produced by the school and the ‘classroom’ level, in which media education pedagogy includes interactive web conferencing software. The use of digital technologies in media education appeared to support student‐led construction and interrogation of femininities to some extent. I argue that this kind of student‐led girling is important in the context of more prescriptive school‐level girling practices.

Use of digital media and dance within the classroom

Beckwith spoke on and conducted workshops on the use of digital media and dance within the classroom.

From the website http://ausdance.org.au/news/article/2011-dance-across-the-domains-2011 :
Dance Across the Domains (DADs) is an innovative program for teachers and educators to receive professional development from dance industry practitioners and leading dance teachers.

In 2011 the focus for the conference is “dance from many cultures”. A key feature of the conferences is exploring the ways dance can enhance learning in other areas of the curriculum, such as literacy, numeracy, humanities and ICT.

DADs is includes practical activities, theory-based sessions, peer observation, case studies, resource sharing and networking. The conference supports schools’ implementation of VELS domains and strand, provides curriculum advice and related support materials.Megan spoke on and conducted workshops on the use of digital media and dance within the classroom. 

Mobile texts and migrant audiences : rethinking literacy and assessment in a new media age

This article highlights the importance of rethinking literacy assessment in a digital and global world. Although pressures currently abound to narrow conceptions and practices of literacy, especially in an era of high stakes testing, digital multimodality and connectivity offer the potential for new ways of thinking, representing, and communicating, as well as new avenues for participating in relationships across social, geographic, and cultural difference. We explore the challenges of redesigning assessments so that they better take into account children's multiliterate capabilities. In so doing, we offer examples from our work in afterschool contexts that demonstrate how we have grappled with the complexities of assessment in new times.

“Digital Literacy” in #legaled, begins here?

Discusses issues of interaction, enablement, social justice, flexibility, overload, and industrialisation in legal education and practical legal training, with reference to flexible, online and distance education and "digital literacy".