Literacy teaching and learning in e-Learning contexts

Chapter 2: Literacy learning

Introduction

Multiliteracies Pedagogy provides a framework for re-conceptualising literacy teaching and learning. However, teachers also need rich examples of what this teaching and learning might look like in practice. In this chapter we provide such examples.

The subheadings of this chapter have been drawn from Luke and Freebody’s (1990, 1998) Four Resources Model. However, our interpretation of what it means to break the code, make meaning, use texts, and analyse texts is not based solely on the work of Luke and Freebody. As signalled in Chapter 1, we apply The Four Resources Model to all modes of meaning making, we interpret the term “visual images” as including print, gestural, and spatial modes of meaning making, and we also apply the Model to the production of texts (for example, writing or performing) as well as to the “reading” of texts.

We begin each section with our interpretation of what it means to break the code, make meaning, use texts, and analyse texts. We then provide examples from the e-fellows projects to demonstrate students’ growing capacities in each of these areas.

Breaking the code

Breaking the code involves recognising and using the features and structure of texts. For example, with print text this requires an understanding of: the alphabet, sounds in words, spelling, and structural conventions (such as the “problem” that occurs in the middle of a traditional narrative or the summary of arguments that occurs just before the conclusion in an expository essay). Breaking the code also involves working out how different modes such as, print, illustration, and sound, all work together.

The e-fellows provided many examples of shifts in students’ capacity to break the code of different types of text. Below is a sample of these.

"Some of the acting and confidence and expression and use of voice has improved over the time we have been filming. I hadn’t noticed until tonight as I have never watched all of the films together." (New entrant teacher, blog)

"Making the movies was a great opportunity for us to be using our newly developed KidPix¹² art skills and practicing using an effective story telling voice when creating our own Pesky the Possum narratives. Each student worked hard to follow the steps toward creating a published QuickTime movie of their story…" (Year 3 teacher, interview)

"They had a lot of spatial type discussions, when working out how best to show their part of the story." (Year 7/8 teacher, interview)

"They completely understand you have to have characters, setting, problem. They know what makes a story." (Year 3/4 teacher, interview)

"I did some running records today…and some of the children have shifted five levels in five weeks." (New entrant teacher, blog)

When talking about their learning many students also commented on their improved code breaking skills.

"I learnt how to make a movie—all the little steps to get it right." (Student, Year 7/8 class)

"I’m learning how to explore words because I used to see a word like ‘brutal’ and [before this project] I wouldn’t know what it means and I wouldn’t have gone onto the Internet to check out what it means…Like ‘brutal’—I had no idea what it means but I found out…Another word is ‘savage’. It’s interesting and I’m finding out new words what I’ve never heard of before." (Student, Year 4 class)

"I’m proud of doing the illustrator [role] because I normally find lots of mistakes [discrepancies between text and visual information] in my drawings and I quickly rub it out and do it better than the first time." (Student, Year 4 class)

"I think I concentrated more on my spelling and punctuation cos in my first couple of essays it kind of brought my grade down so now I’m really trying to proof read as much as possible." (Student, Year 11 class)

Many of the e-fellows also observed shifts in students’ ability to break the code in modes which had not been the primary focus of their project. For example, the Year 3 teacher found that after telling stories orally using the Easi-speak¹³ one of her students began writing for the first time.

"I didn’t know he could write a sentence until the inquiry…This was a child who had amazing language but he never wrote." (Year 3 teacher, August hui)

After spending a week making and watching their movie based on the book My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes, the new entrant teacher found that students who had previously been non-readers could read it. She attributed this to their experiences with acting out, filming and watching their movie of the story.

"When I’ve been looking through the movies they are fulfilling something big for the boys that they might not have been getting elsewhere—the physicality, the dramatisation, the faces and being something from a book and I think it is affecting all their reading—it is transferring over to that a little bit more…They really do benefit from being able to be physical in these films." (New entrant teacher, interview)

Both the Year 7/8 teacher and the Year 4–6 teacher observed an increase in their students’ writing skills even though their units were focussed on movie making. The teachers considered that because students had developed a better understanding of the connections between different modes as a result of the projects they undertook, they improved in all modes.

"What you can learn in one area [of literacy] can enhance another." (Year 2 teacher, August hui)

"[They had] had improvements in reading retelling, sequencing the story, one thing following the other. The links between what authors and illustrators do… between making meaning and creating meaning…It is turning into a multi-literacy unit that will help them in the future." (Year 3 teacher, interview)

"Those lower level boys—their reading levels have gone up because they’re reading more [as a result of our fairy story multi-media creations]. They’re re-reading their [own written] stories and they’re reading the fairy stories. They are doing a lot more reading." (Year 3/4 teacher, interview)

Making meaning

Making meaning involves drawing on knowledge of the text and out-of-text knowledge. It involves generating, responding to, evaluating, and making choices about possible meanings that could be made in any given context. We describe these more fully in the following sections.

Knowledge of the text

Knowledge of the text requires an understanding of the relationship between function and form. The function of a text is its social purpose and thus includes a particular consideration of audience. The form of a text includes its mode and elements such as structure, language devices, language features, and punctuation. Many teachers found that students had little understanding of the relationship between function and form at the beginning of their projects.

"I’ve felt that [the relationship between function and form] has been [something] that the children haven’t understood—when they read a book, why is the picture this colour, why has the font got bigger, when we watch something on TV why have they done this, why have they used that sort of music, what was the message. And that as we move into the editing phase, so why are you using that?" (Year 4–6 teacher, interview)

Teachers provided many examples of students learning about the relationship between function and form through their projects.

"They had to plan their illustrations to support their piece of text. They had to understand the relationship between text and illustration…The links with the picture books worked well…They could see how the message is shared by the illustrator and the writer and how you don’t have to tell everything with words." (Year 3 teacher, August hui)

"They were totally fascinated by the challenge of creating music that fitted with their movie and their message. They explored all sorts of things. They watched movie segments. They talked about their feelings, how the character would be feeling in that particular scene and how they could show that to an audience. In the past they would just have picked hip hop." (Year 4–6 teacher, August hui)

"The students are experimenting with the different text styles. Some have chosen old style writing and when asked why, they could justify it. [They would say things like] ‘It looks like the olden days and fairy tales are stories from the olden days’. They are getting it." (Year 4 teacher, blog)

Making meaning of, and with, multi-modal texts involves drawing on all possible sources of meaning and interpreting the relationship between them. Sometimes, the meanings that can be made from one mode, e.g., printed text, can be supported by those in another, e.g., illustrations. At other times, these may “compete” to create effects such as irony or humour. Teachers described how students were beginning to draw on multiple sources to make meaning and use such relationships.

"[The children] understand story in the visual sense, mood, and music." (New entrant teacher, interview)

During our classroom observations we saw many examples of students building an understanding of the relationship between function and form. The example below is a five-year-old child’s response to a page depicting the bird’s death in Roimata’s Cloak.

"On one of the pages with the rainbow, how it looks so soft it kind of feels a little bit sad because it looks so soft because it’s like something special when someone dies." (Student, New entrant class)

This student has learnt to identify a feature of the visual text (the soft colours and texture achieved through the use of coloured pencil illustrations), and to make meaning of this in relation to the written text and her own experiences of death (the sadness associated with someone important to her dying).

The following example is a Year 4 student’s interpretation of the blank page that appears part way through the main character’s diary in Tomorrow is a Great Word.

"In the first reading it felt a bit scary because it had a blank page so it looked like she was going to die…" (Student, Year 4 class)

Below is a focus group conversation in which the Year 4–6 students discuss the voices to use for their characters.

Student 1: "My twin is nice and you know, like, kind of a mixture of Spiderman and normal like a little kid. And the other person that I am, they’re soldiers for the bad guy who is mean and grumpy. So I do, I mostly only have a grumpy voice."

Researcher: "What about you J, what voice are you going to use for your character?"

Student 2: "Probably a funny voice."

Student 1: "His funny voice is when… he like flies off and then they do this funny, this ‘go away’ voice, like a scared voice."

The next three examples are excerpts from a focus group with the Year 3/4 students discussing the sound effects they intended to add to their slideshow stories.

Student 1: "I’d have ‘bom-boom, bom-boom, bom-boom’…cos there’s bats sleeping. Cos ‘bom-boom, bom-boom, bom-boom’ cos bats are approaching."

Researcher: "Is the bom-boom to make it seem scary?"

Student 1: "Yeah"

Researcher: "And how do you think people would know that means scary?"

Student 1: "Cos it just is a sign."

Student 2: "I could add happy music: La-lela, La-le-la."

Researcher: "Yeah and what would the happy music tell the person watching the movie?"

Student 2: "It would be like then they know something good is going to happen—like the girl lives happily ever after."

Student 2: "When she (main character) is swimming away she could have like: ‘ss, ss, ss, ss’ cos she’s like swimming really, really fast…"

Researcher: "Do you mean like escape music?"

Student 2: "Yeah like: ‘daaaaow, daaaow’ cos she’s being all quiet."

Researcher: "Oh—like secretly?"

Student 2: "Yeah secretly escaping. Like she gets into the water really carefully so they don’t hear a big splash."

An understanding of the relationship between function and form provides students with the tools needed to adapt, modify, and parody conventions to create something new, and to recognise when such effects are used by others. Some of the students from the Year 3/4 class achieved this by mixing the language conventions of the traditional fairy story with contemporary jargon.

"A prince, a king, and a queen lived in the big, big castle. The prince was handsome, the queen was beautiful, and the king was cool because he was a life guard and people liked him…"

Some played on traditional fairy story beginnings and endings

"As for the stepmother she was in danger because she had a pack of wolves around her, she did not live happily ever after…"

"…and they got married and lived happily ever after like every fairytale ends with."

Others replaced the unspecified place and time in which these stories are usually set with specific, contemporary, and local locations.

"Once upon a time the water at Kāwhia was as flat as oil…"

"Once upon a time in a forest in Hamilton…"

These examples show how all acts of meaning making are acts of re-design—a point that was not lost on their teacher.

"It has been interesting to see how some of the stories have evolved from the basic fairytale into something quite different and intriguing. I am looking forward to seeing each new development in their stories." (Year 3/4 teacher, blog)

Drawing on out-of-text knowledge

Making meaning involves using out-of-text knowledge (social and cultural) much of which is implicit. This includes prior knowledge and experience. We saw evidence of students using out-of-text knowledge in conjunction with knowledge of the text to make meaning.

During one of our observations one of the new entrant students drew on his understanding of rewana bread, kēhua, taonga, karakia, to help his classmates make sense of a Robyn Kahukiwa story. When the classmates asked the meaning of “karakia”, he replied

"Karakia’s like a song to make that old kēhua leave."

When another pointed out the pounamu worn by the nanny in the story, this child replied

"It’s a taonga—like this one here. Me and K have one. I got this one from my old school…"

One of the Year 4 teacher’s students used his experiences of being in an earthquake to make inferences about the feelings of the main character in Tomorrow is a Great Word.

"It was just so neat, he [the student] went on to tell us about his experiences of being in an earthquake and how scared he’d been, and how she [the character in the novel] must have been really scared." (Year 4 teacher, blog)

Out-of-text knowledge includes knowledge of other texts and their conventions. Teachers described how students were learning to make connections with other texts, such as books, films, television programmes, and video games, to support their interpretations of text. For example, students from the Year 4 teacher’s class compared the failure of the main character’s parents in Tomorrow is a Great Word to return home during an earthquake with a similar story they had seen on the news. Below are some other examples:

"Today we talked about Kehua and A Lion in the Meadow. I asked ‘What is the same about these books?’ They were so wise and articulate I wondered that I was in the company of five year olds. [The students replied] ‘They are both about being scared. No one will come and help. It’s both a scary thing’." (New entrant teacher, blog)

"I had such a neat moment today. At the end of the story one of my children said out of the blue, ‘I can make a connection between this and the Three Little Pigs story we read—they are both about fear’." (Year 4 teacher, blog)

Teachers also provided examples of students drawing on other texts to help them with their own text production. This included drawing on content from other texts.

"[I got my ideas] from a movie called Open Season… my favourite part of it is when the skunk throws his stink all over the hunters and there is a bit of a force field and there are death masks." (Student, Year 3 class)

It also included drawing on the form of other texts, such as the use of light to signal a good character, or the use of music to create suspense.

"He was bad at first, then he become good. Then the spotlight was on, like a symbol, like on Batman." (Student, Year 4–6 group)

"I have [heard sound effects like this on movies]—like when sharks are approaching people. And on Play Station it has a big ears piranha fish and when you go into the water too deep it goes ‘pikaaaah’ and it goes ‘bom-boom, bom-boom, bom-boom’." (Student, Year 3/4 class)

Generating and evaluating alternative meanings

Teachers described how, at the start of the projects, students often did not have the capacity to generate more than one meaning of or with a text or to evaluate the relative merits of different meanings. Nor did they know how to defend their own interpretations or challenge the interpretation of others.

"This group of children…they’ve come through as a group and they’ve always been the ones who are the ones to talk in class and have the good ideas and no one’s ever said I disagree with you, so in the beginning we talked about that and they said, ‘People haven’t ever said I don’t agree with you because they don’t know if they agree or not’." (Year 4 teacher, interview)

By the end of the projects, however, there were many examples of students learning how to present and defend their ideas, to support or challenge the interpretations of others, and to alter their own in the light of new evidence.

"So they’re expecting that somebody else can challenge them on something and they can change it [their mind] and that’s ok and they’re also saying no I’m going to keep this part in, I think it was important, so I’m keeping it in. And it’s very, very cool that they’re starting to feel more safe and secure in that everyone can have a different opinion. I think they’re slowly moving off from the belief in there being a right or wrong [answer] and [are understanding] that I don’t have all the answers." (Year 4 teacher, interview)

"[They learnt] how to be able to reflect and connect and debate without one feeling that I don’t have the right to an opinion and to be able to put the ideas together and then articulate that into a solution. It’s about them understanding those roles. It’s almost like that form of cooperative debate type thing." (The Year 4–6 teacher, interview)

"[Student] will also really probe about things and so does [student], another child. She … is so questioning about stories and analytical as well." (New entrant teacher, interview)

Students were very enthusiastic about their growing ability to generate more than one way of making meaning of and with text.

"I like blogging and talking to people and making an argument." (Student, Year 4 class)

"I like sitting in a group talking cos we’re actually starting an argument cos everyone’s got different reasons so it’s like we’re having a little war as talking." (Student, Year 4 class)

"I’m proud that I can disagree with people because I used not to be able to disagree with people." (Student, Year 4 class)

Presenting, defending, changing, and challenging ideas required a level of text analysis that many students had not previously engaged in and many commented on how challenging they found this.

Student 1: "I’ve learnt that you’ve got to read the story over and over again so you know what it means…I read it like four times at home."

Researcher: "Some people would say that is boring?"

Student 1: "It’s…so you know what it means…"

Student 2: "You have to ask people, you’re asking people what their reason is and it’s challenging for you cos you’re trying to figure out which ones—which, which answer you think is the correct answer"

Researcher: "Oh, so is that the idea that you were telling me before, that all the people in the group might have different ideas and you have to work out which ones you agree with?"

Student 2: "Yeah. I think it’s a challenge cos you never know what’s right and what’s wrong."

Using texts

Using texts involves understanding that texts perform different cultural and social functions. Using texts also involves understanding that these functions shape the way texts are used and shape the meanings that are made of and with them. Students need to know the conventions associated with using texts in different contexts and how these can be used and adapted these to suit particular purposes.

Teachers provided students with opportunities to become users of text by setting up environments that emulate those found in the real world of literary critics, TV presenters, writers, film makers, social commentators, and so forth. They did this by either drawing on their own expertise as members of these discourse communities in their out-of-school lives or by linking students with out-of-school experts. We provide more detailed information on how they did this in Chapter 4.

In this section we outline evidence that students learnt how to use multi-modal texts in a range of contexts, and learnt how to participate and contribute as part of the discourse communities in which their work was situated.

Learning words, acts, values, beliefs, and attitudes

Teachers described how their students learnt and adhered to the (often unspoken) conventions of the discourse communities in which they participated. This involved knowing not just what to contribute, but how and when.

We saw evidence of students using the technical terms and jargon of several of the discourse communities in which they worked. For example, the new entrant teacher’s students used terms such as: expression, gesture, tone, clarity, transitions, voice-over, director, credits, and sound effects. The Year 4–6 teacher’s students used terms such as: studio, producer, script, set, take, shoot, and green screen. The Year 3 teacher’s students used terms such as: character, setting, plot, climax, problem, solution.

Students not only learnt the language of their discourse communities but how to use it. As one student from the Year 4 class said, “If you’re doing the blog you have to write appropriate stuff”. This involved an understanding of genre conventions, and we observed students learning these. During an observation in the Year 3/4 class, for example, four of the students spent some time debating whether or not the story they were writing adhered closely enough to the conventions of fairy tales or whether it was beginning to sound too much like a horror story.

Students also need an understanding of the conventions of spelling, punctuation, and grammar associated with their discourse communities. We heard students from both the Year 3/4 and the Year 4 classes express the concern that their work be spelt and punctuated correctly. This concern was tied to an understanding that this was a requirement of the discourses they participated in.

Understanding the conventions of a discourse community involves understanding when and how to be silent as well as when and how to speak. For obvious reasons students from all classes involved in video or audio recording quickly learnt to adhere to the convention of group silence prior to recording. The students in the Year 4 class learnt how to listen to another’s view point, and to clarify their interpretation of it before responding, and how to justify their own interpretations using evidence from the text.

We also saw evidence that students learnt the language and conventions required to use the tools of their discourse communities. This included cameras, video equipment, green screens, costumes, props, scripts, books, microphones, and computers.

"We went over to the studio to do a mock shoot…they just walked straight in, ‘Hi G, we’re gonna get the cameras, and we will want it set up’." (Year 4–6 teacher, interview)

"They filmed and presented [at a Māori principals’ conference] and they were there in front of it as confident as. Here they were changing shots. One of the little ones who was acting as director started the thing and they were going to film, it was all intro’ed and then they turn round, ‘Quiet! Quiet on the set. Filming now’. And in the middle of it someone made a booboo. ‘Cut! Sound check’. And the principals are going like [Wow!] And you know, you get someone the same age as [student] doing that and it’s like - apparently they were blown away! Then [student] sits there and takes two through ten questions, and an informal interview in Te Reo and responding and interacting and adding things..." (Year 4–6 teacher, interview)

Students saw themselves as text users of the discourse communities in which they were participating, and this gave them a sense of purpose. When asked how the e-fellow project work differed from normal school literacy activities, one of the students from the Year 4–6 group, had this to say:

"In our [normal] classes we just write about anything and we write about our weekends. But when we’re doing it in here we write about what we have to film about, and that’s helping us with like filming and getting us to know, like knowing to do that and all that stuff."

Students learnt and shared the values and beliefs of their discourse communities—that making meaning of and with text is a worthwhile endeavour; that it is hard work and requires patience, persistence, perseverance; that it is a collective as well as an individual process; that it is a knowledge generating exercise; and that it provides opportunities for creative thought, imagination, and sometimes for deep insight. We saw evidence of these shared beliefs, attitudes and values in the actions and words of students working as a collective on their shared tasks and in their reflective comments during focus groups.

Our observation of the new entrant students as they worked on their movies is one example. When they were recording and watching or listening to their productions the students demonstrated a heightened level of sustained concentration. Like real world directors, the students watched their movies with the eyes of film critics—acknowledging what had worked well and making suggestions for improvements. Here is an example of a post movie watching conversation.

Student 1: "That was rock and roll fantastic"

Student 2: "It was funny"

Student 3: "It was a bit complicated"

Teacher: "What do you mean?"

Student 3: "It was a bit busy"

Student 4: "We read it describingly"

Student 1: "We need to add some gingerbread music"

Teacher: "What does that sound like?"

Student 1: "Like this [hums]"

The norms of discourse communities are established and maintained through repetition and monitoring by group members. Over time, we saw students beginning to modify their own behaviours and monitor the behaviour of others. For example, the new entrant teacher described how the “silly” behaviour of one child in front of the camera was quickly modified by the reactions of his peers who did not want their movie “ruined”. The Year 3/4 teacher described how one of her students challenged another for not taking on board any of the feedback she provided on his story. The Year 4 teacher described how one member of her literature circle group challenged another for not using punctuation in his blog postings and how several group members began to challenge another for consistently writing posts in which he expressed his agreement with the opinions of other group members without giving a reason.

"Interestingly, if I wait, the children are beginning to monitor each other and starting to ask why someone has said something and asking them to add further to their post." (Year 4 teacher, blog)

We also saw evidence of this in student focus group responses.

"When you do it [write your posting] you have to read it again. Sometimes people do stuff and it’s not spelt correct so people don’t know what the word’s supposed to be. I’m scared that if I get a word wrong and then I post it, then the whole globe sees it." (Student, Year 4 class)

Building social identities

There were many examples of students learning the social identities of their discourse communities. The Year 3/4 teacher referred to her students as writers or authors because “that is how they see themselves” and the Year 2 teacher made a similar observation of her own students.

The new entrant teacher discovered that her students had told their reliever teacher the story she was reading would make a good movie and how to go about making it. She would be the director and they would be the actors, then they would add a voice-over.

The experience of participating in discourse communities helped students to “try on” and in many cases adopt the identities of community members.

"I am a lead presenter for the show." (Student, Year 4–6 group)

"I didn’t know I could be a writer, but when I had a go I actually did it." (Student, Year 3/4 class)

"I learnt how to work with a group—how to be a director and have people listen to me." (Student, Year 4–6 group)

"It’s good when you can learn new things instead of just doing normal schoolwork and it feels like you have a career suddenly…Since we get to do this every day nearly it’s quite like a job or something but it’s actually quite fun." (Student, Year 4 class)

Students saw their text production and interpretation not as practice exercises for when they “grew up” and carried out these activities “for real”, but as being viable and available for use in the real world here and now. Our observation of two students discussing the prospect of selling the movie they were making at an aunt’s video store is an example of this. The idea one of the Year 4 teacher’s students had about advertising their class blog on television so that more people would visit is another—albeit somewhat difficult to achieve. We turn now to focus more closely on the impact of having an audience.

Having an audience

Having an audience was a fundamental component of the discourse communities students took part in. All of the projects but one had an audience of some kind. Most began with “captured” audiences consisting of peers in other classes, the school assembly, parents and extended whānau. The texts produced by students at five of the e-fellow schools were available online and received hits from around the world, but mainly from family and friends. The films produced by the students at two of the schools had a premiere for family and community members. The animations produced by the students at another school were aired on the local TV station.

As students developed their confidence, experience and skills they began to elicit more authentic audiences. For example, one of the bloggers from the Year 7/8 group sent an e-mail to the principals of local contributing schools to inform them of the school blog.

"He composed this wonderful e-mail…The fact that (the students) are looking at how they can get the ball out a bit wider, to more than just our school’s community reflects that they are actually proud of the work that they are doing; recognising that it is of value to more than just the people in our immediate community, and they want to celebrate what each other is doing." (Year 7/8 teacher, interview)

The students in the Year 2 class went online in search of an authentic audience. While their buddy class were great at commenting on their blog postings they were a captured audience and the class wanted an authentic one. They knew they were getting external hits on their site but not whether the visits were authentic. They decided that an audience could not be considered authentic “until we have some dialogue that they have been touched” (Year 2 teacher, August hui). In their search they found Room 6 Cyber kids and the students were so impressed with the aesthetics of their site that they emailed them to find out how they could “bling” their own blog. After making their alterations they got feedback from Room 6 cyberkids “We love your new background”, and so the dialogue continued. The Year 2 teacher concluded:

"Connecting with these children was an authentic audience—they had been touched." (Year 2 teacher, August hui)

Teachers described how having an audience—whether captured or authentic—made students more aware of text use. For example, the Year 7/8 teacher described how reaching out into the wider community had encouraged her students’ thinking about the nature of their audience, and how to engage them in the blog:

"(One student was) talking about a hook to hook them in. He tuned into what his book review is going to do. It is that knowledge of audience. And with that knowledge of audience they have to think about the skills they are applying to create it." (Year 7/8 teacher, interview)

The Year 4 teacher described how one of her students saw the “summariser” as an important literature circle role because those visiting the blog may not have read the story and so would need the summary to contextualise the blog comments made by other students in the group..

Having an audience also helped students adopt the social identities of their discourse communities.

"These kids had experienced an authentic audience, the confidence of talking on [TV programme], leading it, making decisions on what was said, working on the script. Like adults they write that, all of that." (Year 4–6 teacher, interview)

"That having this confidence in their literacy skills and being on air and being able to walk down the street, and hear ‘that’s the presenter on [TV show]…I’ve seen you on telly’. And that doesn’t worry them now. They’re proud of it and it’s ok. But they’re not arrogant. They just feel good about themselves and that’s good." (Year 4–6 teacher, interview)

"I like the feedback because it helps me get better at writing. It makes you be a reader and a writer." (Student, Year 3/4 class)

Engaging with members of out-of-school discourse communities

As students built their capacity and confidence to participate and contribute as members of their various discourse communities in school they also began to seek connections with members of these communities in the out-of-school world. For example, bloggers from both the Year 4 and the Year 7/8 teachers’ classes made contact with and received replies from the authors of books they had read. Below is the response one student received from Kate De Goldi

"Hi [student], Kate De Goldi here…it was a buzz to see your review—it was so succinct and positive!…I tried to imagine I wasn’t me, and decided I would definitely want to read the book as a result of what you wrote…a writer’s dream comments…I’m glad you found it funny, too….I thought writing about anxiety in a moderately humorous way would be a more powerful way of communicating Frankie’s difficulties."

"It’s incredibly nice to get feedback from a reader—doesn’t happen all that often—so I’m most chuffed…thanks so much. Hope you’re reading something else new and wonderful now…Have you read Millions by Frank Cottrill Boyce…I think you might enjoy that—very funny and poignant at the same time….warmest wishes, Kate." (Year 7/8 group, blog)

Soon after, the Year 7/8 teacher had the opportunity to meet Kate de Goldi (at the New Zealand Reading Association Conference), and expressed surprise that “She was just as rapt to see that he had taken the time to blog about the book”. This was not a case of a student sending fan mail or an author humouring him with a reply. It was a case of two readers and writers communicating within a common discourse community.

Analysing text

Analysing text not only covers critical thinking but also the broader aspects of critical literacy. Critical literacy involves considering the construction of texts and the power relationships established, questions of inclusion, exclusion and representation, and the ways in which texts can position a reader. Critical literacy involves questioning texts themselves rather than taking them at face value.¹⁴ The e-fellows saw the capacity to analyse texts in these ways as important.

"You have to make them critical of that visual language though… It’s like television isn’t it? (A child in my class), he plays GTA [Grand Theft Auto] which is R18 and is serious, like shooting guns and prostitutes and everything…He is the loveliest child. Are his parents making the right choice for him? I don’t know. So hopefully you can give them a little bit of that [critical literacy skills]." (New entrant teacher, interview)

Overall, there were fewer examples of students learning critical literacy skills than of breaking the code, using texts, and making meaning. Findings from this project suggest that younger students are able and interested and, perhaps most importantly, need to develop critical literacy, but are doing relatively little of it. Several e-fellows provided students with opportunities to see how texts position readers. For example, the Year 4 teacher began her literature circle unit with The True Story of the Three Little Pigs to demonstrate the way in which there is always more than one possible reading of a text and that stories are never neutral but told from particular positions that as a critical reader we must be aware of. The students’ task was to discuss whether or not the wolf was really the victim, as portrayed in the re-telling. Later in her unit the Year 4 teacher discussed the idea of a new literature circle role—“the conscientious objector”—a role one of her colleagues was experimenting with in her own class. This role involved a consideration of the ethics of texts, characters, authors, and so forth.

The Year 7/8 teacher provided students with several different versions of the Shackleton story and gave them opportunities to watch video clips with the aim of increasing their capacity to analyse the different ways stories are, or can be, told and the effects of these different tellings. The Year 11 teacher began her unit on formal writing with the topic “Social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are endangering New Zealand teenagers” so that students had the opportunity to reflect on and learn more about the need to analyse texts and their sources.

These teachers described the ways in which their students’ capacity to analyse texts developed over the course of their projects.

"The kids are becoming quite discerning about the quality of what they are watching." (Year 7/8 teacher, interview)

Students learnt not just to practise critical literacy in relation to texts but also in relation to in their peers’ attempts to make meaning of them. We observed an example of this in a discussion between a group of the Year 4 teacher’s students in response to a decision the main character in Kids alone in a Cyclone had to make when offered a ride home by a truck diver she did not know as she and her younger brother fought their way through a violent storm. One of the students argued she should not accept the ride if the truck driver had tattoos.

"I’ve had a thought. If the person, the truck driver, had any tattoos… It depends if they have offensive tattoos on their upper body because then they’d be really rough." (Student, Year 4 class)

Another child challenged her assumption that tattoos signify a person who is rough on the basis of different experiences and a different world view—that her father had tattoos and drove a truck. What was interesting was the lack defensiveness expressed by either child or of the group as a whole during this interchange. This was an interesting meaning making question to consider, just like the many other questions about text they had raised and attempted to answer many times before. In the student focus group following our observation, students talked about the importance of not taking texts or the interpretations of their peers at face value, and the importance of taking time to consider different perspectives. An excerpt of this conversation is included below.

Student 1: "If someone has a question and if someone makes it…like [student] said if you talk to a stranger and he offers you a ride home and she said like if he has tattoos and is strong you wouldn’t go with him and my Dad is strong and he has tattoos."

Researcher: "And we know he is a good man."

Student 1: "Yeah."

Researcher: "So is what you’re saying is that it’s good for everyone to have time to say their views, otherwise E in that situation would never know that actually she could be wrong, but because she had the chance to hear your view she gets to hear another way of thinking about it?"

Student 1: "Yeah, and maybe a different way."

Student 2: "Like [student] says, someone asks a question but a person could answer and you could get more possible reasons by getting answers off other persons."

Researcher: "And why is that good?"

Student 3: "So people can have their say."

Student 1: "Because you might be wrong."

Summary

In this chapter we have provided examples of what learning how to break the code, make meaning, use texts, and analyse texts across arrange of modes and with multimodal texts can look like in e-Learning contexts. We have presented the e-fellows’ observation that, for students, achievement in one mode of meaning making often seemed to be associated with achievement in other modes, even when those other modes were not the activity’s primary focus. Next we consider the question of student engagement, before moving on to Chapter 3 in which we explore the conditions for learning that were present in the classrooms, including those specific to the ICTs involved, and that supported this student learning and engagement.

Footnotes

12. Kidpix is a drawing programme for children.
13. Easispeak is a portable microphone/recorder which can be used to save audio recordings on the computer and replay them.
14. For further reading on critical literacy see: Antsey & Bull (2006); Knobel & Healy (1998); Lankshear (1994); Luke & Freebody (1999); New London Group (1996); and for recent New Zealand-based research: Sandretto et al. (2006a; 2006b).