Collaborating with Teachers and Students in Multiliteracies Research: "Se hace camino al andar"

Multiliteracies theory, with an emphasis on literacy as diverse and negotiated social practices involving multimodal work, is particularly compatible with collaborative research, as such research enables researchers and teachers to consider students’ multiple perspectives and intentions for their work. This article discusses three collaborative teacher-researcher case studies of teaching and learning in a multiliteracies framework with middle-years students. In these case studies teachers developed literacy projects that explicitly sought to capitalize on students’ out-of-school literacy interests and practices. Collaborative researcher-teacher relationships enabled comfortable research relationships with students throughout 6- to 10-week instructional projects; students’ perspectives throughout the projects enriched both the teaching and the research. These case studies suggest implications regarding collaborative relationships and stances among researchers, teachers, and students.La théorie des littératies multiples, selon laquelle la littératie consiste en des pratiques sociales variées et négociées qui impliquent le travail multimodal, se prête particulièrement bien à la recherche collaborative puisqu’elle permet aux chercheurs et aux enseignants de considérer les multiples perspectives et intentions qu’ont les élèves face à leurs travaux. Cet article présente trois études de cas collaboratives entre enseignants et chercheurs portant sur l’enseignement et l’apprentissage dans un cadre de littératies multiples avec des élèves du secondaire. Les enseignants impliqués ont développé des projets en littératie qui visaient explicitement l’exploitation des intérêts et des pratiques parascolaires des élèves. Les rapports collaboratifs entre les chercheurs et les enseignants ont permis l’établissement de rapports pédagogiques amicaux avec les élèves tout au long des 6 à 10 semaines qu’ont duré les projets académiques. Les perspectives des élèves ont enrichi l’enseignement et la recherche pendant cette période. Des conséquences portant sur les rapports collaboratifs entre chercheurs, enseignants et élèves, et les attitudes qui les caractérisent, se dégagent de ces études de cas

earning earning Learning e ea ar rn ni in ng g g Adolescents Composing Fiction in Digital Game and Written Formats: tacit, explicit and metacognitive strategies

ABSTRACT This article reports on a study of 23 tenth-grade students who created fiction in digital game and written formats. The researchers observed them at work, analysed their stories in both formats, and interviewed selected students to learn what affordances and constraints they demonstrate and/or articulate in such authoring. The students used ScriptEase, a software tool that supports the creation of digital stories, based on the game engine of Neverwinter Nights (Bioware). The authors consider the theoretical literature about narrative and games, focusing especially on indicators of verbal tense and mood. They discuss the overlaps and differences between digital and written stories, drawing in particular on the work of two students, and they conclude with implications for theoretical understandings of contemporary narratives in multiple formats and implications for literacy education. Teachers who encourage students 'to read like writers' and 'to write like readers' have long noted the impact of students' writing on their reading and the impact of their reading on their writing. Adding a different medium increases the metacognitive potential of this exercise. As young people increasingly become able to produce fiction in game and other digital formats, it is likely that their consumption, production and understanding of fiction in such formats will develop in ways that we cannot now predict. This article reports on a project in which 23 Grade 10 students were given the opportunity to create two related stories, one in digital game format and one in words. Six of those students commented in subsequent interviews on their processes of creation in both media. We report in detail on the work of two of these students. The artefacts created using the two different formats and the students' comments about their creative processes raise many questions for contemporary literacy education and many challenges for literacy teachers. Although creating digital game fiction may appear to be a marginal activity to teachers who must prepare students for high-stakes examinations (as these students' teachers must also do), our findings suggest that we need to consider vital questions about the core of the literacy curriculum for kindergarten to Grade 12 students in the coming years. Many contemporary high school students are experienced digital gamers, and all of them have had years of practice in both reading and writing stories created in words. However, few students have had the opportunity to develop their own story in the format of the digital game. When the students in our project were given the chance to work in this way in a highly supportive environment, they learned new digital skills, made sophisticated decisions about what kinds of narrative were more appropriate to each of the two formats they were using, and articulated productive metacognitive strategies