Monthly Archives: March 2024

Student Blogs

Literacy Networks . . . & Confusion

Hey all,

This week, I’m like not mentally here, okay. I hope we can really understand what I’m saying. It’s been really hard, lately – so bear with me, here. And, then I’m presented with this lovely research article that made my head spin even faster. I threw up because it reminded me of being dyslexic and how academia scares me (which, through my logical-rationale brain, this makes perfect sense to why I overreacted to this text and to why my relationship with literacy texts of this nature are not so cute). Do you understand what I’m saying, here? Because half of me does and the other half doesn’t.

Remember, people — I’m an open book.

So, with that being said, I’m going to just write random stuff for this week’s blog post that I hope makes sense in relation to, “Literacy Networks: Following the Circulation of Text, Bodies, and Objects in the Schooling and Online Gaming of One Youth” by Kevin Leander and Jason Lovvorn.

What I’ve gathered is that this research article is an ethnographic study that follows and analyzes one youth – Brian – in three different literacy networks which were two from his school classrooms (History and English), and one from his play of a massively multiplayer online game called Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided. I had no idea what any of the jargon meant in this research article, so I looked up everything: Literacy Networks, Actor Network Theory, Space-Time Dimensions, and any other term that made me want to cry. I still don’t understand what Actor Network Theory is and I truly don’t even care for it at this point. This quote, “Literacy is a form of networking that produces space-time” (Leander & Lovvorn, 293), helped me understand the relationship between such confusing jargon. And I learned that literacy network is an expansive notion for theorizing literacy practices, specifically to move and push social practices of literacy forward so to make sense of how the social and wide-ranging text actor features form a relationship with one another in a unique space-time quality.

~~ I have no idea what I just said ~~

Anyway, I think that the environments (in school or out of school) in which literacy learning takes place are considered the “space-time dimensions,” but I could be wrong. To be honest, I couldn’t even finish this article but my failure to finish reading and fully understanding the depths of this research reflects my mental state and internal frustration with myself NOT this chosen piece of research or anything to do with Daniel’s personal selection. I usually love learning, if truly interested in the topic or not – even if the topic makes zero sense to me, I somehow can make the text relatable in some form or another.

Also, the research discussed a lot about literacy practices in relation to making meaning out of text through personal engagement and agency and how one can use the tools within the text and their spatial surroundings to help form or build upon their identity. I found it funny and interesting as I’m personally struggling with my identity (early adulthood mid-life crisis, perhaps?), while trying to read a form of literacy that does not want to agree with my sense of agency right now. I’m certainly not having a meaningful exchange with literacy right now as you can probably sense the annoyance in my voice.

Out of all the gibberish and jargon within this research article, I did agree with the concept that meaningful exchanges in literacy practices can occur outside of the home, school, or workplace (Leander & Lovvorn, 292). With that being said, I also agree with Leander & Lovvorn in that closer examination must be done to help scholarly researchers and literacy educators to “reconceive of literacy as clearly embedded in other activity structures and forms, and [to] consider the special role that literate activity has in shaping the spatial and temporal relationships of streams of activity (292). Setting-based distinctions (home, school, arcade, etc.,) and the diversity that each space-time dimension presents across activities like gaming, blogging, mixing music, remixing fan fiction, etc., offer a great opportunity for understanding differences among literacy practices of learning, teaching, and thinking.

Oh my – thank goodness this blog is technically, considered done (for what I think). I kept telling myself, “B!tc*, write something, anything – just get it DONE!” I hope whatever was said made sense because it kind of does and kind of doesn’t for me. What a weird blog post of mine. Okay . . . goodbye, now.

Xoxo,

Francesca Di Fabio 

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Case Studies

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This week we looked closely at another method for approaching qualitative research. Understanding the genre features of qualitative research: A case study by Y.H. Guo was a case study about a failed case study research project. The “meta” one-two-punch of Guo’s design afforded us new insights about what is important when undertaking qualitative approaches, as well as the various possible pitfalls of this methodological approach. In the end, it was the compelling (and depressing) story of grad student “Lin” (pseudonym of course), and his false-starts-in-research, that exhibited for us a variety of mistakes when conducting a case study approach.

A case study is one of the most commonly used methodologies of social research. With the case study approach, we come to understand that social constructs should be interpreted rather than measured. Case study is an empirical inquiry which investigates a phenomenon in its real-life context. In a case study, multiple methods of data collection are used, as it involves an in-depth study of a complex phenomenon. A common contentious issue with case study methodology overall is whether the findings of the study of a single social unit can be generalized over the larger population of similar units. But the trend here with qualitative research (and more specifically, case study research) is that knowledge production moves towards dynamic, holistic, and individual aspects of human experience. In this way Guo alluded to the significance of situational “representativeness” rather than the demographic “representativeness”.

This was a quirky yet useful study, opening our perspectives to what affordances may come from approaching a case study effectively. Thank you to Brittney for leading us through some of the highlighted pitfalls of Lin’s attempt to do graduate level research work (i.e. a lack of a Lit Review before gathering data; lack of thoughtful design for a variety of different research instruments (working effectively in concert); imprecise/vague instruments for data gathering; lack of preparation/understanding in how to interpret the data; lack of communication with a research adviser; failing to seek support).

Our class slides

Jump starting your own ideas for your research

We discussed how to begin the journey of your research. You are now entering the “Discovery & Invention” zone. Remember in the early generative stages of starting research that there is a crucial difference between a topic and a question. Reminder: avoid the “narrow down the topic” trap (…because…you cannot narrow your way out of topic land.)

  1. Make yourself vulnerable
  2. Be affirmative and non judgemental
  3. Write down your ideas
  4. Generate questions internally- consider both your curiosities and your assumptions

Your to-do list

Please read: 

Leander & Lovvorn. (August 2006)  Literacy Networks: Following the Circulation of Texts, Bodies, and Objects in the Schooling and Online Gaming of One Youth Cognition and Instruction 24(3):291-340 DOI: 10.1207/s1532690xci2403_1

Blog 6 due 3/7 – Please write your blog reflection on our Actor Network Theory article for discussion. 

Daniel will lead our discussion in class next week in Part 2 of our class time, after we meet with Craig Anderson in Part 1 of class. 

In addition, please do at least 15 mins of “freewriting” to generate early ideas about the topics you might have in mind. Some questions may come to mind that might be useful when visiting the Learning Commons (Library Rm. 115). Please try to formulate a few questions for us when we are exploring the search engines with Craig.

Have a good weekend, and glad to mention that we have made it to March!