Dressman 2009 New lit editor overview.pdf - Oncourse

Dressman, McCarthey, and Prior Editors’ Introduction 345
Editors’ Introduction: Adolescents’ Literacy and the Promises of
Digital Technology
Mark Dressman
Sarah McCarthey
Paul Prior
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Over the last fifteen years, nothing in research or theory has been heralded as a
greater boon to the development of adolescents’ literacy practices than the advent
of personal computing and the Internet. Based on a combination of studies of
semiotics, popular culture, and social and cultural production and reproduction,
researchers in secondary literacy have mainly studied the practices of individuals
and small groups of adolescents, and have used the findings from these studies to
argue two related points (Alvermann, Hinchman, Moore, Phelps, & Waff, 2006;
Chandler-Olcott, 2007; Gee, 2000; Kress, 2003; Lankshear & Knobel, 2006; Lewis
& Fabos, 2005; New London Group, 1996). First, these studies have found that in
marked contrast to conventional measures of in-school literacy which find that
many adolescents struggle to read and write with efficacy, when literacy is digitized
and made personally and socially empowering, adolescents become highly engaged
and excel as readers and writers across a broad range of print- and image-based
formats. The second point, which builds from the first, is to emphasize the stark
contrast between the print-centric curriculum of conventional secondary schools
and the multimodality of contemporary workplaces and everyday life, and to
argue that in their literate practices many adolescents today seem to be anticipating
and preparing for lives of work and play that leave the traditional practices of
schooling far behind.
The three research studies and the Standpoints essay featured in this issue
of Research in the Teaching of English both contribute to and challenge current
perspectives on relations between digital technology and the development of
adolescent literacy in the early twenty-first century. David Bruce’s study, “Writing
with Visual Images: Examining the Video Composition Processes of High School
Students,” builds on models of written composition such as those of Emig (1977)
and Flower and Hayes (Flower, 1989; Flower & Hayes, 1981) to argue for a model
of video composition that stresses the recursive and self-evaluative nature of the
composition process even more than researchers of writing have. Bruce grounds
his model in a study of three small groups of high school students as they planned,
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346 Research in the Teaching of English Volume 43 May 2009
videotaped, and edited a music video based on a song of their choosing. His study
also provides a vivid and candid account of the logistical and pedagogical challenges
faced by teachers and researchers who teach composition through multimodality
within a high school setting.
A second study by Rebecca Black, “Online Fan Fiction, Global Identities, and
Imagination,” similarly draws on three case studies, in this instance of three young
Asian women located in different countries along the Pacific Rim (Canada and the
Philippines), to document the role of fan fiction sites as a means of developing
proficiency in English-language discourses. However, based on theories of global
cultural exchange (e.g., Appadurai, 1996), Black argues that far from merely acquiring
proficiency in English, in their practices of appropriating language, images, and
fictional elements from a wide range of Asian and international sources, publishing
their fiction on the World Wide Web, and then engaging readers around the world
in critical discussions of their compositions, these women are participating in a
process whereby new genres are changing modes of English-based expression and
broadening the avenues through which transnational, transcultural communication
across individuals and groups occurs.
The third study in this issue and the featured Standpoints essay take more
circumspect positions with regard to the promises of digital technology. In “Changing
Conceptions and Uses of Computer Technologies in the Everyday Literacy
Practices of Sixth and Seventh Graders,” Jane Agee and Jeanette Altarriba report
findings from a survey of 189 early adolescents in a middle-class, predominantly
white school district and show that early adolescents in their study were not nearly
as engaged or preoccupied with computer technology as might be presumed from
case studies of similar populations. They suggest that these students’ developmental
status (seventh graders reported more online computer use than sixth graders),
limited technology use within the schools, and differences in literate proficiency
may help to account for this discrepancy. These findings add some nuance to
current discussions of the role of technology in the lives of adolescents and point
to specific factors that may limit the extent to which adolescents embrace digital
literacy as a part of their daily lives.
Elizabeth Moje argues for an even more nuanced and reflexive approach to
the study of adolescents’ use of digital technology in her featured Standpoints
essay for this issue, “A Call for New Research in New and Multi-Literacies.” Moje
opens her essay by noting that the extent to which digital forms of literacy influence
daily lives may vary broadly across individuals. But she also points out that
much of the information in these new modes remains encoded in conventional
print, and suggests whether a complete rupture with pre-digital forms of literacy
has occurred or whether the incorporation of hypertext, audio, and still and video
images with print text might better be described as not completely “new,” but as
a combination of new and old modes that are compositionally wide-ranging. If
this is the case, then distinctions among digital formats, the practices that develop

Dressman, McCarthey, and Prior Editors’ Introduction 347
from each, and the cognitive outcomes that are produced from them must be
delineated and researched. New/old questions about relationships among quantity
and quality of access to digital tools in and out of school and their effects on
learning and school achievement must also be asked, and ways of researching
that not only document the processes and social and cultural effects of digital
technology in the lives of individuals but that distinguish among differing effects
across subgroups of students, different uses of media, and different pedagogical
and curricular approaches must be developed. In short, Moje’s essay is a call for
researchers to move beyond the documentation and theorization of digital literacy
as a new, or novel, phenomenon, and to view it instead as an integral feature of
how digital and other media are now combining to reshape what it means to be
literate, particularly within educational contexts.
In summary, we believe the studies and essay featured in this issue of RTE
provide a snapshot representation of the current state and future possibilities of
research into adolescents’ literate uses of digital technology. Together, they push at
the complexity—methodologically and theoretically—of research that addresses
digital literacy and routine considerations of how digitization and conventional
print literacy reciprocally affect each other. We are pleased to publish these studies
and essay as an unofficial “themed” issue, and like Moje we call for additional research
that approaches the phenomenon of digital literacy with rigor, systematicity,
and theoretical and conceptual precision.
References
Alvermann, D. E., Hinchman, K., A., Moore,
D. W., Phelps, S. F., & Waff, D. R. (2006).
(Eds.), Reconceptualizing the literacies in
adolescents’ lives (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural
dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Chandler-Olcott, K. (2007). Animé and
manga fandom: Young people’s multiliteracies
made visible. In J. Flood, S. B. Heath &
D. Lapp (Eds.), Research on teaching literacy
through the communicative and visual arts
(Vol. II, pp. 247–257). Newark, DE: International
Reading Association.
Emig, J. (1977). Writing as a mode of learning.
College Composition and Communication, 28,
122–128.
Flower, L. (1989). Cognition, context, and
theory building. College Composition and
Communication, 40, 282–311.
Flower, L., & Hayes, J.R. (1981). A cognitive
process theory of writing. College Composition
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Gee, J. (2000). Teenagers in new times: A
new literacy studies perspective. Journal of
Adolescent and Adult Literacy 43, 412–420.
Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media
age. London: Routledge.
Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2006). New literacies:
Everyday practices and classroom learning
(2nd ed.). New York: Open University Press.
Lewis, C., & Fabos, B. (2005). Instant messaging,
literacies, and social identities. Reading
Research Quarterly, 40, 470–501.
New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy
of multiliteracies: Designing social futures.
Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92.