Books by Karen Wohlwend
Literacies, Learning and the Body: Bringing Research and Theory into Pedagogical Practice
by Christian Ehret, Christine Mallozzi, Hilary E . Hughes, Kerryn Dixon, Jaye Johnson Thiel, Anne Crampton, Mia Perry, Amanda Claudia Wager, Jacqui Dornbrack, Elisabeth Johnson, Rachel Oppenheim, Karen Wohlwend, Stephanie Jones, Marjorie Siegel, Stavroula Kontovourki, and Grace Enriquez The essays, research studies, and pedagogical examples in this book provide a window into the emb... more The essays, research studies, and pedagogical examples in this book provide a window into the embodied dimensions of literacy and a toolbox for interpreting, building on, and inquiring into the range of ways people communicate and express themselves as literate beings. The contributors investigate and reflect on the complexities of embodied literacies, honoring literacy learners and teachers as they holistically engage with texts in complex sociopolitical, historical, and cultural contexts. Considering these issues within a multiplicity of education spaces and literacy events inside and outside of institutional contexts, the book offers a fresh lens and rhetoric with which to address literacy education policies, giving readers a discursive repertoire necessary to develop and defend responsive curricula within an increasingly high-stakes, standardized schooling climate.
![Research paper thumbnail of Literacy, Play, and Globalization: Converging Imaginaries in Children's Critical and Cultural Performances [Medina & Wohlwend]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/43018010/thumbnails/1.jpg)
This book takes on current perspectives on children’s relationships to literacy, media, childhood... more This book takes on current perspectives on children’s relationships to literacy, media, childhood, markets and transnationalism in converging global worlds. It introduces the idea of multi-sited imaginaries to explain how children’s media and literacy performances shape and are shaped by shared visions of communities that we collectively imagine, including play, media, gender, family, school, or cultural worlds. It draws upon elements of ethnographies of globalization, nexus analysis and performance theories to examine the convergences of such imaginaries across multiple sites: early childhood and elementary classrooms and communities in Puerto Rico and the Midwest United States. In this work we attempt to understand that the local moment of engagement within play, dramatic experiences, and literacies is not a given but is always emerging from and within the multiple localities children navigate and the histories, possibilities and challenges they bring to the creative moment.
November sunshine streams through the large window of the kindergarten classroom. The room is fil... more November sunshine streams through the large window of the kindergarten classroom. The room is filled with light and the steadily rising chatter of children at play in small groups scattered around the room. Near the window, Lubna 1 and Mei Yu periodically check each other's work as they copy from the alphabet above the chalkboard and decorate their whiteboards with colorful letters, stars, and moons.
Articles by Karen Wohlwend
Digital Media and Learning Issue. James Paul Gee, Nicholas E. Husbye, & Jennifer Connor-Zachocki ... more Digital Media and Learning Issue. James Paul Gee, Nicholas E. Husbye, & Jennifer Connor-Zachocki (Eds.)
This chapter examines the digital literacy practices that emerge when young children play together with digital apps on touchscreen devices. Children’s collaborative composing with a digital puppetry app on a touchscreen--with many hands all busy dragging, resizing, and animating puppet characters, and many voices making sound effects, narrating, directing, and objecting--appears aimless, chaotic, and in sharp contrast to the orderly matching activities in prevalent letter and word recognition apps that dominate the early childhood educational software. The crowded collaboration around a single touchscreen looks messy but produces a complex text built with 1) touches, swipes, and other embodied actions that make up digital literacy practices, 2) sensory or multimodal layers of colorful images, dialogue, sound effects, and movement that make up animated stories; and 3) negotiation and pooling of children’s individual story ideas for shared pretense that make up playful collaboration—all contained on a 9.7 inch screen.
Enriching and assessing young children's multimodal storytelling. Coauthors: Christy Wessel Powell & Tolga Kargin
This article provides primary teachers with assessment tools and curricular examples to expand wr... more This article provides primary teachers with assessment tools and curricular examples to expand writing workshop by adding a multimodal storytelling unit on drama and filmmaking, allowing students to create engaging off-the-page stories through films and play performances that enrich writing. Too often children’s literacy abilities are assessed solely based on what they can write on paper, overlooking the rich ways they convey meaning through multiple communication modes like sound effects, gesture, movement, images, and language in their storytelling. This research recognizes play as an important literacy, and argues that a multimodal emphasis in teaching and assessment more closely match the ways children learn and make meaning in their everyday lives. This study is a part of a larger ongoing multiyear, multisite study of literacy playshops in early childhood classrooms and teacher education.
Free Play or Tight Spaces? Mapping Participatory Literacies in Apps
In this article, to illustrate how six dimensions of participatory literacies influence children’... more In this article, to illustrate how six dimensions of participatory literacies influence children’s interactions with apps on iPads, we share a rubric that considers each app's capability for developing the following dimensions:
Multiplayer
Productive
Multimodal
Open-ended
Pleasurable
Connected
Drawing from our fieldwork in schools, we evaluate the apps using radar graphs as "app maps" that allow us to visualize participatory literacies and compare apps according to the ways learners actually use them.
Phi Delta Kappan , May 2015
The authors propose and discuss their Playshop curricular model, which they developed with teache... more The authors propose and discuss their Playshop curricular model, which they developed with teachers. Their studies suggest a playful approach supports even more rigor than the Common Core State Standards require for preschool and early grade children. Children keep their attention longer when learning comes in the form of something they can play with. Research also shows, the authors say, that just because children are playing does not mean they are not developing intellectually or academically. The play/rigor binary is a false construct, the authors say, which has errantly led schools to shorten and eliminate recess and playtime for children, more specifically hurting low-income and diverse children’s chances for fuller academic and intellectual progress that could help close the achievement gap.
The Maker movement promotes hands-on making, including crafts, robotics, and computing. The movem... more The Maker movement promotes hands-on making, including crafts, robotics, and computing. The movement's potential to transform education rests in our ability to address notable gender disparities, particularly in STEM fields. E-textiles—the first female-dominated computing community—provide inspiration for overcoming longstanding cultural divides in classrooms. Analysis of children's use of e-textiles reveals that materials like needles, fabric, and conductive thread rupture traditional gender scripts around electronics and implicitly gives girls hands-on access and leadership roles. This reconceptualization of cultural divides as sets of tacitly accepted practices rooted in gendered histories has implications for reconceptualizing traditionally male-dominated areas of schooling.
ABSTRACT Drawing upon theories that reconceptualize toys and artifacts as identity texts, this st... more ABSTRACT Drawing upon theories that reconceptualize toys and artifacts as identity texts, this study employs mediated discourse analysis to examine children's videotaped writing and play interactions with princess dolls and stories in one kindergarten classroom. The study reported here is part of a three-year ethnographic study of literacy play in US early childhood classrooms.
Using data from a 3-year ethnographic study in US early childhood classrooms, I examine two kinde... more Using data from a 3-year ethnographic study in US early childhood classrooms, I examine two kindergarten boys’ classroom play with their favourite Disney Princess transmedia to see how they negotiated gender identity layers clustered in the franchise's commercially given storylines and consumer expectations. This analysis contributes necessarily syncretic methods of analysis that enable critical examination of the complexity in children's play interactions with popular media artefacts as collaborative and heteroglossic negotiations of gender. Mediated discourse analysis of action and multimodality in boys’ Snow White princess play makes visible how children pivoted and anchored their performances as they negotiated, played, and blurred boundaries among gender identity intertexts.
Drawing from critical sociocultural perspectives that view play, literacy, and gender as social p... more Drawing from critical sociocultural perspectives that view play, literacy, and gender as social practices, boys’ Disney Princess play is examined as a site of identity construction and contestation situated within overlapping communities of femininity and masculinity practice where children learn expected practices for “doing gender.” The article presents critical discourse analysis of two instances of 5- and 6-year-old children’s doll play excerpted from data collected during a year of weekly visits to one focal kindergarten in a U.S. Midwest public school, part of a larger three-year study of literacy play as mediated discourse. Through princess play, children enacted femininities and masculinities and negotiated character roles with peers in ways that enforced and contested gender expectations circulated in media marketing and enforced in play groups. Findings indicate that doll play is a productive pedagogy for mediating gendered identity texts circulating through global media and for creating spaces for diverse gender performances in early childhood settings.
This reconceptualization of play as an embodied literacy explores how its multimodal facility for... more This reconceptualization of play as an embodied literacy explores how its multimodal facility for manipulating meanings and contexts powerfully shapes children’s learning and participation in classrooms. Three examples from one focal kindergarten in a three year study of literacy play in early childhood classrooms illustrate how young children emphasize or combine particular modes to strategically amplify their intended meanings as they play 1) to try out social practices, 2) to explore the multimodal potential of material resources, and 3) to construct spaces for peer culture within classrooms. Multimodal literacy research holds promise for convincing administrators and policy-makers to reverse the erosion of play in schools. In this classroom, a pedagogy of literacy fusion (Millard, 2003) merged two literacies—multimodal play with school literacy—producing an inclusive space where children could play with meanings and achieve school goals as they enacted literate identities in both peer and school cultures.
The International Reading Association's Outstanding Dissertation Award, which has been given annu... more The International Reading Association's Outstanding Dissertation Award, which has been given annually since 1964, recognizes exceptional contributions made by doctoral students in reading or related fields. Candidates are self-nominated or nominated by their dissertation advisors. Applicants must be current members of the International Reading Association. Each submits a monograph based on the dissertation, which must have been completed during the previous academic year.
Young children often use actions rather than talk as they interact with objects and each other to... more Young children often use actions rather than talk as they interact with objects and each other to strategically shape the social, material, and cultural environment. New dynamic research designs and methods are needed to capture the collaborative learning and social positioning achieved through children’s non-verbal interactions. Mediated discourse analysis (MDA), a hybrid ethnographic/sociolinguistic approach rooted in cultural-historical activity and practice theories, analyzes mediated actions with objects. A three-year ethnographic study of children’s literacy play illustrates the five-stage process in MDA research design that resulted in microanalysis of children’s activity with social practices, positioning and spaces that included and excluded peers.
In this conceptual piece, we examine media as a nexus of a traditional schooling pedagogy and per... more In this conceptual piece, we examine media as a nexus of a traditional schooling pedagogy and performance pedagogy to make visible how their overlapping elements produce media's pervasive educative force but also to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of using media in educational contexts. Nexus analysis examines a fashion makeover television program – What Not to Wear (WNTW) – as an embodied lesson that produces identity revision but also disjunctures and slippages that enable critical responses and productive remakings. WNTW is a dramatization of remediation of one woman's (portrayed) lived practices and clothing choices which are read on her body as personal expression of fashion trends. These globalized lessons with body texts require new ways of reading and responding that allow learners/viewers to see the power relations that construct particular identity performances as errors and cultural practices and ethnicities as unacceptable.
Digital literacies present opportunities to expand ways of making meaning. Utilizing a New Litera... more Digital literacies present opportunities to expand ways of making meaning. Utilizing a New Literacies Studies framework, this article presents critical lessons in film production from a multiple site case study using examples of classroom experience to demonstrate how filmmaking and play come together in a process of storying, a multimodal approach to text composition. Students in both preschool and early elementary contexts expressed an expanded understanding of composing through digital means, utilized technology in sophisticated ways, and accessed their knowledge of popular culture and film conventions through the process of storying.
In this article, semiotic analysis of children’s practices and designs with video game convention... more In this article, semiotic analysis of children’s practices and designs with video game conventions considers how children use play and drawing as spatializing literacies that make room to import imagined technologies and user identities. Microanalysis of video data of classroom interactions collected during a three year ethnographic study of children’s literacy play in kindergarten and primary classrooms reveals how the leading edge of technology use in print-centric classrooms is pretended into being by 5- , 6-, and 7-year-old “early adopters” a marketing term for first wave consumers who avidly buy and explore newly-released technology products. Early adopters signals two simultaneous identities for young technology users: 1) as developing learners of new literacies and technologies and 2) as curious explorers who willingly play with new media. Children transformed paper and pencil resources into artifacts for enacting cell phone conversations and animating video games, using new technologies and the collaborative nature of new literacies to perform literate identities and to strengthen the cohesiveness of play groups.
""We talk about children as digital
natives (Prensky, 2001) growing up in brave
new virtual w... more ""We talk about children as digital
natives (Prensky, 2001) growing up in brave
new virtual worlds, but also as vulnerable innocents
who are especially attuned to—and in need
of—nature. But do we really see these children?
Do we understand them as emergent users
of new literacies and new technologies? If so, how
might early literacy education change to prepare children to read, write, be, and act as full participants
in digital worlds and unknowable futures? This article examines tensions across literacy,
play, and technologies in early childhood classrooms
in order to understand how the meaningmaking
possibilities we offer children are shaped
by the ways we see them. How might new ways
of seeing open our eyes to “new basics” (Dyson,
2006) in early education and help us reshape inschool
literacies to more closely match children’s
lived worlds?""
In this article, the authors examine affordances and limitations of two interpretive frames—nexus... more In this article, the authors examine affordances and limitations of two interpretive frames—nexus of practice (Scollon, 2001) and the rhizome (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987)—for understanding the social construction of young children as precocious users of digital technologies. Building on recent work in literacy studies that challenges fixed understandings of space and context, particularly with respect to literacy practices using digital media, they argue that interpretive approaches to understanding young children’s participatory online literacy practices must seek to understand converging discourses and practices, but also divergence. These arguments are illustrated through nexus analysis and rhizoanalysis of a parent-produced YouTube video of a toddler who operates a computer to browse online nursery rhymes.
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Books by Karen Wohlwend
Articles by Karen Wohlwend
This chapter examines the digital literacy practices that emerge when young children play together with digital apps on touchscreen devices. Children’s collaborative composing with a digital puppetry app on a touchscreen--with many hands all busy dragging, resizing, and animating puppet characters, and many voices making sound effects, narrating, directing, and objecting--appears aimless, chaotic, and in sharp contrast to the orderly matching activities in prevalent letter and word recognition apps that dominate the early childhood educational software. The crowded collaboration around a single touchscreen looks messy but produces a complex text built with 1) touches, swipes, and other embodied actions that make up digital literacy practices, 2) sensory or multimodal layers of colorful images, dialogue, sound effects, and movement that make up animated stories; and 3) negotiation and pooling of children’s individual story ideas for shared pretense that make up playful collaboration—all contained on a 9.7 inch screen.
Multiplayer
Productive
Multimodal
Open-ended
Pleasurable
Connected
Drawing from our fieldwork in schools, we evaluate the apps using radar graphs as "app maps" that allow us to visualize participatory literacies and compare apps according to the ways learners actually use them.
natives (Prensky, 2001) growing up in brave
new virtual worlds, but also as vulnerable innocents
who are especially attuned to—and in need
of—nature. But do we really see these children?
Do we understand them as emergent users
of new literacies and new technologies? If so, how
might early literacy education change to prepare children to read, write, be, and act as full participants
in digital worlds and unknowable futures? This article examines tensions across literacy,
play, and technologies in early childhood classrooms
in order to understand how the meaningmaking
possibilities we offer children are shaped
by the ways we see them. How might new ways
of seeing open our eyes to “new basics” (Dyson,
2006) in early education and help us reshape inschool
literacies to more closely match children’s
lived worlds?""